How To Achieve Your Personal Goals

Setting goals is easy. Achieving them separates the more successful ones from the day dreamers. Think about how many people set resolutions that they never achieve?

The truth is achieving a goal is not about luck. In a research in the 1950s, researchers asked a group of Harvard University graduates about their goals. Almost all of them had goals. But only three per cent of them actually wrote them down.

30 years later. Those three per cent who had written down their goals had amassed as much wealth as the other 97 per cent put together.

So, let's try to see if we can use mind map to help organise your thoughts and help you achieve your goal.







Step 1. At the centre of the page, write down "Life Compass"
I use the word "Life Compass" because the most important goals in life are often what guide us to our success. So, let this mindmap be a compass to your life, be the 'True North' when you are lost.

Step 2. Think in terms of Roles.
Rather than just think in terms of goals, associate with 'Roles'. I find that goals are often link to relationships. We are trying to achieve goals for ourselves, for our family, for friends. In my example, I defined 4 roles to use as a starting point.

The 4 roles are:

• Work
  
• Family
• Personal
• Father (it can be Spouse, Sibling, Child or Friends)

NOTE: You can also choose to add more roles.

Step 3. List the goals
For each role, think about the goals that you want to achieve. Some goals may also be link to other roles or can be a subgoals Example, you may want to buy a house that is worth $1 million. In order to do that, it would also require that you need to be earning a certain level of income. Hence, there will be milestone in your work that you need to achieve.

Step 4. Let the thoughts flow.
Do not stop at the goals. As you let your thoughts flow, you will be thinking about other things like timeline to achieve the goal. Milestone associated with each goal.


The Benefits
And here you can see, that the mindmap do not restrict you. Some goals are complex and require multi-steps to acheive. With the mindmap, you will not run out of space. You can even hook up with other dependencies that is required to achieve the goal.

A copy of the mindmap in Freemind format is uploaded to Mappio and can be downloaded here.