[*Part 4 of My Goal Mastery Series: A System to Rule Them All]
As many of you know I’ve been working on this system for a few weeks now, and it has been an interesting experience. And by interesting, I mean difficult.
Resistance is kicking my ass.
I wrote about my struggle with it in my last post, and it’s still there throwing everything at me to try to get me to stop. I’m sharing this, because it’s going to be the same for you whenever you try to do anything new and challenging. To get through this stage, you need to understand it’s normal. It’s just the primitive part of your brain—the amygdala—doing its thing; it believes change is dangerous.
When it comes to resistance, you have to keep inching forward through the discomfort. Eventually you’ll get used to the new thing being part of your life and the amygdala will stop sounding the alarms—your resistance will ease off.
So…inching forward with my new system!
As promised I’ve compiled my research for you on the components that are integral to building an effective goal mastery system.
And while I only started working on this incarnation of my system a few weeks ago, I’ve been studying leaders and other high functioning people since my 20s, trying to figure out how they go about being so damn productive. One thing I noticed is that they all have fairly regimented daily systems they follow.
While I have personally experienced that it IS possible to change your reality by consistently visualizing what you want to create every morning, the truth is that if you haven’t built a foundation—a container—that can hold that new reality, it will collapse like a house of cards every time.
For a house to stand strong, it must have a solid foundation. So, if success is important to you, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the boring, unsexy and time-consuming job of building that foundation to support your vision.
If it feels overwhelming (and it will), remember, you don’t have to do all these things at once. You can pick one element and try it out. Then pick another. Each of these components has the power to help you make positive shifts in your reality.
How I’m doing it: I completed each of the following elements, printed them all off and put them in a binder, which is going to remain on my desk.
The Components of an Effective Goal Mastery System
- A big-picture overview of your vision for your life (lifetime goals, next 3 years, next 12 months, next month, next week, today).
- A projects list of the things you want to do in the next 3 or 12 months (depending which of the system plans you choose) that will make your highest vision a reality.
- A task management system to get those projects done.
- an idea and memory management system: a way of tracking and saving all your ideas as soon as you think of them so they don’t clutter up your brain. (I’m playing around with using Evernote for this.)
- A daily morning routine that sets you up for success (and bonus if you can add an evening routine).
- A system for checking in with and tracking your own progress: daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.
As long as your Goal Mastery System includes these six elements, you will see shifts in your productivity and you will also experience more of the kinds of milestone successes that will feel fulfilling for you, because they will be aligned with a higher vision.
Next, I’m going to share the actual steps you need to take to create your personal Goal Mastery System (which I am following myself to create my own system). Remember even if you just do one or two of these for now, it will move you forward. Progress over perfection!
My Personal Step-By-Step Process to Create Your Goal Mastery System
- Create a big picture overview of your highest vision for your life.
- First, complete the 3 End Goals Exercise.
- Use what you learned in that exercise to create your Horizons of Focus.
- Print off a one-page summary of your Horizons of Focus and put it in your binder.
- Optional: I also have a card I keep on my desk in a plastic picture frame so I can see it every day. It answers the following 3 questions:
- What is your highest vision for yourself?
- What are you focusing on developing this year that will help you get there?
- How will it help you get there?
- Create a morning routine: All high performing people start the day with a morning routine that sets them up for success. This should include things like: meditation, visualization, affirmations, exercise and looking at a list of your daily tasks and weekly projects.
- Write down the morning routine you think will best support you at this time, print it off and put it in your binder.
- Track your daily tasks: To Do, Doing and Done. You can do this with a very basic text system (like Joel’s POL), or you can make a KanBan style board on your wall, or you can use online apps (more on that in the next post). How you track them is up to you, but there needs to be a system in place.
- Write a couple paragraphs about what system you are going to try using and why, print it off and put it in your binder.
- Create your project plan. It can be based on the next 3 months or 12 months. But choose one of the systems from my last post and create your plan. This plan should be based on what you wrote in your Horizons of Focus (so go do that first!).
- Use one of the plans I provided in my last post to create your full Project Plan, print it off and put it in your binder.
- Create a visual for your monthly plan (i.e. the month grids that both Natalie MacNeil and Marie Forleo use) so you will remember what you committed to doing when.
- Print off your visual monthly plan. Put one copy in your binder, and post another next to your computer where you will see it every day.
- Weekly and tri-monthly check ins.
- Set a time each week, (eg. Sunday) and book a meeting with your Self to create your plan for the following week and review how things went the previous week–and how you can better support yourself going forward.
- Set a date/time 3 months from now to look at the system you are experimenting with to see how you can improve it.
- Create and print a Tracking Page for your binder where you will keep your notes and updates from these meetings you have with yourself.
Absolutely none of the above will work without consciously choosing to develop self discipline—the art of doing what you said you’d do when you don’t feel like doing it. This is actually the hardest part, so build accountability into this somewhere. Have a notebook or something where you are tracking your progress with this, and celebrate every small step forward on it. Otherwise that primitive part of you that fears change is going to sabotage all your efforts.
Here are the other posts in this series:
- 3 Steps to Create a Goal Mastery System That Works for You (Finally!)
- 4 Exercises to Set the Right Goals to Create a Life You’ll Love
- 6 Systems That Will Help you Set & Meet Goals
The 6 Components of an Effective Goal Mastery System- Apps That Will Help you Set & Meet Goals
Rise up and shine as your True Self,
Shawn xo
P.S. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this in the comments section below or on my Facebook page. Let’s create community together! We are here to SHARE who we ARE and SUPPORT each other! ♡
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