The following article is perhaps one of the most important I will ever write. If you have stumbled on this, count yourself extremely blessed. Do you want to genuinely make some changes, make a fundamental change in your very soul? Then the following article on setting goals can change your life forever.

Setting goals, and deciding where you want to take yourself, is perhaps the most important thing you can do. But not for the reason you think. The most significant value in life is not what you achieve, but rather, what achieving your goals makes of you.

A bible verse that has embedded itself in my mind over the last few years:

“Remember that I have commanded you to be determined and confident! Do not be afraid or discouraged, for I, the Lord your God, am with you wherever you go.”

Want a better future? Your future is predicated on one single principle. Jim Rohn talks about this one single principle for anybody’s future in such a concise way. You have to count on yourself. Count on your ability to design the future.

It is called the promise; the promise of the future can literally change everything. He says if you face the future with apprehension, you will take hesitant and uncertain steps all day. You live like this for a few years; just imagine how empty your life will be.

If you live excited for the future and work to design your future, live like this for a few years and see how full your life becomes.

The promise of your future is connected to the price. The price to pay is easy if the promise is clear and powerful. If the promise of your future isn’t clear, the price becomes problematic, too much to overcome.

The promise is what you decide you want your future to be. You have been given the ability to change your future. The price? A few simple disciplines practiced every day. We will pay the price of a few simple disciplines if we can see the promise.

If we can’t see, we don’t want to pay. In fact, we will pay the most extraordinary disciplines if we can see the promise of the future if it is clear. This is called setting goals.

The promise of the future, the designing of our own future. Setting financial goals & income goals, health goals, spiritual goals, where do we want to go, who do we want to be, what do we want to do?

Designing our own future is within our hands and our capacity to do. That Bible verse read it carefully; we are commanded to be determined and confident about our future. Hopeful and excited about our future.

So let’s figure out how to make the promise of our future clear and powerful. Let’s set about determining what our future will look like.

Do you want to know how simple goal setting is? Decide what you want and write it down.

That is how easy goal setting is. The setting of the goal is not really the challenge. The challenge for so many of us is that we don’t even know what we want.

A few years back, I remember lying on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, trying to find something to watch. Somehow I found myself watching a video by MJ DeMarco called the 1/5/10 strategy. I still remember this as if it was yesterday. This was the first time in my life that I got up, went out, bought a hard-covered notebook, and did the exercises mentioned in his video.

Hand on heart, as far as I remember, this was the first time I took setting out my future seriously – so seriously that I even did the exercises. I didn’t view this video through my normal cynical lens for some reason. I actually did what he said. The techniques in this video and his books are something I think about every single day since.

I don’t know what it is; maybe the fact I did the exercises and physically wrote down my thoughts? The outcome of this exercise is now ingrained in my mind. This is his technique for planning out your life. Giving yourself a roadmap to get where you want to go.

Why not try it? What have you got to lose?

Get a journal, do not use a digital device. On page one, put the heading ’10 Years’.

Envision how your life would look ten years from now, if everything went as well as it could. Envision it as a best-case scenario.

Where would you live, what would you drive, what would you be doing, what’s your net worth, where would you vacation, and what does your daily day look like? What clothes are you wearing, who are your friends? What type of person are you? Write everything down and be specific.

For example, in ten years, you see yourself with a $10 million net worth because you just sold your company for $7,5 million. You live somewhere sunny in a beautiful house near the ocean, have a fantastic spouse, three children, are debt free, and are doing what you want to do without the constraints of money. Deep in your soul, you feel secure, loved, unique and important. You are helping some young people in the community dig themselves out of poverty, a scarcity mentality, etc.

Write it all down, everything.

At this point, your ten-year vision may look a bit like a fantasy.

Go to a new page and head this page, ‘5 Years’.

Write on this page what your life would need to look like if you were halfway to your ten-year vision. So if you had just sold your company for $7.5 million in year 10, you probably have a profitable and expanding business in year five. This business is getting close to making a hundred thousand dollar profits this year. Maybe you have been dating the person of your dreams for a few years and are close to getting married etc.

Write down your halfway point in all areas and what it should look like.

Then go to a new page and head this page, ‘1 Year’.

What would your life have to look like one year from now to be 20-25% closer to that five-year vision?

If you have a business that makes a hundred thousand dollars of profit in year five, then at the end of year one, maybe you have just launched your small business. You have the foundation laid for scale with an awesome productocracy. Perhaps you’ve paid off all your credit cards.

Or maybe you have been on a few dates and found your soul mate. Is it possible you have learned some computer programming language and built yourself a high-leverage skill?

Write it down, one year from now, what it should look like.

Once you have this all written down, congratulations. You now have a roadmap for your life. More importantly, you now have a decision framework for action. From this point on, you now have a framework that tells you how to make your decisions. You know exactly what choices you should and should not be making.

If any decision advances you towards the one-year vision, it is the right decision as it will get you on the right path to your five and ten-year vision.

Any decision that does not move you closer to the one-year vision is a detour. This doesn’t mean you can’t go out for dinner or watch TV. But it gives you a framework for what decisions you need to take each day to move you closer to your one-year vision.

Why don’t you do this exercise before you carry on reading?

To make changes in your life and move you toward the promise of your future, you need to design your future.

To do this, we need to create this decision framework. We can filter all our decisions for action through the above decision framework. It will tell you if a decision or choice is the right one to make with a straightforward methodology: Will this decision move me closer to my one-year goal or further away?

Now you have the goals that you need to move forward. This decision framework will make all decisions and choices easier. There is now only one thing missing.

Before we get to the missing ingredient, if you look at your one-year goals page, keep the following thought in the back of your mind.

In your one-year goals page, what one single goal is the most important? One single goal that will move you forward the most. E.g., it may be starting a new business or growing your existing one. You may need to learn a high-value skill to build this business.

What one single goal jumps out at you as the most important to accomplish that will move you closer to that five-year plan?

What specifically needs to be done to achieve this most important goal one year from now? Please write down the exact specific steps it will take to accomplish this goal. All the individual steps are needed to accomplish this one goal.

In most cases, this one most important goal will require a large amount of work from you – to acquire the skills needed for this goal. Do EVERYTHING in your power to achieve what will become this one life-changing goal. This will mean doing some things differently tomorrow, some new discipline you aren’t doing today. Set out daily steps and plans to move you towards this one goal.

If you step toward daily achieving your plans, you will be well on your journey of becoming a person of discipline and resolve. Never give up; making progress is the key.

Make it a reality by a change in your daily habits.

Do you want your life to look like your ten-year design or plan? Then boil down all of the above into today. Set specific, smaller goals for each day. What will you do tomorrow that will get you closer to your one-year goal? What is the most important one thing in your one-year plan you need to achieve?

Whether you’re pursuing a new skill or trying to accomplish stretch goals, the beauty is in your daily decisions. You want your life to look different; the best way to achieve this is in a daily plan; even if you don’t achieve the one-year goal, you’re working on becoming a better you.

Small incremental change in your daily routine is ultimately what you need to do to achieve the larger goals.

If you want to achieve your one-year plan, your life goals, your personal goals, and your five-year plan and ten-year plan, then set daily goals and start small.

This will mean you need to adjust your daily planner. Everything you do and every decision regarding your time must be fed through your decision framework. As discussed, the price will be some daily disciplines to reach your promise of the future. If you want the ideal future, you must gain new disciplines today.

Actionable and measurable daily disciplines. Spend more time thinking about a clear path to achieve your purpose in life through small daily disciplines.

These actionable and measurable daily disciplines are the missing ingredient. You need to investigate where you can find extra hours in the day to work on the one-year goal. What resources do you need to achieve this one-year goal? What is getting in the way or holding you back from the discipline required to do what is needed each and every day?

Practically what does this mean? It may mean cutting out the TV. Getting up two hours earlier than normal to work on yourself. Getting enough sleep, eating well and exercising gives you the energy needed for your additional hours of work.

Can you work on your project for a few hours after work? Weekends, holidays.

You will be surprised how much time you can find to fit in a few more hours in a day to achieve your daily disciplines. You need to be ruthless, and motivate every area of your mind to hit your one-year goal. Celebrate the daily sacrifices you are making. Even if progress is slow, all areas of life will be changing.

You will start to become somebody different. And this is really the greatest miracle.

The greatest value in life is not what you achieve, but rather, what achieving your goals makes of you.

Setting goals gives us the framework for our decisions, & setting goals helps us make the daily adjustments needed in order to achieve the promise of our future.

If your vision is clear, getting up each morning at 04:30 to work on acquiring a new high-leverage skill will not be difficult. Working during your lunch hour, when you get home, every weekend on this skill will not be especially difficult.

You will be able to do the daily disciplines required if your vision (the promise) is greater than the price.

You will have a clear understanding of what is required; you will have all the motivation you need, all the motivation to achieve the daily disciplines.

James Clear talks about taking the friction away from the daily disciplines. For e.g., say you were looking to work out each morning. Put your workout clothes out the evening before. When you get up in the morning, your clothes are right there. You almost feel obliged to go for your workout.

You will get better results if you take as much friction out of the small daily disciplines as you can. This simple technique is a great way to set up achievable goals that motivate you, because, more often than not, you accomplish your goals each day if you have removed the friction.

I find if I get the kettle filled and ready, my coffee cup and a glass of water out and ready the night before, then it is easier for me to get up really early.

This little technique will help you set up realistic goals, and use the smart techniques other people have used for their success. Take time to enjoy the fact you are achieving your daily disciplines.

Also, fill your mind with helpful and positive information. I find it helpful to listen to podcasts with information that will move me closer to my goals when I exercise. In the car, make your car or bus trip your university.

Maybe for you, it is reading success stories. Maybe listening to another entrepreneur who works in a similar field, any information that moves you toward your goals.

You can achieve your dreams; you can reach new and exciting levels of personal development in life, and make life full of value because of who you are becoming.

If you set goals as explained above, and make these daily disciplines a critical part of your day, then maybe, just maybe you will achieve the big goal.

What will it take to achieve something you want? How will it look when you have complete satisfaction with what you have achieved? Who will you be when you get results you didn’t think possible? These are the million-dollar questions.

Remember, the greatest value in life is not what you achieve, but rather, what achieving your goals makes of you.

The goal of most side hustles is to bring in additional cash each month. Learning to invest your money with options can be one of your side hustles. If done properly, it won’t take up much time and can be a real money printer. You will need funds to invest – but be careful; if done incorrectly, options can quickly make you poor. If the right strategy is followed and you don’t get greedy, option investing is a great way to invest the money you make from your new endeavor.

Options must be one of the easiest ways to bring in additional money right away, but only if the right strategy is followed.

Check out our FREE ‘Options for Beginners Course’ below to see if learning options is for you.