Categorize Your Dream Roundup

Aren’t you bursting with butterflies right now?

After doing the goal listing exercise from part two, people always tell me that they are raring to go. They are chomping at the bit ready to get moving. You should be too.

If you don’t feel excited or like climbing Mount Everest, you haven’t tapped the well deep enough. Go back to part 2 of this series and spend a good half hour or 45 minutes on your Big List. No need in holding back… write down everything you want.

Optimizing your goal list

Once you have gone through the exhilarating process of listing of everything you want in life it’s time to do a little bookkeeping. Don’t worry, it’s going to be simple.

All I want you to do is go through and place a letter next to each one of your goals. Each letter will represent a life category.

I would recommend the following four categories (you can choose more or less if you desire):

(M) – Money
(F) – Family
(S) – Spiritual
(P) – Personal

The reason for categorizing your goals is there will come times during your goal setting career when you feel “out of balance.” If that’s the case, you are emphasizing one of those four major categories to the detriment of the others.

As an example, let’s take a newly married couple. Newlyweds should spend the first year of their marriage enjoying one another and making the first year as pleasant as possible. You may have heard the saying that the “first year is the hardest”? I’ll second that because it was for Kim and me.

Anyway, while the two newlyweds are supposed to be spending time together, the goal focused partner may be spending entirely too much time focusing on the (M) aspect of their goal categories and neglecting the (F) goal category. You can see that by doing this the other person is going to feel taken for granted or neglected.

The same would be true of another couple who are both goal getters but each have all their goals focused on the (P) category to the neglect of the (F). This couple would begin to feel as if they are drifting apart. You can almost see how the arguments would unfold…

So by categorizing your goals, you will have a direction that keeps you well-rounded. You will be able to have your cake and eat it too.

So spend a few minutes going through your list and place each of your goals into a category by writing a categorizing letter beside each one of them.

You may decide that you want to rewrite your goals at a later time on different sheets of paper one for money, one for family, one for spiritual, and one for personal. It just depends on what makes you feel better.

• This is tip #3 of the 31 day series 101 Goal Setting Breakthroughs: A 31 Day Blog Series That Will Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever! Subscribe to my free RSS feed to get the rest of the series and never miss a tip!

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