That’s pretty bold of me to say isn’t it? Actually, it’s really not. I learned a long time ago that "Goals and plans change but decisions don’t." The ultimate decision you make to reach a goal should never change but how you get there may change a lot in the process. This leads me to the 6th rule in the Ten Basic Rules for Successful Goal Setting…
Goals should be written to be
changed whenever necessary
When I first started the goal setting process I thought that setting your goals in stone was the right thing to do. The thing I didn’t realize is that life happens and things get uprooted. In short, you have to deal with interruptions. So if we know that going in, we need to set our goals so they can be changed whenever necessary.
What happened to me back in 2005 was a prime example. I was moving up the fast track at the company I was at as a VP. I was being interviewed for some regional opportunities when my wife was suddenly diagnosed with cancer. Nine months later she passed away and I had to figure out how to move forward and raise our 9 children. Today it’s still a struggle but thankfully I had my own coach who taught me this concept prior to that all happening. So as soon as she got sick, I dropped everything I was working on and tended to her care. I was probably out of the office for 7 of those 9 months. I worked some from my Blackberry and laptop and made some visits to my shop but that was it. For this reason this step holds special significance for me. I didn’t have to agonize over what I was going to do about my goals when this all happened. I knew what my priorities were and I put the goals off to take care of what was most important to me.
Situations like I went through make you realize that your job is not the "end all be all" like we’ve faked ourselves out to believe. Is it important? Absolutely. But you still have a life outside of it. Thankfully, the company I was working for understood that in a big way.
How do you write goals to be changed whenever necessary? It’s simple. You just have to make sure you’re not setting yourself up for failure. Don’t say "My goal is to be a millionaire in 6 months." How about being a hundredaire or a thousandaire in 6 months? We always get excited about our goals, especially at this time of year, and then we put these ridiculous expectations on ourselves and quit or slow down. Then we beat ourselves up for not doing it and that makes things worse. If you give yourself enough negative self talk you’ll never get out of bed!
The other piece to that is to think about how much you could get done if you concentrate on one thing daily that you can actually accomplish. Instead of spending your days worrying about why you didn’t do what you were supposed to, you could be getting one major thing done per day. You’d be so much further ahead. In my own life I can tell you that I’ve wasted a lot of days thinking about that. Not so much anymore.
So remember, goals and plans change but decisions don’t. If you keep that in mind and write your goals so that they can be changed whenever needed, you’ll do fine. It’s all about setting up expectations you can actually live up to.
I know you can do it and I believe in you!