A Guide to Personal Goal Planning for 2013

Creating a life plan can be scary. Imagine creating plans for the remaining 30-50-70 years of your life. That’s awfully quite a long time. But planning is essential. These are words from Dorothy Canfield Fisher, “If we would only give the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what to do with two weeks of vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.” I got to read this from the free book, Creating your Personal Life Plan from Micheal Hyatt’s Site (http://michaelhyatt.com/).

Reflecting on your life and knowing the direction that you want to take in your life is really beneficial. You don’t get easily thrown off from all these plans that you have once challenges are encountered along the way. To make planning easier for you, I will share some tips from my own personal experience with my husband.

Every year, Ej and I create goals and plan for the year ahead. We started in the year 2009. I guess you could say that we are an OC couple (haha!), but planning for the future has made us stay on track with our goals.

1. Create your main Vision Statement. It can be a personal vision statement or a combined vision statement. This vision statement is crucial since this will be your ultimate goal. Think of yourself 15 years from now and see where you want to be. What will you be doing by that time? What will you have? In my place of work before, we a vision statement for 2020. EJ and I also have our own vision 2020 and that includes having passive income that will help us both retire young. Your vision statement should be something that you will be able to attain by completing missions and goals along the way.

2. Create goals for the following year only. Some people may find creating plans for five years quite overwhelming. I, too, think that plans should be made so that you can act on it as soon as possible. Creating a one year plan for me is just right. You will find that you will be able to accomplish most of the goals that you lay down.

3. When creating goals, indicate a specific time frame or indicate a specific month or even day when you want these goals to be accomplished. When we create goals, I indicate the start and end date (month) for each one. For example, if you want to save Php 120,000 this year, all you have to do is set aside Php 10,000 a month worth of savings. Indicate that you will need to do this for each month.

4. Break down major goals into smaller ones. If, for example you want to start a business, what you can do is break down this major task into smaller ones, like accomplish a business plan by January. Look for suppliers in February, etc. etc. This will help you go through all your goals and urge you to accomplish them.

5. Create goals that are actionable within the given time frame. It’s good to think of the best possible scenario that can happen, but in tune with what can happen within the given year. I cannot aim to be the president of the Philippines by next year since I do not have any political experience. Create goals that you know that you can achieve with the right amount of effort. In the same way, do not create goals that you know that you can easily do, like “I plan to drink 1 glass of water daily”. Try to come up with goals that will help you become a better individual.

I hope this helps. If you need help in creating your goals, just leave a comment and we can talk about it over coffee!

For those who plan to create their own businesses in 2013, I will be offering my own services to help you out. For those seeking for help in creating a business plan, one of my goals for next year is to help people in starting their own businesses. I’d love to help women, especially those who are thinking of moving out and freeing themselves from the Corporate world to start their own business. I will also offer branding mentoring sessions for those start-up entrepreneurs or personalities who are thinking of what direction to take in terms of creating a strong personal or business brand. I will be offering these services next year.

My next plan to create my own life list. I’ve been meaning to create one, but I haven’t had the time to get to it :) Do you have your own life list? I know of a couple of bloggers who already shared theirs. Shout out to these people to comment with your life list below. I’d love to copy (*wink wink*) some ideas! haha!

Love lots,