Goal Setting–What Is Your Linchpin?

Sometimes I get my best blogging post ideas when reading or making comments on other people’s blogs. Today’s post is like that, here is the link to the Verve House Collective that inspired me.

 

It has taken me awhile to get to the place where I know what I want out of life. I started journaling every morning, before I’m good and awake. I brain dump on the pages anything that comes to mind. Now, you need to understand, I am not one of those people who have stacks of notebooks from when I was a kid. Journaling was a decision I made as an adult to figure out what I was all about.

So I took a lesson page from my writing (novels/short stories) manuals. Whenever I need to figure out why a character does what they do in a story, I jot it all down to get a “character sheet”. Taking  myself as the subject, and a fresh notebook, I began to write. What are my motivations, What makes me sad, What makes me get up in the morning, Who do I love, Who loves me, and why. Before you knew it I was energized by getting up an hour early to drink my coffee and journal. After a year of doing this steadily I know I’ll never go back. I have narrowed my life down to 2 main overarching goals, and everything I want or desire to do falls under those headings.

No, at this point I’m not going to share mine, that is super-personal and unique to me. My goals aren’t what you should be doing with your career. You have to find your unique calling/goals/desires (whatever you want to call them).

The linchpin keeps the wheels from falling off. Without it the buggy will crash. Do you have linchpin goals?

One of the things I did that made the biggest impact on me and helped be see the way my various goals and desires were interwoven was to make a list of 25 things I wanted to do with my life. It took me a day or two to get the list complete. You want to write down the ones that instantly come to mind, but give yourself time to think about the others. After I did this I looked for patterns in the list. What topics or talents did they fall under. My list fell into three sub headings, writing (big surprise), travel, and skill building. From those three I realized there were 2 things that were linchpins. If I didn’t accomplish those 2 goals, then none of the other things on my list would happen, much less matter.

With these 2 goals in mind I am focused and right on top of my game. I highly recommend trying out this exercise for yourself. Find out what you are really all about. What is at your essence? What is holding you back? How are you going to fix it? Do you have linchpin goals, ones that hold the key to the life you want? Get to the bottom of these questions, once and for all, and you will move forward each day with intensity and integrity toward who you want to be.