Goal Setting Article

Seven Guidelines for Creating an Ideal Life!
by Gary Ryan Blair (The Goals Guy)

It all begins with a vision; a vision of creating an ideal life.
The relentless pursuit of that vision will eventually give birth to the picture in your mind. An ideal life born from the unwavering dedication to doing whatever it took to become successful.

Creating the ideal life obviously requires intelligence, but that's just the start. What's most important is having a positive set of values, attitudes and habits necessary for your vision to become reality.

The following are Seven Guidelines for Creating The Ideal Life:

Goal 1. Create a Bigger Future!

Make your future bigger, brighter, and bolder than your past.

Your past is history, however your past offers great insights for creating the ideal life. Your past is rich with experiences that are worth thinking about in new ways, and these valuable experiences can become raw material for creating a masterpiece.

Approach your past with this attitude, and you will have an insatiable desire for even better, more enjoyable experiences. Use your past to help you create the ideal future, and you will separate yourself from situations, relationships, and activities that can trap you in the past. Continually use your past only as a foundation for what lies ahead, and you will move closer to your personal north star.

Goal 2. Create Contributions Into Other People's Lives!

The ideal life must include a commitment to serving others. Create a habit whereby your contributions are bigger than your personal gain.

As you become more successful, numerous rewards will come your way: increased income, praise, recognition, reputation, capabilities, status, resources, and opportunities.

As nice and as enjoyable as these rewards can be, they can also become an Achilles heel. Be careful as to becoming too fixated on just the rewards, rather than on making still greater contributions.

To create the ideal life, concentrate continuously on making ever greater contributions into the lives of your family, friends, associates, community and the world at large. Look for ways to empower the human spirit, help others eliminate limiting steps, demonstrate honor, discipline and good character, and look for opportunities to teach and share what you have learned with others.

Goal 3. Create a Learning Environment!

The creation of an ideal life is dependent upon your commitment to growth, learning and implementation. You may have a great deal of experience and sit at the front of the class intellectually, but still be no smarter for all of the things you've done, seen, and heard.

Experience alone is no guarantee of intellectual growth. To create the ideal life that you envision, you must continually transform your experiences into new lessons, and you will make each day of your life a source of growth, maturity and beauty.

Every experience in life offers an opportunity for learning. The smartest people are those who can transform the smallest event or situation into breakthroughs in thinking and action.

Goal 4. Create Higher Standards!

Raise the bar high, higher than you think possible, astound yourself by your performance. To ensure that you have more in life, you must first commit to being more.

Be more committed, focused, disciplined, and relentless. Be the authentic person you are and were meant to be. Be more, do more, demand and expect more from yourself and those around you, and you will be creating the ideal life.

No matter how much acclaim you receive, keep working to improve. The opportunity for growth is unlimited. Continually work to surpass everything you've done so far, by continually raising your standards.

Goal 5. Create a Greater Appreciation for Life!

Gratitude is essential to creating the ideal life. Over the long run, the few who are continually successful have this in common, they recognize that success springs naturally from the assistance of many other people and they are continually grateful for this support.

Short-term successes cut themselves off from everyone who has helped them. They see themselves as the sole cause of their own achievements. As they become more self-centered and isolated, they lose their creativity and ability to succeed.

Continually acknowledge others' contributions, and you will automatically create greater success and a greater quality of life. You'll continually be motivated to achieve even more for those who have helped you. Focus on appreciating and thanking others, and the conditions will always grow for your increased success.

Goal 6. Create Enjoyment and Playfulness!

A greater sense of enjoyment and playful spirit, will automatically create a greater quality of life.

Distressing emotions and humor cannot occupy the same psychological space. A sense of humor helps you to find the lighter side of deadlines and conflicts. It's a tool for letting go of frustrations and upsets of the moment. A growing conviction that stress levels are running high makes a sense of humor a mandatory condition for the creation of the ideal life.

Fun is the fabric of happy memories, the icing on the cake of life. A life filled with mirth is one well lived, approach everything you do with this sense of enjoyment and playfulness.

Goal 7. Create Discomfort!

Of all the guidelines advocated, none is of more fundamental value than your willingness and ability to create discomfort. In a very real sense, it is a precondition to all the others.

Always make your goals and dreams greater than your comfort. Recognize that every act of creation, is also a simultaneous act of destruction. The more positive, intentional, and comfort challenging the better.

Many successful people start off with big, bold, breathtaking dreams and ambitions. They take risks, and some on occasions have bet the farm in the process, but the moment they become successful, they start seeking greater security and comfort as their main goal. They begin to play not to lose, rather than playing to win!

They fall asleep at the wheel motivationally, and quickly lose the confidence that made them so successful. Security and comfort are desirable by-products of goal achievement, but when they become the goal itself, they quickly work against you.

Treat any increase of comfort in your life as only a temporary stage for establishing bigger goals. Continually strive for higher goals and achievement, continually place yourself in a position where you have to grow, learn and perform and life will always be an adventure.

The relentless pursuit of the ideal life must continue throughout your life as you pursue the goal of just not meeting, but exceeding even your wildest expectations.

Incorporate these guidelines into your life, and share them with others so that you and they might be able to enjoy all that life has to offer.

At The Goals Guy, our mission and reason for existence is simply to inspire people to live into their full potential through learning resources that make the heart sing, mind expand and the spirit soar!

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair
The Goals Guy