Goal Setting - Create a Road Map
Have you ever taken a road trip across country? Did you start out from home and just take any road that seemed interesting to you? Of course you didn't. You got out a road map, you found your destination, and you did some serious planning on what roads would lead you, state by state, city by city, to your final destination. Isn't it amusing that so few people follow the same strategy when planning their lives? Something as important as a life goes unplanned, with no road map.

Embarking on a goal setting strategy is not worth your time if you don't understand the necessity of having a goal road map. So, why are we so casual about planning our own lives? There are many excuses, none of them with any merit.

The list reasons so few people create a road map for their lives is long. But all of the reasons are excuses and without any merit whatsoever. Excuses like "I don't want my life to be so rigid" are so naively ridiculous they don't warrant much attention in this article. Take the excuse above and apply it to your road trip. If you decided to take a different road along your way, one that wasn't planned, how difficult is it to change the plan? A simple turn of the steering wheel in to the left rather than the right? Of course the same is true with any goal. If you decide along the way that it should no longer be part of the plan, part of the road map, change it, replace it, take it out of the plan.

There are no valid excuses for not creating your goals road map that hold any merit. None. But creating a road map requires some effort. Take the effort that goes into planning a road trip and magnify it by a hundred fold. But the rewards for doing so are magnified a thousand times over the quality of life you will experience by not creating your map. To get started, you should first educate yourself on general goal setting. You need to understand the importance of concepts like beginning with the end in mind, writing down your plan, outcome vs. performance goals, etc. We've got other articles you can read on goal setting. We also have a website where you can learn a great deal more, use free goal setting tools, and listen to your favorite music associated with goal setting, and your specific goals. See below for a link to the site and let's get started with your road map to a rich and rewarding life journey.

A word of caution,  as Hal Ketchum sings in "Someplace Far Away", "be careful what you're dreamin' or it someday may come true". In creating your road map, if you're in a relationship, make sure you both get excited about your journey if you want to remain in your relationship ;-)

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If you're serious about goal setting, you're going to need tools to aid in designing, refining, and following your plan. We've developed a tool we call the GoalTender but there are many others available on the web and we encourage you to research several articles and tools before investing your money. What works for one person may not work for you.

Closing Thought

The road to success has many tempting parking places.