MM145 - Setting Goals | MM Book Study Pt. 3

Day #3 of our dedicated book study of Morning Mindset a 30 Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life. We discuss setting goals, short, mid, and long term. How do we set practical goals for ourselves and what is the purpose for goals in our life?

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[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Welcome back to Morning Mindset and we are going to continue with the Morning Mindset book study a 30 Day Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life, available as a paperback on Amazon, as a Kindle version. I hope that you are following along in your book, and if you have the paperback book. Now if you have the Kindle version, I know that Kindle allows you to highlight sections and it also allows you to take notes, which is a really, really cool feature that candle has so here. We are on day 3 of our journey and we're going to talk about setting goals.

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Now in the book, I talk about Land Navigation. Compass work what some people will call orienteering but one of my favorite classes to teach to my military students when I was working as a as a contractor was working as a military contractor small arms and tactics instructor was to teach Land Navigation to take a bunch of young 18-19-20 year-old kids and teach them all about how to use a compass,a map and a protractor and a pencil to and you're like “Wow, compass-map-protractor, but I got a phone and it's got a Google GPS thing on it and that's always perfect and always takes me exactly where I need to go.” Does it really? Not necessarily. a map and a compass, now when you do Land Navigation, something that you need to do is you need to figure out a number one where you are.

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When you open up a map and you look at that map. It's pointless and meaningless. If you cannot open a map look on the map and figure out where you currently are on that map because if you don't know where you are on the map. It doesn't do you any good all the compasses and protractors and and all that stuff and all the mathematician work.

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All the adding and subtracting and it's not gonna do any good because you have to first know where you are setting goals getting our mindset right doing our self assessment and gut check if you do a self-assessment and a gut check. What does that tell you? That tells you where you are right now. So in Chapter 2 or part two of this series we talked about your gut check. Where are you? So let's say that your life is a big ol map. Your life is a big map and it's laid out in front of you your gut check your self-assessment is where are you right now now now that you know where you are you need to figure out where you want to go.

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My navigation you figure out where you are on the map and you figure out where you want to go you use your compass and your protractor and you figure out which direction you need to go on that map to get to where you need to be and that is where goals come in. You need to set goals now goals aren't just I want to be a millionaire.

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Now “I want to be a millionaire” can be a goal, but it's not an easily achievable goal from the, well from the immediate standpoint. So well, my goal is to be a millionaire. Alright, now people who are millionaires today, people have or billionaires or what have you they didn't just wake up in the morning and say “You know what? My new goal is to be a billionaire, and as long as I hold true to my goal, I will be a billionaire” but somehow you get there. Let's say you have a map, and your goal you need to travel 3000 meters or three kilometers, right? You need to go three clicks. You could just start walking and count off all the paces you need to be until you get to.

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Is that easy to do? Is the person keeping pace count, you just going to tell them “Okay count the number of Paces. We need to get to 3,000.” Like no dude, I can't just, I can't do that. That's not practical, no. What you do instead, is you count out your journey in hundred meter increments, and then you add those up. You shortened the journey into legs, and when you shorten it into a leg, that's like a short-term goal.

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Now, let's say your short-term or your long-term goals. You say I want to lose 40 pounds. I looked at myself in the mirror. I got on the scale and I realized hey, I need to lose some weight and I want to lose 40 pounds. So just saying I want to lose 40 pounds. How is it going to help you do that in the short term? Where your short-term goal wouldn't be “I want to lose 40 pounds”, your short-term goal would be “I want to lose five pounds this week” or, and that's a lot of poundage, you know, 5 pounds in 1 week. Let's say I want to lose 3 pounds this week and then another three and then another three so you do that and before you know it you're down 30 pounds.

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But you make short-term goals when I first started writing many many moons ago, or I don't know it was when I first started but one of the pieces of advice that I got from someone who made their living as a writer was they said if you want to be a professional writer, you need to write 250 words a day minimum and you know writer anybody who's writers as well to 150 words is nothing easy.

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Yeah, I can do that ten to ten minutes turned 50 words. Yeah, but the trick is he said you need to do it every day. What people will do is they'll say well I need to write a 3000 word. I'm stuck on that number, 3000-word essay for college or I needed to report for work and my report has to be at least blank number of pages, and so rather than starting it when they have plenty of time and knocking off 250 to 300 words a shot. They say I'll just I'll do it all at once. I'll get it done. I'll get it done. I'll get it done. Nope. See if your long-term goal is to write 3000 and you write 250 to 300 a day. It's not that hard.

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Is it pretty easy, so short term goals. What do you hope to accomplish in the foreseeable future? What do you hope to accomplish this week? What do you hope to accomplish this month? Short-term goals are also like New Year's resolutions. What do you hope to accomplish this year now Big Time stuff, like graduating from college or buying a house or what?

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Have you gotten your degree to become a billionaire? Those things don't happen in short periods of time. So your short-term goals are what you want to do and write it down. One of the things that I recommend if you're using the paper book, is write your goals in the margins take a pen. Take a pencil whatever and write it on the paper.

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Look at it, read it back to yourself, write it down. I'm not kidding. You're not going to hurt my feelings if you write and scribble all over your book. It's your book, right? So short term goals less than a year or less now midterm goals a little bit broader. They could be in the two to three to five-year range.

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I want to get a college degree. I want to get an associates degree. I want to get a bachelor's degree. I want to get a masters degree. Those things don't happen overnight, but those can be mid goals right now long-term goals are things that you really want to do with your life. You want to purchase a home and pay it off?

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Do you want to start a successful business? Lots of people start businesses and most businesses. Don't last beyond a year or two. So a long-term goal would be I want to have a successful business that I can sell for a profit. Nobody who opens a business and is open for only a year or two is probably going to be able to sell it for a profit.

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They're probably haven't even made any money yet. They haven't established a long track record. A long-term goal could be to open a business to turn that business into something successful something that is so successful that other people want to acquire it sell that business and then start another one.

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Or sell that business and retire or sell that business and travel or sell that business and sit down and write the Great American novel that you've always wanted to write. Those can be long-term goals, but you don't get to that overnight. You don't get to the long-term goal by just wake up in the morning saying, you know what I want to have a successful business and I want to be a millionaire.

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Yeah, that's great in the future. But what are you going to do in the short time and write all of those things down? Many, many years ago, probably 30 years ago. I had a friend who told me, we talked about goals, and you should write down your goals. Write down your short-term goals, your midterm goals, and goals that you want to accomplish in the next 5 to 10 years, and I did and I put them in a notebook.

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I was in the Marine Corps at the time and I transfer Duty stations and I went to another one and that notebook got tucked away. I got put in a sea bag or what have you and it wasn't until several years later that I gotten out of active duty that I went through my stuff and I found that notebook where I'd written those goals and it was probably I don't know 5-6 years after I had written the goals all down, and with the exception of one goal, I had achieved every one of those things and it wasn't because it was in the Forefront of my mind constantly, but I had written them down. I had mentally committed to those I was on the path and I got there and one of the ways was I took the time to do some self assessment.

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Where am I on the map? You know gut-check. Where am I on the map right now, and once I decided once I knew where I was once I did the gut check I wrote down the goals, and that was the direction. I needed to go that was that helped me get to where I needed to be so chapter number 3 is setting goals, and I'm serious write them down and go back you because you're probably going to go back and read them later. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I'm your host Paul Markel and I'll talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.