Priorities to Goals to Success!

What does the next 5-10 years on the future hold for you and your family?  Some of what we will be doing will be determined by our decisions.  We've been told it is important to set goals and accomplish them.  All of us have a desire to be successful, happy, prosperous, and healthy.  Our present position today has been determined by our previous thinking.  What we have thought in the past has made us what we are today.  So, what we think today and from this time forth will determine our future.

Sometimes we want to blame other people for our circumstances and it is true others do influence what we do and other people can be responsible for certain areas of our lives, but it is our previous thinking that has determined to a great degree where we are at in this particular point of our life.

Priorities

All of us have priorities and some misplace these priorities.  Setting goals for our life and looking to our future will have little significance until we are willing to look at our priorities.  Priority means that which comes first over other things in your life.  Ninety-five percent of our successes and whatever we are doing in life has not to do with education or ability, but rather with the way we set our priorities.

Our priorities are set by our values.  If your priority is your family, this shows your values lie in family first.  If a person neglects their family, this shows the value they put upon their family - their family is not rated high to this person.

The priorities you choose will be determined by what you place the most value on in your life.  All of us make decisions every day.  We have a daily life of consciously or unconsciously choosing one thing above another. 

Three Primary Ways to Develop Priorities:

• A definite decision - you choose what to set first in your life.
• Pressured by our circumstances or others choose certain priorities for us
• By drifting into habits - they become a way of life

Once you set your goal, that will determine in time your values and that determines your priorities.

What would you say was the number one interest in your life this past year?  What did you spend most of your time doing?  What did you give most of your thinking?  When you find out what you did mostly with your time and thoughts, this was your values and this was your priority.

Goals and Goal-Setting

Goals are determined by priorities.  Determining your goals and how to achieve these things is determined by your priorities.  Some people have never considered setting specific goals.  Maybe you have never been taught how to go through the process of determining what you want and then how to get what you want.

A goal is an objective you want to achieve.  One of the exciting things about setting goals for you and your family is it challenges your ability, it taxes your capacity, it reveals what you are capable of doing.

All of us can do more than we think we can do.  Successful people know how to set goals and achieve them.  All projects begin in the mind - you dream about it, desire it, able to visualize it.  Every great achievement in life was first visualized in the mind.  Everything that is accomplished is accomplished as a result of thinking something and then thinking about it.  Everything worthwhile in life is visualized, dreamed about, planned and desired intensely.

Part of the problems of today is that many people set no goals.  You will spend the rest of this year doing something.  Do you want to waste the rest of the year, or do you want to set goals, and achieve them one by one?

Many give up because of what has happened in the past.  You don't want to drift through life.  You must set goals and make plans to carry them through.  If you don't you are going to have to suffer.  If we fail to set goals it costs us - time, money, energy.

We end up wasting time and achieving a one-sided, unbalanced life.  People who have no dreams, no goals and no plans lack excitement in their lives.  They are drifters.  People who don't plan their lives will have somebody else do it for them.  Their life ends up being mediocre.  Do you want people to describe your life as ‘blah?'

Drifters become very critical of the people who are aggressive and who are achieving something in life.  One of the reasons for rebellion we see today is the attitude many of these people have towards those who do have.  They themselves are apathetic and they don't want to put forth the effort.  Instead of changing their own attitude about their lives, setting goals, and getting out of their poverty (spiritually, physically, mentally, financially or socially) they just criticize people who have worked hard, who have set goals, who have planned and who have paid the price.  These people who set no goals always end up disappointed with the results of their lives.

Some people are just too lazy to think about life, to look at life to examine their lives, to look at their possibilities and potentials.  They just want someone else to take care of them throughout their lives.  A goal setter has energy, expectations, enthusiasm and excitement.  Isn't that the life you prefer to live?  How great to look back at the end of your life and be able to see with a sense of approval, not regret, what has been done in your life.

So this year, dream!  Marc Spitz, Olympic winner, says, "If you want to pursue a dream, there's nothing like the present." 

Dreams create ideas, ideas plants seeds, seeds grow goals, goals yield success!  Dare to dream great dreams and reach your destiny.

Dr. Leslie Schneider, International Training Consultant and Contributing Editor COSE Mindspring www.abmword.com  ddatalink@sbcglobal.net