Goals for the Sake of Goals
Just a few months ago I woke up every day absolutely jacked up to progress towards my goals. I had recently finished listening to The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone, which taught me two great lessons. First, take massive action towards your goals. Second, write down your goals every single morning and attach a reason to those goals. Easy, right? Absolutely! So there I was writing down my goals every single morning and taking steps in the right direction. Want to know one of my goals? Sure you do. So here it is: “Make $25 million dollars in my lifetime so that I am able to create opportunities for other’s to be successful.” Okay now take a second to breathe and stop laughing.
No shame.
I’d like to start off by saying I’m not ashamed whatsoever of the large goal I set for myself. Like I mentioned last week, you should absolutely aim high for yourself. I should also mention that in the last few months I have changed this goal. Not because I feel like it’s out of reach for me, but because it’s not what I need to actually achieve my ideal life. My problem at the time was I thought I needed a significant amount of money to impact people in the way I’d like. I now know, through the strategy I’ll get to in a second, that I can achieve my goals with significantly less money.
Another thing we should discuss before moving forward is this idea of making money. Wanting to make a lot of money doesn’t make you a bad person. For example, people have these goals of traveling, or providing for their family, or paying it forward in their community, etc, etc. These things cost money. Now can you do these things without making a large amount? You sure can! The idea of this article is not to get caught up in how much money, but to bring your goals into perspective and help you realize how attainable your dreams truly are.
So what helped me realize that I didn’t need $25 million? Well for starters I had some of my fellow masterminders/friends ask me what the point of having that amount of money was. I didn’t have much of an answer. I couldn’t explain the purpose of the amount. So I had to ask myself, do I really need THAT much money? Turns out, I didn’t. So how did I discover what I really did need? I broke down my goals.
Breaking down your goals.
How did I do this? Very simply. I first started by creating my life plan. This helped me to see what I wanted for my life. Then I created a Google Sheet with all of the things I would like to accomplish in my life. I categorized the goals by Travel, Family, Friends, Assets(substitute Financial if you’d like), Health, and Misc. I included a column that tracked if I would need time, money or both to obtain and enjoy each goal. Hint: Most will need both. The next step (and column) required me to put a time frame to it. So I put the age by which I would like to accomplish each goal (25, 30, 35, etc.). I also created a little note section at the end to add any other important pieces.
So we have a nice list of goals written out and we’re starting to see this Sheet take form. What’s next? Next, I created a tab that has all of my goals listed by their time intervals and then added up the costs. For example, Age: 25, Age: 30, Age: 35, and so on, each being a separate tab on the same goals sheet.
I’ll explain how I set up ‘Age: 25’ and then you can just repeat the process as you go. I currently have my goals created out to age 35. So anyways, on your Google Sheet, create a new tab ‘Age: 25 Costs.’ Within this tab, copy and paste over all of the goals that you would like to accomplish by this age. Make sure to continue the categorization. I then list out any important notes. Important notes can be anything that will help you understand your calculations. For example, I have a note ‘AVG. Flight to X from X’ next to my goal overseeing close friends X times per year. This will help me understand that cost per flight based on where I am and where I’m flying to.
From there, I start doing some searching. I head to Google and try to find the costs of my goals. If you want to travel, find flight costs and the cost of the trips. If you want to live in San Fransisco then find the type of place you’d like to live and copy the link along with the total cost per year to live there. I like to also include a monthly expense column by dividing my total cost column by 12. One thing that’s important for me is actually picking out a specific thing(location, car, etc.). I actually have a link to the place I would like to live by the age of 25. I then do this for all of my goals and then multiply the cost by the quantity. Most things won’t have more than a quantity of one. I do, however, have my traveling multiplied by the number of times I would like to go a certain place. So if I want to see friends 5 times a year, I multiply the average plane ticket by 5 and that’s seen in the total column. I then sum my entire sheet up for the current age. You can then divide this by the income bracket that you will fall into and BOOM you have your minimum yearly income necessary.
Some things to keep in mind.
It sounds straightforward, right? I mean it can be, but it definitely takes time. Remember to estimate the yearly cost of living in the location you’ll be in. Include some of those miscellaneous living expenses into your sheet so you can have a more accurate representation of what you’ll actually need. You’ll start to recognize how affordable things can really become once you start breaking these things down. I now realize I need nowhere near $25 million to live the life that I want to. Not even close! Also understand that this seems daunting, but it’s truly valuable information to have. It’ll take you a couple of days to complete, but allows you to truly see your life from a reasonable perspective. And remember things can always change. Nothing is set in stone just because you said you want this or that.
If you would like the sheet that I used to create my goals, email me! I will send you the link to a blank slate that you can copy and use for yourself. If you would also like a video going through how I did it, include that in the email and I would be happy to create one!
Thank you for taking your time to read this. I really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this read please tap that heart so that other people can enjoy it as well! If you have any questions at all please email me here.
