Tag Archives: TED talk

4 Steps to Accomplishing Your Goals – Step 1: Assess and Clarify

goal-achievement-series

Everyone who makes goals has an innate understanding that you can’t get different results doing the same thing you’ve always done. This leads to goal setting and the beginnings of new changes, but sometimes the goals never get done and the changes don’t stick.

Over the next month, I’ll be posting a series about the goal achievement process that I use to accomplish many things throughout the year. I’ll also highlight stories from people who’ve accomplished big goals in their life or business. This is one series you won’t want to miss!

Today is Step 1: Assess and Clarify. We’ll go through some questions to figure out if you’re ready and willing to start a new goal, project, or change. I’ll also show you a technique for creating your goal in a way that best sets you up for success. Keep reading to learn more and then come back next Tuesday (Jan 17) to read Step 2: Plan and Take Action.

The four steps each also have worksheets that help you walk through this process. If you want them, be sure to answer Yes!! on that section on the Insiders signup form (if you’re already signed up, you can update your profile by using the same email you used before).

Click here to read Step 1: Assess and Clarify

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Writing letters to strangers

Strangers are friends

Sending and receiving letters and cards is fun. There’s something special about holding the card instead of viewing an email or text. They make me smile. If I got a random letter from a stranger, I think I’d be happy. It reminds me of pen pals from when I was little.

I love making people happy. So, when Christine Barba from Project Light to Life (who did an interview on this site, check it out) wrote about anonymously mailing letters of encouragement to strangers, I got really excited and added “Send a letter to a stranger” to my own list.

Find out what I did

Is it bad to share your goals with others?

There’s a fine balance between needing accountability to accomplish our goals and wanting to keep things to ourselves, for whatever reason. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t share all of the things on my bucket list, because I hold some too closely. However, I’ve experienced too many benefits from talking about my goals (online and in real life) to keep them to myself.

Sharing our goals helps us to connect with and get encouragement from other people who want to do (or hear about others doing) similar goals. Together we get to enjoy the excitement of planning, and can exchange tips and ideas to make each experience better.

Sharing goals also keeps me accountable. If you hear me talk about something I plan to do in February, and don’t hear anything else about it and now it’s November, you might ask how it went. And if I haven’t done it yet, I’d be reminded and would follow through, because it’s embarrassing to only talk about doing things yet never actually do them.

But maybe that’s just me.

In the TED talk below, Derek Sivers makes an argument that sharing our goals may make us less likely to accomplish them. Take the 3 minutes to watch the video and let me know: what works best for you? Do you tell people your goals, or keep them to yourself?