Rethinking And Rightsizing Our Goal Setting

This week I’m happy to introduce you to Michele Vosberg as my guest blogger while Thom and I are traveling.  Michele is one of the most recent bloggers I began following in 2018, but when I began reading her posts I knew without a doubt that she fits into the SMART Living lifestyle.  With a strong intention to help people become all they are meant to be, her blog  Life Redesign101 is sure to help any of us who appreciate self-awareness and personal growth. Thank you, Michele, for filling in for me and sharing some of your ideas about rethinking (and rightsizing!) our goal setting for the future.

This is the time of year that many of us are focused on goal setting for the new year.  At this stage of life, we are likely accomplished goal setters.  We have successfully navigated the demands of the working world.   We’ve also successfully juggled the responsibilities of caring for homes, children, pets and even parents.

We have manipulated our Day Planners and multi-tasked our way through many projects and life challenges. We don’t need another lesson on S.M.A.R.T. goals (not to be confused with SMART Living!)  We don’t need a bigger planner with more hours in the day. We want to get off the hamster wheel, live in the moment and enjoy our lives without checking off our accomplishments on an endless to-do list.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t need goals. Part of right-sizing our lives is right-sizing our goals. Where work and other obligations may once have been our priorities, now we want to focus on our lives. This doesn’t mean giving up on goal setting and planning.  It means taking our planning skills and using them to make sure that the lives we are creating are the ones we want to live.

We’ve been trained in goal setting to accomplish tasks.  It’s less likely that we have been trained in goal setting to create a life. Without planning, our lives can take unexpected and unwelcome turns and detours.

In their book Living Forward, Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy discuss the drift that often happens when people reach their forties, fifties and sixties.  While busily focusing on outside goals such as our career, our inner goals can get lost.  We get stuck in a riptide and pulled off course.  It is not unusual for people to realize that their health is less than optimal, their marriage is broken or running on fumes, or that they have lost touch with their spiritual or creative selves.  The result is a slow but steady drift.

Without attention, we can find ourselves in places we never expected to be, living a life that wasn’t what we had hoped.  We wake up one day, surprised, and wonder “how did I get here?”

For many people, life planning equates with career planning.  We are taught to assess our skills and plan for a career.  We often define ourselves by our careers.  “What do you do?”  is a far more common question that, “What kind of life do you want to have?” Chances are we also spend more time planning a career than planning a life.  The frequent interview question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” is as far as many people go in the long-term planning process.

Planning for retirement may also be a part of our career plan, although Americans are alarmingly underfunded in this department. Forbes called it “The Greatest Retirement Crisis in American History.”  We aren’t much better at planning for the end of life.  A 2017 study found that only 29% of people have a living will and only about one-third of all adults have an advanced care directive.  These are just two examples of how people fail in life planning.

Why don’t people spend more time in planning for their lives?  Some don’t take the time to contemplate life’s big questions.  They are busy engaging in the day-to-day tasks of life. Others aren’t sure what they want.  Some people struggle to define their purpose, though having direction and meaning enriches our lives.

I run workshops which engage people in redesigning their lives so that they can live a more meaningful, fulfilled and happier life. One of the exercises I ask people to do is to describe how they use their skills and talents to do something they love to do.  I want people to understand how the things you are talented at are often your gifts, and the more we use our gifts, the more fulfilled we feel. I am always surprised by the number of people who either don’t think they have any skills or talents, or who can only describe how they use their skills and talents in a professional setting.  Many people don’t connect using your gifts as part of bringing joy into your life.

Another activity I have people do is to describe their perfect day.  At first, everyone talks about drinking Margaritas on a beach.  They describe a fantasy where they escape their ordinary, routine life.  I acknowledge that for some people, living on a beach and sitting in the sun all day might be the ideal life.  But I also ask them to think about how long they would find that activity rewarding. How do you want to spend your days?  It is a powerful question–because how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

The process of creating a plan for your life isn’t difficult, but it does take some time and reflection.

Planning your life requires you to ask yourself questions.  What do you value above all else?  How do you choose to live out those values?  What is your perfect day, week, month and year?  How do you envision yourself in the future?  What would make you excited to get up in the morning? What gives your life meaning?  What kind of legacy would you like to leave?

You also need to take an inventory.  Rate your satisfaction from one to ten on areas of your life including: career, family, partner/spouse, finances, spirituality, home, health, social and community engagement, and personal growth.   Look closely at the areas with low numbers.  These are potential areas that if improved, could drastically improve your life.

Once you have clarified your values and determined how you want to live in the world as well as understanding your current status in important areas of life, you are ready to make a plan.  Here is where your goal setting capabilities come into play.  Take an area of your life that you want to change and make a plan.  Determine the end result that you want and work backward, outlining the steps you need to take in order to get to the end result.   If you are visual, creating a web diagram can be helpful.

Break down each step into small, bite-sized, doable pieces.  Then plan those pieces into your days.  You have likely used this process in your work, now apply it to your life.  If you are overwhelmed with too many goals, just pick one to start with.  Work on that goal until you feel some success and are ready to tackle another one.

We all have it in us to lead extraordinary lives, lives of fun and purpose and passion.  We are worthy of the time and attention it takes to plan for good things, and we deserve to live a life we love.  I’m not settling for a mediocre life.  I want to wake up every morning, excited about starting the day.  What about you?

Okay, your turn.  Are you a life planner or are you more of a spontaneous fly-by-the-set-of-your pants type? Have you used goal setting to achieve your life goals as well as career goals?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

About: Michele Meier Vosberg, Ph.D. is an author, teacher and personal development specialist. Her life’s mission and highest calling is to help people to become who they are meant to be.  Michele has conducted workshops and given presentations throughout the country and internationally on the topics of motivation, adult development, innovative learning and understanding our talents, skills, learning styles and emotional intelligence.   Michele’s blog can be found at Life Redesign 101 and she is a contributing author of the book Time to Fly: Dream, Plan, Act.  She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and her literary cats Gatsby and Sassenach.  She has two grown daughters.  When she is not busy reading, writing, and dreaming, she loves to sit on a pier and watch the sunset.