Nobody cares about goals. Goals are ugly and difficult and require thought and hard work. Nobody wants to talk about goals.
But dreams are different. Everyone cares about dreams. Dreams are en vogue. Dreams are popular and sexy. And dreams are easy. Everyone has a dream. And everyone wants to talk about their dream. But the truth is goals are just dreams with legs on them. Goals are dreams with a plan attached. Goals are dreams you can work toward.
Dreams are ethereal.
But if you want to make your dreams a reality you have to find a way to map them out. You have to come up with a plan. To make dreams doable you need to pull them out of the air and put them into a play. That’s where goals come in…
Take your dream and make it into a specific goal
When making a goal you have to be specific. How are you going to know if you hit the target if you don’t know what you are aiming at? So take your dream and make it into a specific thing you want to accomplish.
Stop dreaming about being rich and decide you want to make a million dollars.
Stop saying you want to be “in shape” and pick a specific look/weight/size you want to be.
Make your dream specific. Then…
Set trackable goals
Now that you have a specific goal, make it so you can track it. What I mean by that is set up smaller goals and steps to take along the way.
Do you want to be a millionaire? How will you make the first thousand? How much of the million will you make this year?
Do you want to get healthy? How will you measure your progress? Will you track your weight? Your food intake? Your clothing size? Your blood pressure? Your ability to walk up a flight of stairs?
Make sure your goals are trackable. Also…
Make sure your goals are realistic
I wrote a little about this last week but the point bears repeating. Make sure your goals can realistically be accomplished in the time frame you set.
Do you want to be a horse jockey? Are you six-five? It’s probably not going to happen for you.
Do you want to buy an island? Unless your father is Bill Gates or you invent a new smart phone it might not happen.
Do you want to lose 50 pounds by next week? You could workout all day, every day and eat nothing but broccoli and it’s still not going to happen.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Set goals that are realistic for you. You may be smart enough to invent a smart phone or lucky enough to have rich family members who love you. If so, good for you. You may be a famous actor who has a personal chef and the availability to workout for three hours a day. Bravo.
Take your personality, your schedule, and your abilities into account when setting goals. Something may be very realistic for you and make a good goal to set. And that same thing may be outrageous for me to try to do given my circumstances and time frame.
We may both want to lose 10 pounds. You may set a goal of doing it in five weeks and I may set my goal at four months. And both of us may have set realistic goals for ourselves. Don’t judge your goals by another persons abilities.
Dream big. I will never tell anyone to dream small dreams. But then bring those dreams to life by making a plan. Big dreams require big goals. And big goals require specific, trackable planning.
