Category: Goals

One Small Step

Published on in Goals, Habits, Personal Finance by RyanLaw

by Ryan H. Law

When we decide we want to achieve a goal we usually get excited and want to jump in the deep end. For some people, this might work, but the majority of people are going to sink. Research has shown that taking really small steps can be the best way to achieve a goal.

Robert Maurer, author of “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” tells a story about a girl named Julie who needed to lose weight and get her blood pressure down. He was tempted to tell her to exercise aerobically for 30 minutes every day, but he knew from experience that while the advice was good, she was unlikely to do it and would just feel misunderstood and guilty.

Maurer decided to try something different. “How about if you just march in place in front of the television, each day, for one minute?” Julie responded that of course she could do that. After all, there was no way she couldn’t succeed.

Was she going to get healthier exercising for a minute a day? Probably not. What happened the next week, though, was that Julie came back excited that she had achieved her goal. Together they built up the exercise habit, minute by minute, for a few months, until she started exercising for 30 minutes each day.

If you set really small steps towards your goal you will achieve success over time. The steps should be so small that you are guaranteed success.

You should be setting goals in seven areas of your life:

  • Work/career
  • Mind/intellect
  • Spiritual
  • Physical/health
  • Personal/social
  • Family
  • Financial

What is one small step (so small that you can’t fail) that will begin to move you forward? Here are a few ideas:

  • I will march in place during one commercial
  • At noon I will go on a five-minute walk
  • At 8:00 in the morning I will read one verse in the Bible
  • When I get home from work I will spend five minutes connecting with my spouse
  • After dinner I will play with my children for three minutes

This process works the same for financial goals. We all hear the advice that we should pay ourselves (save) 10% first, but few people do it. If you aren’t saving any money right now, can you save just 1%? If that is too much, how about .5% (one-half of one percent)? Can you add .5% more to your 401(k)? Can you pay an extra $5 this month towards your debt?

Again, these steps seem so small that it seems they won’t make any difference. Starting small, then moving up from there, works!

Here’s an example. About 2.5 months ago I decided to start jogging 3 days a week. I haven’t been jogging in at least 10 years. I started a program where the first week looked like this:

  • 60 seconds jogging
  • 90 seconds walking
  • Alternate for 20 minutes

Almost anyone can do that, right? If that sounds too hard you can decrease the jogging and increase the walking. The point is to increase, over time, the amount of time jogging and decrease the amount of time walking.

I’m on to a different program now where I run for four minutes then walk for one. My endurance and strength have built up and now I am running four miles in about 40 minutes, and that includes 10 minutes of warm-up and cool-down time.

Am I where I want to be, fitness-wise? Not quite, but I’m making progress. The name of the game is improvement, not perfection, and that applies to your money, your fitness, your family, and every other area.

Here’s my challenge to you:

  • Pick one area from the seven areas of your life.
  • Set a small goal – one you know you can’t fail at.
  • Let me know what your goal is in the comments below or on Facebook or Linkedin.

If you found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you would share it with others using the links below!

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Buy Experiences, Not Stuff

Published on in Budgeting, Goals, Habits, Personal Finance by RyanLaw

by Ryan H. Law

For most of us Summer is about half-way over. My question for you is this: What have you done this Summer to build lifelong memories with your family?

I want you to think back to your childhood for a minute and think about some of the gifts you received. How many can you remember? You probably remember a few. I remember getting a stereo one year, and a skateboard a different year. I can remember a few other items as well.

Now think back instead to some fun experiences your family had. For me that brings up many memories of camping or hiking as a family, trips to Disneyland and Sea World, family reunions and others.

Which of the two memories triggers happier thoughts? For most of us, it is the experiences. In fact, research by Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University has shown that we get greater pleasure from experiences than we do from “stuff.”

I’ll share one recent example from our family. We were up at Bear Lake in northern Utah enjoying a day on the beach with some extended family. We decided to rent a boat for an hour, and we had a blast. It was definitely worth the money we spent on it. We could have bought cheap souvenirs for the kids instead that would have been lost or broken in a week or two, but instead they built wonderful memories on the boat.

Here is how my friend and colleague Carl Richards expressed it in a great image:

DD_MoneyHappiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So with just over a month of Summer left, what are you going to do to build some memories with your family?

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Wheel of Life Approach to Life Balance & Goal Setting

Published on in Goals, Habits by RyanLaw

Hardy quote“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:

Wheel of Life

  • 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/

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