CurtisJudah

Goal Setting and Definition – An Introduction to Lifestyle Design

Lifestyle

Goal Setting is pointless. That is what the people you don’t want to be, tells everyone. The successful people on the other hand, live and die by it and that is already enough reason to believe that it works. I like to call this goal recalibration and I will tell you why in a second.

This stage is the single most important stage in lifestyle design because without this stage, you will never ever start! I define lifestyle design like what you probably think it is. It’s simply designing your lifestyle to the way you want it to be. No fancy explanations, just simple and easy to understand. Know what you really want and more importantly, don’t be influenced by others that want to make that decision for you. This is the foundation of lifestyle design.

Now I want to tell you why I call this recalibration. To calibrate means to correlate the readings with those of a standard. Everyone, you included, already have many goals in mind and those goals are usually “calibrated” to the standards of who you know, what you see and how they want you to be. I want you to re-calibrate your goals to the standards of the “uncommon” people. The successful one’s, the people you envy the most. Recalibrate your goals so that you’d know what is important to you and only you. Do it like how they do it.  Find someone you know and look up to and observe them, see what makes them successful at what they do!

So how do you do it? It’s pretty simple actually. Here’s something you can follow right now.

  • Close your eyes now and clear your thoughts. Brainstorm personal goals and write them down immediately.
  • Impose a deadline. This is important so I suggest you pick 6 months for now. You can change this later on for other goals. Don’t make it too long though because you will lose steam. Remember you crammed before an exam then you still got those high grades? That’s what you want.
  • Write your Long Term Goals. These should be finished within the deadline of 6 months. Don’t be worried about how hard they are and don’t over think them. Just keep a positive mindset and stop thinking of conquering the world.
  • List your Short Term Goals. Think of what you could do now to start your long term goals.
  • Lastly, list down your Medium Term Goals. Without this, you sometimes lose steam and lose track of your goals. Here’s an example. Your long term goal is to be able to fit in that dress of your that your mom gave you last Christmas. So you state that your short term goal is to enroll in the gym and start training to lose weight. Your medium term goal is to lose at least 30 pounds in 3 months. This is like a checkpoint or a big stepping stone towards the milestone. Remember to reward yourself when you finish a medium term goal. This will keep you motivated and positive throughout.

Eventually, when you get the hang of it, you will learn about tracking your progress which is equally important to see where you are at and what you are doing wrong. Do not be afraid to fail, keep working towards your goal and never give up.

In conclusion, simply state your goals and divide them to Short, Medium and Long Term Goals. Write them down and be dedicated to it. Without your whole hearted dedication, you will notice that will stray away from what you need to do and start doing time wasting activities. You need this stage to succeed in Lifestyle Design. Sooner rather than later, great things will happen to your life and you will finally realize that you did take the right step by re-calibrating your goals and mindset.