This book will help you achieve goals based on your personal needs and values. It uses a simple and highly visual method called the 10-Step Goal Acceleration Process (GAP) to enable you to immediately apply its topics to relevant issues in your life. Key concepts build on those introduced in earlier chapters. Its other benefits include: ¿ Highly visual and easy to understand. ¿ Uses simple templates, so you can create a highly personalized improvement plan. ¿ Provides a logical road map for achieving goals. ¿ Goals can modified as your needs change. ¿ Encourages you to immediately begin applying key concepts in each chapter. ¿ Shows shortcuts for achieving goals to save time. ¿ Helps to more effectively resolve personal conflicts. ¿ Helps balance goals to avoid becoming stressed and frustrated. ¿ Provides a useful framework from which to organize your life's activities. ¿ Enables you to lead a more satisfying and successful life. In summary, as you read this book, you will have a much clearer idea of which personal goals are important for improving your life. The 10-Step GAP process will also help you make sense of the complexity that surrounds your life. Complexity tends to inhibit personal success by distracting people from identifying and achieving the things important to them. You also learn how to create realistic plans for achieving important goals. Don't be surprised if, at the end of the book, your final goals are different from the ones earlier ones. This approach for achieving personal goals will help you lead a more productive life. This is what successful people do differently!

Doing What Works

What Successful People Do DifferentlyBy James William Martin

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 James William Martin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-4700-8

Contents

Foreword...........................................................................................................viiIntroduction.......................................................................................................ixChapter 1: Knowing your goals is the first step Step 1: Identifying your personal goals............................1Chapter 2: Understand your needs for success Step 2: Defining your personal needs..................................19Chapter 3: What you value gets done Step 3: Defining your personal values..........................................33Chapter 4: Balance is necessary for a happy life Step 4: Creating your balanced scorecard..........................49Chapter 5: Work smart not hard Step 5: Comparing personal goals....................................................61Chapter 6: Visualize your goals Step 6: Mapping personal benefits..................................................71Chapter 7: Understand how goals are related Step 7: Comparing different personal goals.............................83Chapter 8: Align goals to achieve them easier Step 8: Creating goal convergence....................................101Chapter 9: Focus on high priority goals Step 9: Defining important goals...........................................111Chapter 10: Planning will make you successful Step 10: Creating your personal improvement plan.....................133Conclusion.........................................................................................................151References.........................................................................................................157

Chapter One

Knowing your goals is the first step

Step 1: Identifying your personal goals

Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live. —John Dewey

To meet our needs, we need to achieve goals. Although each of us may have different goals, there are some common goals everyone has at one time in their life or another. These include improving your spirituality, relationships with family, friends and colleagues, helping the greater community, improving living space and working conditions, obtaining education and leisure time, improving personal health and ensuring that your wealth is sufficient to meet your needs. Goals are important because they encourage us to create plans and spend our time and resources on the things that matter most to us. It is important to identify the goals which are right for you rather than goals which others force you to pursue.

Planning for personal success

What is personal success? In this book, I use the simple relationship shown in Figure 1-1 to represent success at a personal level. This relationship implies personal success depends on identifying and setting the right goals and creating plans to achieve them. By the right goals I mean ones that are consistent and measurable. Consistent and measurable goals enable you to create simple plans to achieve them. Figure 1-1 also encourages you should take time to reflect on what you need and value to ensure that the goals you pursue will be the right ones. It is important to get your goals right the first time because to achieve them requires scarce time and resources. In other words, if you poorly define goals, the result will be work that needs to be redone. As we move through the ten chapters of this book, I will discuss several related topics and present tools and methods to help you to identify, balance, prioritize your goals and take the necessary actions to achieve them.

What are your personal goals?

People have personal goals which may or may not be well defined. In fact, because of poor goal definition unimportant goals may be pursued to the detriment of more important ones which may never be achieved. To help you get started in defining your personal goals, Figure 1-2 describes twelve common goals. Your goals may not exactly fit this listing, but, that's no problem. In fact, it will be great if you have more relevant personal goals. You can insert goals more appropriate for your personal situation. But, I will use these twelve goals to provide a common point of reference to discuss goal achievement and how it can help meet your needs. I will also show you how to prioritize goals in ways that will enable you to more efficiently achieve them. The standardized definitions are shown in Table 1-1 will also be important for our discussions. You will be surprised at how useful it will be to work out plans to achieve personal goals once they have been properly defined.

Improving your spirituality

What is spirituality? Its definition will depend on who you talk to. But, to keep the conversation at a simple level, let's use a standard definition such as the one which is contained in the Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Dictionary. It defines spirituality as being "connected by an affinity of the mind, spirit or temperament; showing great refinement and concern with the higher things of life". In my view, the phrase "showing great refinement and concern with the higher things of life" is the key concept of its definition. However, some people consider spirituality to be a vague concept having little meaning or usefulness. But, I disagree. At its basis, spirituality, as we define it at a personal level, is our reason for existing. It depends on respect for others, respect for the environment and a belief that we should be constructive in our actions. In other words, to do no harm to the people and things around us since we are passing through life only as temporary occupants of this world. Spirituality helps us to make sense of our personal journey through life.

In our quest for spirituality, religion may become a part of a person's belief system. For many people, spirituality is intertwined with their core religious beliefs and their expression. It must also be admitted there are people who belong to well established religions who lack spirituality. And there are other people, not part of an established religious community, who are spiritual. Spirituality is a personal belief system which should influence a person's behavior. To begin defining your spiritual beliefs, try to write down three beliefs that are important to you. Then ask yourself a simple question, "How well have I adhered to these personal beliefs?" In other words, "Has my behavior been consistent with my personal beliefs? Or is my behavior in opposition to the beliefs that I consider important?" If a dichotomy exists, the result will be hypocrisy. Hypocrisy occurs when; a person makes "the false claim to or pretense of having admirable principles, beliefs, or feelings". People find themselves in this uncomfortable position through a variety of reasons which are either self-induced or caused by external circumstances beyond their control. It always a good idea to sort out in advance differences between our beliefs versus behavior to avoid circumstances which test our spirituality. In other words, we don't want to be hypocrites. Spirituality also depends on culture, religion and a person's life's experiences. In other words, only you can define spirituality as a personal goal.

Improving relationships with family

The relationships that people have with their families range between very close and happy to distant and violent. In...