Ryan H. Law, CFP, AFC

“The one skill most responsible for the abundance in my life is learning how to effectively set and achieve goals.” –Darren Hardy (author of The Compound Effect and former publisher of SUCCESS magazine)

In my last two posts I have talked about how to set goals and how to make changes in your life. This week I am going to cover what areas of life you should set goals in.

A preliminary note, though – before you set goals it is important that you consider the answer to the question, “Who do I truly want to become?” As the oft-repeated quote goes, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” Everyone knows “successful” people who lost everything that was important on their way to the “top.” They lost family, friends, trust and so much more.

Clayton Christensen wrote an excellent book titled, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” He tells a story about how, at his 10-year Harvard Business School reunion, all of his classmates seemed to be doing well. Many of them were on their way to the top of their companies and were earning enormous amounts of money. What he found out, though, was that many of them were unhappy.

Many did not enjoy what they did for a living and there were numerous divorces or unhappy marriages. One of his classmates told him he hadn’t talked to his children in years.

As the years went by, things got progressively worse. One of his brightest classmates, who earned more than $100 million in a single year as Enron’s CEO, ended up in jail for his role in the Enron scandal.

Christensen shares these stories with his students on the last day of class and then writes these questions on the board:

How can I be sure that:

• I will be successful and happy in my career?
• My relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness?
• I live a life of integrity – and stay out of jail?

Have you ever asked yourself these questions? If not, now is a good time to do so. Pull up a note and write out the answers to them. It can be an enlightening experience, and critical to setting goals that ensure your ladder is leaning on the right wall.

With that as a background, let’s move on to what areas of your life you should set goals in. I’ve read a number of different ideas, but I find the Wheel of Life approach to be the most comprehensive and easiest to use. My two main sources of inspiration on this are Zig Ziglar and Darren Hardy. The seven areas of the Wheel of Life are:

• Personal & Social
• Work & Career
• Family
• Spiritual
• Financial
• Mind/Intellect
• Physical/Health

You need to get specific, though! You need to define specifically what success looks like in each area, and you rate each one on a scale of 1-10, with one being very poor and 10 being outstanding.

To help you set this up properly, I have created a Wheel of Life planning worksheet with some suggestions by both Zig Ziglar and Darren Hardy.

You can access that here: http://blog.ryanhlaw.com/resources/

Let’s look at an example. For Physical/Health one suggestion is, “I eat a healthy breakfast every day.” If I eat a healthy breakfast 3-4 days a week I might rate myself a 5 in that area. I can then follow up with a few questions:

• What number would I like to get to?
• What will it take to get me to that number?
• Am I ready to make a change in this area (am I am the Preparation stage of the Stages of Change)?
• If I am ready to make a change, what small step can I commit to – one that I am guaranteed not to fail? Another way to look at this would be to ask, “What will take me to a 5.5?”

Does this amount of work seem daunting or overwhelming to you? If it does, let me take you back to Darren Hardy’s quote from the beginning of the article:

“The one skill most responsible for the abundance in my life is learning how to effectively set and achieve goals.”

This type of work is what Stephen Covey calls Quadrant II work – important but not urgent. Commit to set some time aside to properly plan your life.

You can find the Wheel of Life Planning worksheet here:

http://blog.ryanhlaw.com/resources/

Successful author, entrepreneur and speaker Jim Rohn said, “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”

Are there areas of your life that you want to change? Do you want to lose weight, get in shape, stop a bad habit or start a good habit? None of these things are going to happen by chance. They are only going to happen if you make a decision to change. In my last post I talked about goals – I want to dig deeper today into how you actually make the changes in your life that you want to make and how goal setting fits in to this.

Back in the early 90’s three researchers – James Prochaska, Carlo DiClemente and John Norcross wanted to know the answer to the question: “How did people make changes in their lives?” They were expecting to find some common denominators among those who had made changes and maintained them. What they ended up finding, though, was a model that they called Stages of Change.

In this post I am going to walk you through the five Stages of Change and discuss some ways you can incorporate them to make a positive changes in your life.

The first stage is Precontemplation. In this stage you don’t know that you have a problem. It’s the alcoholic that says “I don’t have a drinking problem – I can stop anytime I want” or the person who is in the early stages of heart disease due to their lifestyle but isn’t aware of it. For those in the precontemplation stage there is no intention to change their behavior. They may wish to change, but this is different from intending to change.

The second stage is Contemplation. In this stage they are aware that a problem exists, but they haven’t taken any steps to overcome it. They are contemplating changing sometime in the next six months, but research has shown that people will contemplate changing for years before actually doing anything about it.

Preparation is the next stage. Those in this stage intend to change their behavior in the next 30 days. They may have already taken some small steps, such as purchasing running shoes.

Preparation is where goal setting kicks in. If you want to stop eating sugar, for example, but you are still in the contemplation stage then setting a goal isn’t going to help – in fact, it can be harmful because you aren’t going to keep your commitment. If you are ready to commit, though, and you are ready to make a change in the next 30 days, then use my last post (http://blog.ryanhlaw.com/how-to-set-and-achieve-your-goals/) to set your goals!

Action is the stage where you take decisive action. You actually go running, you throw away all your cigarettes or take any other action that exhibits positive behavior. You enter the action stage on day one and stay in this stage for six consecutive months. That means that if a smoker, for example, goes three months without a cigarette then smokes one on a stressful day, then quits again, they start this stage back over.

The final stage is Maintenance. Those in this stage have changed their behavior for at least six months. This stage was originally called Termination but was modified to reflect that maintenance is not static – it is a continuation of change. For example – at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings everyone introduces themselves as an Alcoholic, even if they have been dry for years. They recognize that they need to maintain the change.

I differ from the authors in only one regard. Action is seen as the step where you completely stop or start doing something. You completely quit smoking, or you exercise for 30 minutes every day, or you completely cut out sugar, or whatever the action is.

For many people (myself included) that’s too overwhelming. Smaller changes, where you are guaranteed not to fail, have proven to be more effective. I’ll give you an example from my own life. I would like to be better at studying the scriptures. My ultimate goal would be 30 minutes each morning, but I often get overwhelmed when I think about doing that and it’s the first thing to go. Sometimes reading even one full chapter seems daunting. Recently I gave myself permission to think small. Just a verse or two per day. That I can do (and, consequently, I have the last few days). Does that mean I have failed? No! Am I where I want to be? Not yet, but it’s better than where I was. The focus, for me, is on getting better, incrementally, not perfection.

Perhaps this means I am still in the preparation stage for scripture reading, but I’m OK with that.

Think about a change you would like to make in your life. What stage are you at? Are you ready to move to the next level? What small goal can you set for yourself – so small, in fact, that you are guaranteed not to fail?

Remember, life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change.