How to hit your targets this year - Goal Setting Part 1 of 4

Learn From My Failures: How To Hit Your Targets This Year - Goal Setting Part 1 of 4

By: Theron Glenny

 

Here at Joshua House, we are passionate about helping people find purpose and live their purpose out.  Your life is like an arrow.  It’s got a flight and it’s meant to hit targets. What targets do you want to hit this year?   In our last article, How to prepare your family for a new year, we left you with a list of questions to ask yourselves to help you think about your new year.  The questions were designed to tap into your heart and get you dreaming and thinking of what could be this year.  

In this article, we focus on how to take those dreams and act on them. Before we get into ‘how', you have to know first, that I have hated goal setting for years.  Hate is a strong word I know, but is very appropriate for how I felt towards goals.  Why is it that people who teach goal setting make it seem so easy?  This drives me nuts.  Why the sour taste?  In the past, I have rarely hit or completed goals I've set.  If you are like me, you also hate the feeling of losing and not being successful.    

This article, the first in a series of four, is a labor of love because I’m sharing with you my failures and how my failures can help you…

  1. Not make the same mistakes I did, causing you not to succeed
  2. Turn the dreams God puts in your heart into goals you can target and ultimately hit. 

I personally love dreaming and getting ideas that God gives me out onto paper.  The challenge that many people never overcome is vetting the ideas, turning them into goals and then executing them.  I’ve struggled with this as well. This is not an easy thing.  But, today, let me give you a starting place.  If you haven’t already go back to our last article and spend some time answering the questions we give.  It will help you tremendously with what I’m about to share. 

Failure #1 - Not identifying your areas of life. 

Having one comprehensive list of goals is confusing and overwhelming.  Our brains need to be able to segment and place where things fit.  We need swim lanes.  Understanding our swim lanes help keep us focused on our goals. I call these swim lanes, 'areas of life'.  In every season of life, we have areas of life (AOLs).  Failure to identify AOLs will cause confusion about the main focuses you have in the season you are in.  

For me, my AOLs right now are: 

  1. Family (includes my marriage, parenting, finances, and personal stuff)
  2. Work (my occupation) - normally with your occupation, you’ll have a set of goals you and your company leadership set together. 
  3. Ministry/Community service - for me, this is my work with Joshua House and our church. 

Everything I do in life falls in one of these three buckets.  Yours may be similar or different.  

For a teenager, it could be: 

  1. Personal
  2. Family
  3. School
  4. Sports

Again, these are just examples.  Now it’s time to identify yours.  What are your areas of life?  Take a few minutes to identify your areas of life and write them down.

Next, take a look at the your answers to the questions we asked in our last article and see if you can put your answers (your dreams/ideas/wishes/goals) into your AOLs.  Where do they fit?  Put them in the correct swim lane. Here’s an example:

1. Family (includes my marriage, parenting, finances, and personal stuff)

  • Go to the gym 3x/week
  • Take family on vacation in July
  • Save $____
  • Read 5 new books

2. Work (your occupation)

  • Generate $_____ revenue for company
  • Develop new product line ______.  

3. Ministry/Community service - for me, this is my work with Joshua House and our church. 

  • Give $_____ to ________.
  • Volunteer 10 hrs/mth every month @ _______. 

In the next three articles in this series, we’ll help you take what you’ve identified and give you specific tips (learned from my failures) to help you accomplish your goals.