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Making a Map For Your Success
G oals are the steps you will need to take so as to arrive at the destination of your vision. It is one thing to know where you want to go: it is another to know how you are going to get there. The following steps are the big chunks of the goal setting process. Remember: until you have crafted a strategy for the attainment of your vision, all you have is a fantasy.
1. A Support Team. After you have clarified your vision in as precise detail as possible and established where it is you wish to arrive in five, ten and twenty years, I suggest that you pull together a support team. This team can be made up of friends and family members whose gifting, talents and life-experience are different from your own (who wants parrots on the team?) and who love you enough to be supportive, honest and to hold you accountable to your commitments.
Once you have this support team together, share your vision with them. Ask them to help you establish detailed goals as to how to arrive at your desired destination. Keep this discussion as positive and supportive as possible.
2. Face the facts. Where are you right now? Within the context of your desired outcomes, what are your assets and liabilities? What are your strengths and weaknesses? For example, if you want to write a novel and your grammar is weak, this is a "wh ere you are right now": it is a limitation that will need to be removed.
3. Consider the Steps. What are the steps you need to take-what is Step One, Step Two, Step Three and so-on, that will lead you to your destination? Does one of your first steps need to be more education, or the hiring of an accountant, or an appointment with a lawyer? Do you foresee obstacles that can and should be removed as quickly as possible? Should you seek to interview someone who has, in some shape-form-or-fashion, lived the dream you are aspiring to? Map out each step in the wisest and most efficient progression as possible.
4. Set time-frames. Once you have arranged the necessary steps, go back over each respective point and set a time frame as to when this particular step will have been taken. Of course, in some cases, this will involve delegation: who is responsible for what and when will it be accomplished? If the attainment of your vision requires that you rely on other people, then YOU are responsible to see to it that they understand the significance of their part in your dreams: clarify, clarify, and clarify again!
With all of this written down, read it aloud to your support team. Make sure they all have copies. Now, commit yourself before these people both to the realization of your vision and the steps it will take to arrive there. Ask your team to hold you accountable to your promises. That's right: you want some people around you who will call you and, in a positive and supportive manner, ask how things are progressing. This will keep you moving in the direction of your dreams.
The steps you lay out and the time frames you establish are not handed down from Mt. Sinai. Sometimes you may notice that a specific step is not taking you in the right direction. Change it. At other times, you will discover that a certain time frame was unrealistic. Move it. Go back to your support team and inform them as to your changes.
by Dr. Monte E. Wilson, III
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