Identify & Establish Your Goals

[private].[/private]Now that you have already taken massive action towards your own personal success by joining PFG, it’s time to identify what brought you here.

We are going to go through a few short exercises so you’re going to need to find a fresh notebook and a pen. Writing things down helps lodge them in your subconscious mind and this is the level at which things really get done.

The first thing you must do is identify your short-term and long-term goals. Your goals need to be specific and realistic. Try not to make your goals unreasonably difficult to achieve, but at the same time set your goals high enough to challenge yourself.

Short-term goals can be anywhere from 1 to 3 months and at most 6 months. Your long-term goals will be 6 months to 1, 2, or even 3 years from now. You can even think of your long-term goals as your dreams.

The first thing to know when identifying your goals is that you must be specific. Do not set a goal such as, “Start online business”. This is far too vague and it’s a trap that many people fall into when identifying their goals.

Instead, set your goals with specific intentions and results in mind. A far better goal would be, “Start an online eBook business focusing on automative ‘how-to’ guides”. Do you see the difference?

Also, be careful not to confuse your goals with the tasks necessary to reach those goals. If short-term goals start sounding more and more like a list of tasks, then they probably ARE a list of tasks. Keep that in mind!

On a sheet of clean paper, write down a few short-term and long-term goals. Decide exactly what it is that has inspired you to start an online business. Is it because you want a new car? A new house? The freedom and flexibility to schedule your own hours? The money to send your kids to college?

These are all great goals. A car is a goal. A house is a goal. Once you have identified your goals, it will be far easier for us to design a path to get you there.

Be sure you have AT LEAST three short-term goals and one long-term goal. Here are a few examples:

Long term goal: 2008 Porsche GT2 Sports Car

*Notice I was very specific, my goal wasn’t just “car.”

Short Term Goal #1: Have my business up and running within 3 months

Short Term Goal #2: Build a mailing list of 3,000+ subscribers

Short Term Goal #3: Earn $2,000 per month consistently from Website “A”

Once you have identified your short-term and long-term goals you need to set a timeframe to reach your goals. You may have noticed that Short Term Goal #1 included a timeframe of three months. You will want to set a date or time limit in order to motivate you to reach your goals before time runs out.

Setting a time limit or time frame is crucial. This way, you will be forced to take positive action towards your goals and you will have to step outside of your “comfort zone”. The comfort zone for most people means accomplishing little to nothing on a day-to-day basis.

Once you set timeframes for your goals, you will be become a new and more powerful you, a person who is driven to make regular, consistent progress towards reaching the short- and long-term goals you have established for yourself.

Try it! I know it works from experience. Planning your approach and setting goals is one thing, but doing all of this within the limits of a time constraint brings it to reality much more effectively.