The Complete Goals Setting Formula

Purpose:

Less than four percent of people write down their goals, and less than one percent actually review them on an ongoing basis. The purpose of this blog is to help you reflect on your year and show you how to set and accomplish goals for the New Year so you can achieve the greatness you are destined to achieve. I broke it down into 4 sections with a template worksheet at the end.

You are either going to go through the world by design or default:

 Design = decide what is important to you and for your life; then set goals to achieve it (proactive)

Or

 Default = other people will decide what is important for you (reactive) As 2017 comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on my year and planning for 2018. This year has been an amazing year; I set some major goals and accomplished most of them. Two of my biggest 2017 accomplishments were doing my first TEDx talk (https://YouTube/JCqo0I5bs3Y) and becoming an Amazon best-selling author. Also this year I was asked to be a keynote speaker at a few different conferences, I spoke at different churches, and I became a licensed minister. I accepted a new pastoring job at Southern Tier Family Life Church, designed and helped start a contemporary service at Marcellus United Methodist Church, I coordinated with local college staff and provided training on how to connect with young adults and identify drug abuse, authored a coffee book, developed a movie script, finished a workbook to accompany my first book and taught a (second) class from it. My favorite goal, however, was becoming more in love with my amazing wife each and every day; I must say this goal exceeded what I expected. I am passionate about goal setting because I never used to set any; I lived life “in the now” and never thought about the future. I thought I was immortal, like most at a younger age, until life catches up with you and rudely slaps you across the face. This thought pattern produced lots of regret years later. I wasted about 30 years of my life because I had no vision, I had no focus, and I had no goals. I lived my life reacting to situations and allowing other people to determine the direction of my life. When I was younger I had no idea I was going to graduate high school until the day before we walked the stage; no idea I was going to college until the week before. When it came time for graduate school, two days before class started I made a call to apply to the school just because one of my friends was going. I ended up being in a major I could not have cared less about, just because he was taking that major. So my plea to everyone is please, please, I am begging you to read this and make a change! Don’t wake up years later realizing you wasted your life. Trust me: you do not want to play catch up, you feel like you’re always running at all times, racing against the clock of life. Nothing is worse than feeling you only have one good breath of life left to make it. Even when you’re supposed to relax, you can never shut off your mind. You are constantly re-evaluating yourself to make sure you hustled hard enough each day.

Section 1: Reflection exercise

In light of the many accomplished goals I’ve shared and of the danger of wasted time, ask yourself four questions. I suggest you write them down; we reflect and think better if we actually write things down (that’s science):
1) List your 3 biggest wins for 2017
2) On a scale 1–10, how happy are you with this year?
3) Review all your goals you had for 2017 and evaluate. Did you spend the right amount of time on them? How can you improve the time you spent on them?
4) What was the biggest lesson you learned in 2017?
After you reflect on your year and honestly evaluate how happy you are with 2017, you will be in the right frame of mind to set your goals for 2018. My goal here is to help you not only set goals for 2018 but help you accomplish them.

Section 2: Questions to ask yourself

1) What do you dream about in your relationships (what is your ideal)?
2) What do you dream about in your career?
3) What do you dream about in your relationship with God?
4) What do you dream about for your health?
After you list those things you can move on to setting goals for each and every one of those areas. Goals work if you break each goal into small weekly or daily steps (action plan) and put a due date on them. Without a due date, you most likely will never accomplish them. Also, I suggest you list the people or person that can help you reach that goal. It may be someone to hold you accountable or someone you can learn from.
One of the most important parts that is often not done is to rank the goals. I use a three-component ranking system for each goal then rate each component on a 1–5 scale with 5 being the most important. The three components are motivation, desire, and commitment. I then rank them 1–5 for each goal. For example, let’s say the goal is to lose 30 pounds in 2018. I would rank the motivation as 3 (it’s hard for me to be motivated to do something I do not enjoy). Desire would be a 5 because I desire to lose weight to get healthy. My commitment would be a 3 as well on this. This allows me to see how I feel about the goal. It also encourages me to try to increase my motivation to a 5 because without that I will not stick to the goal. If another goal of mine is at a motivation level 5, then I would start with that. Hopefully, once I experience some success, my motivation for other goals (such as weight loss) will increase. I will attach a worksheet template you can use with those things on it along with a section for reward. Rewarding yourself after accomplishing a goal is vital. Receiving a tangible award makes achieving a goal that much sweeter.

Section 3: Interested or Committed?

You need to reflect and honestly ask yourself, “Am I really interested in being a better person? Achieving my goals? Having a successful life? Earning more money? Fill in the blank?” Please note, there is a significant difference in being interested in accomplishing goals compared to being committed to the goals you’ve set. If you are interested, you will never achieve them. You will end up quitting when things get hard or do not go your way. However, if you are committed, then you will achieve whatever goal you set in front of you, no matter what. You will learn what you need to learn, research what you need to research, get up at 5 am if need be. You will hustle, you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. You will stop blaming other people and things in life and you will become so focused you will be unstoppable. So, interested or committed?

Second 4: HOPE formula

I created a motto that is my blueprint to all my goals and success: H.O.P.E. I hope to achieve all my
goals, but hope is not a magical thing that you just sit back and wait for. You have to actually apply action.
Hustle = Gather all the information you can get on whatever goal you are trying to accomplish, overload yourself with information.
Organize = Now, put all the info in order and leave out what you do not need: condense.
Prepare = Make an action plan for each goal, including weekly and daily steps that bring consistent progress toward your goal. This is where you put due dates on things.
Execute = Attack it, go to war, make it happen like you need to breathe. If a door closes, build a new one. Fight for your goals. Fight for the person you were born to become.

Section 5: Weekly Review

The last thing you need to do, which is extremely important, is a weekly reflection. This will help you stay accountable to yourself and keep the goals fresh in your mind for the entire year. They are the same questions I asked you in the beginning of this blog for the review of your year. I do these same questions in a notebook at the end of each week.
1) What were your three big wins for the week?
2) On a scale 1–10, how happy are you with this week? Why?
3) Review your goals and assess your progress, did you spend your time on the right things? How will you improve it next week?
4) What was the biggest lesson you learned this week?
Good luck, God bless, and I hope you use this formula to hustle as you build your empire and shape your own destiny. Please email me any questions or feedback at Colby@sevenmiles.org I could not attach the goal sheet to this blog so email me and I will send it to you.

Colby Sutter

Goal Sheet from the Book Freedom Clause 14 Amendments to Freedom