Life Audit: Creating Your Goals (Part Three)

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Step Four: Setting Your Goals

The next step in your life audit is creating your goals. After all, that is the whole point of the exercise. If you need to go back to the beginning, you can here.

First, let’s compare your dream life to your current life. How far apart are they? Perhaps you are closer to your dream life than you first thought? Perhaps you need to work a little bit harder to get there?

SMART Goals

When setting goals you want to be SMART about it. Make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound.

For example: If I had the goal to “lose weight” that does not meet the SMART criteria. It would need to be Specific (lose 10% of my body weight), Measurable (by using a scale and tracker to track my progress), Achievable (10% is usually the recommended place to start for someone who is overweight), Relevant (losing weight will help me achieve my big goal of being healthier) and Time-Bound (I will give myself 6 months to reach my goal).

Prioritizing Your Goals

Now that you have evaluated the areas in your life you would like to improve you need to rank them in order of priority. I am a firm believer in making small improvements over time rather than big changes all at once. You can read how I was able to finally get sober by only focusing on that change for a while here. When you try to make too many changes at one time you lose steam and that is when things tend to fall apart. So, choose the most important changes you would like to make first and make those goals a priority.

Just trust the process.

Setting a Timeline for Your Goals

When I make goals, I usually begin with a big goal and a long time frame and then break it into much smaller goals over shorter time periods.

Let’s return to my “lose weight” example.

I have given myself 6 months to lose 10% of my weight. So that works out to close to 2% per month. In order to achieve this I will set the goal of meal planning for the month and including lots of veggies in my meal plan. Also, I would probably set the goal to drink my recommended water each day and do so by purchasing a large water bottle like this one. Next month, after I have gotten used to eating healthier, I will add in a simple exercise plan.

For goals that require more time than my example use this format. Set your long-term goals and give yourself a 5 year timeline. Then define mid-term goals for each of those five years and set quarterly goals within each year.

An example might look like this:

Five year goal: Become a published novelist.

First Year: Take a creative writing course.

• Quarterly goals: Complete assignments and improve with each assignment

Second Year: Develop the idea

• Quarter one: Come up with a novel idea
• Quarter two: Research
• Quarter three: Character development
• Quarter four: Outline the plot of the novel

Third Year: Write the first draft

• Quarter one: Chapters 1-10 – Beginning
• Quarter two: Chapters 11-15 – Middle
• Quarter three: Final Chapters – End
• Quarter four: First draft revisions

Fourth Year: Second draft

• Quarter one: Finalizing storylines
• Quarter two: Editing for grammar/ proof reading
• Quarter three: Submitting for review
• Quarter four: More revisions

Fifth Year: Getting Published

Now this is just an example. I have no real idea of how to write a novel or anything it was just what popped into my head as I was writing this. For me, I guess my first goal would be learning what it takes to write a novel – haha.

If you haven’t downloaded your free Life Audit Workbook, now’s your chance!

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