How To Manage Your Life With Goals
 

By Saleem Rana

There are two ways to manage your life.  The way most people do.  And the way that works.

The way most people manage their lives is through crisis.  They move rapidly from one problem to another, trying to put out the fire before it burns the whole house down.  This is an exhausting way of living, offering little pleasure and even less hope.

The other way, the way few people appear to use, is to manage it by goals.

The best way to start on goal-creation is to stop everything that you're doing.  Take time off to do nothing.  Take a break.  Give yourself sufficient time to get your breath back.

When you are re-oriented, you should make clear goals and affirm them regularly.

Naturally, once you have set up your goal, you will need to develop a plan to make it happen.  Your plan does not have to be a complete one before you enjoy success.  Any plan is better than no plan, and a well-researched plan based on what you currently know is the best plan.

Your plan will change as you change.  It will evolve as you evolve.  Setting a goal is asking yourself to be more than you are right now--to do more, to have more, and ultimately to be more.  It is an invitation for personal growth.  All plans, therefore, are works in progress.

Your plan will really take off if you can give up a competitive mentality.  Instead of seeking to dominate, seek to cooperate.  Work on developing a team of people who will help you and who you will be able to help in turn.

In everything that you do, there will be both opportunity and crisis, benefits and liabilities.  In a world of dualism, every good thing has its shadow side.  However, your focus should be on the bright side of things, on the half-full part of the glass.  This will motivate you to persist.  While fear is also a great motivator, hope is a better one.  Fear has a way of draining your energy and invites the possibility of exhaustion and despair.  The psychology of success is seeing the opportunity before you.

As you proceed with affirming your goals and working your plan, keep picturing success.  Each time you envision your success, you are instructing your subconscious mind to work on fulfilling your goal.  You may not know exactly how you will accomplish your lofty goal, but if you keep your vision alive you will find a way.

Don't think too small.  When you can have anything that you want through the power of focus why settle for less than you truly desire and deserve?

Learn to master time, putting your time to good use, instead of frittering it away with either over-anxious behavior or with apathetic episodes.  Instead, work on fulfilling some part of your plan daily.

Similarly, you need to master money.  It's hard to make a dream come true when you are short on resources.  Money, like time, is ultimately only a belief system.  You don't have to be a financial expert to master money, just aware of  how money is coming in to your life and where it is flowing out.

In closing, let me leave you with the words of Dorothea Brand, "Act as if it were impossible to fail."