Setting SMART Goals

Good morning and Happy New Year. This is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute with our first blog of 2020.
Couple things. First thing, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss one of our important blogs. We
want the benefit of your comments. I have a question for you at the end. And don't forget about bootcamp classes -
Charlie and Delta. Charlie is February the 19th and Delta is April 15th So please don't forget about those.

So, I want to talk in this blog about how to set smart goals and how to make them stick. It's important when you think
about goals, your goals, to make them big and broad and sort of stretch. And you know, one thing to think about that
always inspired me at goal setting town was Zig Ziglar. And I know a lot of you think that this is really hokey stuff and it
sounds like the 1950s, but I ate that stuff up when I was a younger man.

And even now, just think about Zig and Earl Nightingale and Dennis Waitley and all those guys. And Zig said, "You can get
anything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want." And I think if he were alive today, he
would have the biggest podcast on earth. Everything the guy said was just wisdom. And those other guys too, Earl
Nightingale and others, all those other guys. So, it always helped me at the goal setting time to think about Zig and the
other inspirational speakers, and just think about what it means to set goals.

So, we have a seven-step goal setting process for you here. And I just want to kind of go along, go down the list. And by
the way, we'll put a link to this, so we'll have it available for you. Don't try to write things down and all that. Just click on
the link and we'll have the seven-step goal setting process laid out for you.

So, everybody sets New Year's resolutions. Why do they fail? Everybody says I want to lose 15 pounds, or I want to learn
how to do X, Y, and Z, learn how to speak Italian or something like that. And nobody ever follows up on New Year's
resolutions. I found out from a sporting goods dealer one time that the reason most home gym equipment is made so
shoddily is studies prove that people don't really touch it after the second week after the purchase. They can afford to
make it bad. It's not intended to last, because people just don't use it.

So, resolutions always fail. So how do you make your goals stick? Resolutions fail, goals work. How do you make them
stick?

The first thing is brainstorm your wishlist or your dream list. You might have a hundred things. You might have 22 things.
It's just brainstorming. Nothing is off limits, good ideas, bad ideas, everything in between. Brian Tracy always asks, what
would I want to accomplish if I knew that I could not fail? So, it's a great question because just open up, get away from
your blind spots and your mental barriers. And what would you try to accomplish if you knew that you couldn't fail? Think
about what contributions you want to make, what you want to achieve at work, what you want to achieve at home.

And that kind of brings us to the next category, which is, well, categories. You've got to think about your marriage, your
personal health, your physical fitness, work, spiritual goals, physical goals, toys you might want to buy. As we get older,
the toys that we buy tend to be a little more expensive. It may take some planning. Any other goals, contribution goes,
any other goals that you can possibly think of, brainstorm broad and wide and deep, and just let the creativity flow.

The next thing is you've got to go back. If you've got a hundred things, that's not actionable, that's way too many to be
useful to you or anyone else. So now you've got to go back and start to pick out the ones that really inspire and motivate
you and spark joy and energy in you. And once you've identified 10, 15, 20 of those, then you need to go back, and you
need to write a sentence or maybe even a paragraph about why the goal is important. If you can't think of a sentence or
a paragraph why the goal is important, it's probably more of a wish than a goal, and it probably shouldn't make the final
list.

But one great question to ask yourself is, what about blank? What about this goal? What about making a million dollars?
What about making a million dollars is important to me, question mark? Ask yourself that and really think deeply and why
is this a goal worth putting on my short list and worth pursuing?

Then you're going to go back to your categories, personal, spiritual, family, marriage, et cetera, and you're going to pick
out your most important goal per category. All right? And you've got to then take the categories, let's say you've got 10
categories listed, and you've got to pick your top three to five, three to five only. And then you've got to run them through
the smart filter. Are they specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and timely? If the goals aren't smart goals, then
they're not goals. So, you can't say, I want to lose weight. That's insufficient. It's I've got to lose 32 pounds by December
31st, 2020. Or my weight has to be 165 pounds by December 1st, 2020. They have to be very specific, and all the others,
action-oriented, all those other things. If they're not smart goals, you're not going to achieve them.

The next piece sounds a little weird, but I call it shower talk. So, all of us take a shower, most of us. You know your habits
better than me. But most of us take a shower in the morning and we let our minds wander in the shower, and frankly,
that's where some of my best ideas from, some of my best thinking. So, you've got three to five to 10 minutes in the
morning and you're not doing that much. That's a great time to review your goals. Remember, you only have three to five
goals.

If you can state your goals and remind yourself of your goals every morning, it's a quick mental checklist. Every single day,
am I on target, off target? And if I'm off target, what do I need to do to get back on target and on schedule? So, it sounds
funny to say shower talk because that's exactly what it is. Great time to review and theorize and think about your goals.

So, there's this old Chinese proverb, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And goal setting is the same
way. If you set aspirational, stretch goals, they seem so big and so daunting and all that, but any journey, any goal setting
journey starts with a single first step.

And Earl Nightingale, to come back to the wisdom guys, Earl Nightingale said that the key to a successful life is to have one
successful day at a time. Keep that in mind as you go through your goal setting process and let us know what are your
ideas, what are your techniques for setting and achieving the important goals in your life? We'd love to hear that in the
comments. Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute. Thank you.