Goal-Setting Boot Camp, Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be, by Kevin Shulman, Sandler Training 2020

Are you feeling that you can't get out of bed, that your dog ate your to-do list, that even if you set a new goal you couldn't possibly execute during this stay-at-home hand sanitizing mask-toting twelve foot or more zoom lockdown?  Well, you're not alone.  But there is opportunity in chaos, opportunity in crisis.  And here is what you've got, if you have the energy to execute...

First set the horizon

Shulman recommends that we set down written goals - financial, social, family career, education, and spiritual - on an extended time horizon of 1, 5, or 10 years.  You may, however, want to focus on one year's short-term goals, maybe execute a couple easy ones first, then hit the biggies.

Next, highlight the most important goal to work on.  It could be, for example, re-discovering your family roots.  That might require an in-depth genealogy dive via the internet.  Or you might schedule a Facetime discussion with your oldest aunt.  It could be joining Find-a-grave to locate long-lost antecedents.  Whatever goal you zero in on, says Shulman, "The practice of goal setting makes people more accountable for their own lives and gets them on the path of working toward their vision of the future."

The author scheduled your boot camp to take place over three days with a fourth day designed for business leaders and sales professionals.  This is not something to be done at the end of a long work day - it demands good time.

Shulman completed undergraduate work in psychology at USC, followed by graduate studies in industrial psychology at Wayne State. He knows that we will slip up - we'll miss goals, or procrastinate but he compensates for these little failures a couple different ways.  One solution is to set up a Reward System that recognizes little achievements on the way to bigger goals.  For example, a client  set out to lose 125 pounds on 12 months.  His milestone reward?  A banana split each time he lost 12 pounds - that's 10.4 banana splits.  

Two other methods came through as powerful moves toward goal setting and achievement - "Shrink it" and "Visualize and Affirm."  "Shrink It" is innovative, and perhaps too difficult to complete at the very beginning.  Shulman challenges us to take our goals and shrink them down to bullets that fit on one side of an index card:

*  go to the gym three times per week

*  put $10,000 cash in the bank

*  feel good about myself every day

*  close every sale

*  help my colleagues

*  book a trip to Europe

*  laugh every day 

Shulman quotes Toni Sorenson in "Visualize and Affirm': - "You'll never get it if you can't see yourself having it."  Hmm.  Not the Impossible Dream, but picture this...  On a Dream Board in your office try posting a color photo of something you have always wanted but never quite reached. One Dream Board showed a couple walking the beach, another was a little girl's wish for a new kitten.   Shulman's Dream Board held a picture of a red Ferrari 308 but as the years went by, the Ferrari dream was replaced by career and home  tasks.  The Ferrari get farther and farther way - the impossible dream - until one day his wife Gina parked a rental in their driveway - a red Ferrari 308 -  set for a weekend getaway.  Shulman wondered if it was serendipity or coincidence, but the Ferrari image had never left his mind.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com