The Importance of Goals

Photo by Leonardo Pallotta

Today marks the beginning of my blog. I decided to do this as a way to practice writing on a regular basis. I want to have one of my books published, hopefully while I’m still alive.

I’ve floundered with some of my life goals. I come across a book called “Pick Four” by Seth Godin and Zig Ziglar on Amazon.com. This book is a 12 week guide to helping you achieve four of your goals. It received many good reviews. It was only available in a pack of four copies. Seeing that I only wanted one copy, I emailed Seth Godin and he actually responded and said it was designed to be in a pack of four so that you give away the other three copies. I was sold.

I picked four goals to work on that I thought would get me started in the areas I wanted to change the most; career, music, and fitness (two under career). If I could get these four going, the other goals would be much easier to accomplish. Specifically I chose to start a blog, read 12 books, join a rock band as a bass player, and reduce my waist to 30 inches. None of these was easy and you’re only supposed to take on one difficult, but hey what did I know.

Well the 12 weeks ended last week and I can say with satisfaction that all four goals are completed. It is pretty cool to review the journal over the last 12 weeks to see my struggles and successes.

There’s a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing the goals but it was even cooler to learn all the things I had to research.

The easiest one was reading 12 books (I want to average one per week or 52 per year).
The most difficult one was joining a rock band. This one didn’t come about until week ten. It is not easy at 51 years to find a band that has guys that are about the same age, like the same music and are close geographically.

The blog was the most involved. There must have been two hundred steps to get this was one done. This is definately one goal where if I didn’t break it down step by step I would have given up. By breaking it down, it was pretty easy to do one thing every day.

My fitness goal required a lot of research. I’ve tried to stay fit my whole life. Over the years my waist had grown to 35 inches and I couldn’t get rid of it. I will detail this one in a future post. The first three inches were a breeze. Then it got progressively more difficult. The last inch was a pain. It took two weeks to reduce three inches and eight weeks to reduce one inch.

If you had told me 12 weeks ago that I would achieve just one of these goals, I would have been thrilled. Accomplishing all four is a scream. I can check off all four. I’ve learned a lot. I am motivated to do more.

I would encourage everyone to buy “Pick Four”. Thank you Seth Godin for getting me going!

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