My Philosophy of Goal Setting

Good goal setting directs your activities for the year and enables you to focus on the activities and accomplishments that are most important.

But goal setting comes at a price. The risk of ?not getting it done? or you failing you is perhaps the worst type of regret. So, it seems to me that being as well organized as possible can greatly reduce the risk of failure and minimize regret.

Several years ago I was involved with The Strategic Coach ? a best practices entrepreneur program offered by Dan Sullivan and his group in Toronto. They presented some terrific ideas around self improvement through goal setting, and perhaps one of the most important concepts I managed to retain is measuring back prior to setting new goals. The idea is to celebrate the recent progress you have made first. Being grateful for your accomplishments allows you to give yourself a break and recognize the successes you have already achieved.

Idealized goals are not very satisfying. There are always examples of others who are doing better than you. Measuring yourself against perfect is always a losing proposition?for all of us.

So measuring back starts with a question: Looking back over the past 12 months to the beginning of last year, what accomplishments and improvements have I made in my life? What challenges did I face coming into last year and how did I fare when dealing with them? An honest appraisal of your year will probably produce both wins and losses.

You should look at four aspects (quadrants):

1. Family and other relationships,

2. Personal growth (self improvement),

3. Career improvement and advancement,

4. Philanthropy or giving back to your community.

I usually create three columns for each of the above four quadrants:

A. Challenges last year,

B. Progress during the year, and

C. Required additional progress.

This way, you can celebrate the growth first. If additional progress is needed, then this becomes a goal for the coming year. If you ?got it done?, it then falls off the list.

Now we are ready to look forward. For each quadrant you should ask a couple of questions?imagine we are now one year from today, what has had to have happened in ? family, personal, career, community involvement? to make you feel satisfied with your progress? How can you measure the progress and keep track?

This is a powerful goal setting technique that is designed to make you focus on the things that are truly important. From my experience, it will aid in encouraging you to recognize the progress you are making and help to minimize the importance of comparing yourself to the expectations of others. You can never measure up to ideals, but real progress on the things that matter to you can be most fulfilling.

Progress should be measurable. If you want to improve your fitness then a weight goal may be a good way to keep track, or perhaps committing to 30 minutes of activity every second day and keeping track of frequency by writing it down.

Some may recall that last year my personal improvement goal was to end the year where my weight number started with a 1. I am happy to report that this mission was accomplished and my number today starts with a 1. While I didn?t get to my ideal fitness level, the result was good progress towards my ultimate goal. So progress, not perfection, is really a very satisfying benchmark.

Caloric intake continues to be the biggest factor in my weight loss and improved physical well being. A good calorie counter is a great asset in understanding calories, and we use an app called My Fitness Pal in our house.

This year I am adding a heart rate monitor to my work-outs. The idea is to better capture the data from each session and increase the quality of the approach by keeping my heart rate in the optimal zone, for my age etc, and enjoy better results.?The Heart Rate Monitor I am using is the Polar RS100. It is a watch and chest strap transmitter type that seems to supply what I need but I should note as fair warning, it has only been used twice.

So get started, celebrate your progress in 2012 and plan your goals for the coming year. Writing it down greatly improves the likelihood of even greater success that most importantly, especially applies to you and the people in your life.

Patrick

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