This week’s video, it’s time to define your goals, Twitter Style. What we mean by that is, how can we help you to crystallize your mission, your goal, your dreams in less than 140 characters. 140 characters, well that’s because it’s achievable. It has been proven when Twitter came up with under a 140 character limit to constrict, to get away with the noise, remove the noise in people’s sentences, get to the point of what you want to talk about.
When you try to crystallize or write down your goals and they’re two or three sentences of a hundred and forty characters, even paragraphs I’ve seen written down, they end up becoming more vague and wishy-washy. You needs to be thinking about writing your goals in a methodical way that is very concise. You need to start writing your goals in a way that is very concise and that means constriction, reducing the amount of words that are just filler words that actually mean nothing.
What is it that you want to become? Why do you want to become it? What’s the time frame you want to achieve it? All these things you can put down in a hundred and forty characters. There are many people now who are successful people because they tweet on a daily basis, we have a president of the United States, he’s basically there in the greater main for the fact he’s very active on Twitter.
You can say a lot at Twitter, you can do a lot of damage on Twitter. There are people right now doing time at the majesty service because of what they wrote on Twitter so don’t send me any messages, saying you cannot write down your goals in less than 140 characters.
What I’m talking about here is the process, more than anything else you have been able to think about these goals in a formal, concentrated manner, restricting all the noise. Something special happens when you actually write things down. You are more likely to engage in that process of making that happen, you are concentrating a lot more, you don’t have automatic spellcheck gun on the background, okay. It’s a far more organized way of thinking. There’s a famous poem by Marilyn Monroe, which goes, I think in ink, it’s very important for you guys to, yes we live in the digital age I’ve said that before, but write it down first.
Write it down whatever is truly important to yourself, first before you commit that to Word or any other variant. So why do you think it’s important to be able to crystallize your goals, your wishes, your aspirations in a 140 characters or less? Well from personal experience, I’m talking about 10 years’ worth of experience, helping people define their goals in the context of a care plan. These are people in need of care, one thing is crystal clear, the longer your statement is, the more vague it becomes and harder to follow.
You should be trying to think about how to write in a very clear and concise way, that way you can drown out the noise and get to the crux of what it is that you want to do, want to achieve or want to become. Now one of the major stumbling blocks when people are trying to define their goals and only they don’t really have understanding of what their goals are, it’s just that they also have these fears that overcome them when they define their goals.
We’re talking about fears, we’re talking about the fear of racism, the fear of failure, fear of unworthiness, doubt comes in. Also change the fear of actually changing into something that you didn’t know you could become. Again that probably feeds into your fear of unworthiness but you’re presented all these fears when you come into the point whereby you’re trying to find your goals.
So help is people, to define the goals, it is not a real straightforward thing. There’s a lot of psychology that comes into it but essentially it comes from you knowing yourself, okay. You cannot start writing your goals and to either taking a step aside to define and write down who you want to be in a very unbiased way, okay and what you want to become.
So think about it like this people, you’re in an elevator and somebody asks you what is your goal, do you have time to read off a paragraph worth of statements, in terms of what you want to achieve, the timeframe you want to achieve it? No you don’t, does anyone have time to say that? No they don’t, nobody has the time for that, so chances are you’re not on the way to achieving those goals.
If your goals are very clear and concise, not only will you convince somebody when they ask you in the elevator, all the way to the fifth floor what is your goal. You can say boldly what it is and have time to give some sort explanation as to why those things are your goal. So to help you guys, defining that goal, which you are going to try to shape in less than 140 characters, I have a few tips okay.
The first one being is, if I was to ask you what makes your heart sing, what truly motivates you, what action do you do, what things end up occupying your thoughts and your time that require little or no motivation. The chances are that these things that you’re doing are aligned to your deepest and truest values. If you align your goals to your values, you have the greatest chance of success.
When you try to do things that are not aligned to your values, you tend to require a lot of motivation and I can testify that myself that many times when I was working in careers that I thought were not aligned to my truest values, I needed to really motivate myself to get up just to go to work. This is something that’s made by a hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the globe right now, solely because we’re doing things or are engaging in activities that are not aligned to our deepest values, so understand what those values are, what it is that inspires you? What it is that motivates you? Do you feel like you have a calling? It’s all about yourself.
Values are so so important because these are things we think about all the time. This is what we want for ourselves, mainly due to a lack, most of the values, in fact you do have a process of reflection, are born out of a lack of something, okay. When you are focused on your values, it’s almost like it’s the lens of which you see life. If your value is to have children and you have a sign that has been your goal, if you go shopping you see and notice kids everywhere. If your value system is based upon, say fashion, it’d be comparing the regain of people you see, out and about.
Your values are very very important because this is where we put all our attention, this is where we put all our abilities to recall what we have seen, this is where we put all our focus on achieving things so therefore your values are intrinsically a sign, I can’t say but it’s in the video, to your own goals. You have to align them to your goals, where goals sit with no values you need motivation.
A motivation is not a good thing to be needed on a daily basis, particularly if you need it to achieve your goals, okay. When it’s aligned to your values, you need no motivation, this is who you are and this is what you’re gonna do.
Now to help you guys define your goals in a 140 characters or less, there’s a famous acronym we use in goal setting exercises. We call this SMART, the S stands for being Specific, okay and I’d like to use it in the context of something that we actually stretch you but something that’s also clearly defined. The next one is Measurable, you got to be able to measure your progress along your journey to achieving your goals, okay and I’d also like to include the word motivation. Whatever your goal is it has to inspire you, it has to drive you forward because you know the journey to achieve anything that’s worth achieving is going to be fought with a lot of challenges.
Next, we have action orientated or in this SMART goal, the traditional SMART goal structure they have Achievable but I like action orientated because it’s the doing, it’s like a verb means you’re gonna be motivated and actually doing things to make it happen, okay.
The next one we have is rewarding, we like to reward ourselves when we achieve things so whatever goal you have in mind, also think about the reward mechanism in there, what will you get out of it. Finally it’s T for Trackable, you have to be able to track where you are on your journey to achieving your goals and I’ll end this with a quote by Duke Ellington, “I don’t need time, what I need is a deadline“.
