Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Are Your Working On Your Top 5?


More and more lately, I have been reminded of the importance of doing the best you can with this one life we are blessed to live. Having hit the milestone of 40 years old last year really accelerated my thoughts around my top 5 goals for my life. It's one thing to identify the top 5 goals  - another to actually live in the reality of them.

Where do you fall? Do you even have a "top 5"?

Sometime last year I read a blog post about this and listed the following as My Top 5 Goals For My Life:

1. Live my faith everyday
2. Have a growing vibrant relationship with my husband, Isael
3. Raise two world changing individuals (Emma and Evan)
4. Revolutionize relationships on planet Earth - one at a time (making money as I go)
5. Enjoy my life fully!

A few quick words about goals and I'll set you off to set your own...

Goals need to be measurable

All my goals have specific metrics around them. Metrics for quality and quantity. Yep, even the fluffy ones. Periodically, I review these goals and look at specific measurements to see if I am tracking or falling down.

Goals need accountability

These goals are written on the blog that I first read them on a year ago. They are seared in my mind and again here for accountability. You can do something if you don't name it, speak it - proclaim it. I've shared these goals with folks on my Personal Board of Directors so I can have their feedback and input on how I'm doing.

Goals need to be flexible

There is at least one of these goals that will not stay on the list forever. We need to be open to how our lives change and how goals we set for them may have to change as well. Now, this is not to give us an excuse to chuck a goal when it gets hard - it's more to give ourselves the freedom to evolve our goals to our circumstances when absolutely necessary.

I am in good shape on my top 5 and number 5 can be the most difficult at times. Like in April when a major project driving the majority of my company's income fell apart. Pretty tough to "enjoy" that kind of stuff. But I've learned how. I've learned how to take what life dishes and find a silver lining - the extra time I was afforded by that project's disappearance allowed me to complete my first book and accelerate a project that otherwise would have languished in my stable. And this is not just my "hindsight" view - this was my real time view. Did I mourn the loss? You bet. I mourned it by channeling the hurt, anger and confusion into churning out my book and generating more from what I had. It's all about your perspective.

So.... today I challenge you to create a Top 5 Goals for your life list and get to work on it immediately.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for sharing these tools, I'm all over it!

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  2. Glad to hear it Anonymous - you can do whatever you set your mind and action to!

    ReplyDelete