Crazy Life Goals

We all have them. Or, if we don’t, we should get busy getting some. Yes, those crazy life goals where, on the one hand, you don’t believe will ever come true, and on the other hand, secretly can’t wait for!

Yes, you know, those goals.

I have them. Do you?

My first goal is to write a novel. Ok, ok, I’ll be honest.  It’s really to become a world-famous author, a New York Times bestseller a few times over, and to sit in my amazing writing room churning out novel after novel.

My other goals is to live in France for a year. There are a few caveats to this goal, the main one being, that I will be doing it with my family. And when I say ‘family’, I mean my husband and three children. Oh, did you know I currently only have one child?

Ok, so perhaps my third crazy life goal is to have three children. Yes, I said three (to all those people with two, three, or more children who are currently shaking their head and smiling knowingly, I’m intentionally ignoring you). We’ll see how I feel after I’ve had two.

So the big question is, how do I make these goals less crazy and more fathomable?

What I am currently striving to do is one small thing every day towards my goals. With my novel, it is simply writing. Yes, it is that simple, and then again, that hard. However, I am doing my best and have even started a Writing Prompts  board on Pinterest as an at-my-fingertips source of inspiration. *Please feel free to use and share if you so choose.

The ‘Living In France For A Year With My Family of 5’ is not quite so straight forward. What should I be doing? Learning French? Researching the cost of living? Hurrying up and getting myself pregnant? (Ah, no). Yes, all of these are possible, but are they currently the best use of my time, because let’s be honest, time is often the big factor. In the here and now there is always so much other important/urgent stuff to do that doing small things for a goal that we have for 5, 10 or more years in the future is often hard to justify, no matter what all the self-development gurus tell us.

‘The Rule of 5’

However, speaking of Self-Development Gurus, my regular go-to guru is Jack Canfield (I’ve mentioned him before in this post on Complete Delegation). His book, The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, is a regular source of inspiration for me, and I may have been known, on occasion, to refer to it as my ‘bible’. In relation to this post, I want to introduce you to his concept of ‘The Rule of 5’. I’ve included a video below of Jack explaining it, but let me give you an overview and get to the crux of how you can start achieving your goals (and mine too!).

The key to ‘The Rule of 5’ is to ensure that you do five specific things every day that move you toward your goal. Yes, 5 things. Every day! Jack quotes Ron Scoliastica, a teacher, who told him “If you would go every day to a very large tree and take five swings at it with a very sharp axe, eventually, no matter how large the tree, it would have to come down.” My take away from this is, simply by doing 5 things a day, even if they are really small or quick things, you are going to be moving towards your goal, instead of standing still, or worse, moving backwards.

However, you also need to keep in mind to not always focus on the easy stuff. You need to do the hard, daunting, stomach churning stuff too, even if you only do this once a week. Could you make a phone call? Could you email someone you admire for advice? Could you pay for that online course you keep looking at? Could you arrange to meet a development coach? Could you share your goal with someone who may laugh at you, but who may also support you? Could you share your crazy goal with us, here, now, at the end of this blog?

For me at the moment, working towards my France goal doesn’t mean learning French or researching the best places to live in France. For me working towards this goal, is working towards another goal, of having a thriving, self-managing, profit generating business. This in turn means that when we are ready to live in France for a year we can leave the business in the capable hands of the people who work for us. It could also mean something equally as crazy as opening a French or European office. Just imagine!

Which is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to imagine, and visualise, and picture these crazy goals becoming a little less crazy. I’m also going to work on ‘The Rule of 5’ and see what I can do each day to move towards these goals.

Are you game enough to share your crazy goals? Maybe you might want to also share some of your ‘Rule of 5’ ideas. We’d love to hear in the comments section below!