Are Your Goals Aligned With Your Passions?

By Author: Are Your Goals Aligned With Your Passions?
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You may have heard about the importance of writing down and setting your goals for the future. And as the famous quote says, “if you fail to plan you plan to fail!”
Consider the following questions however:
Are your goals aligned with what you are truly passionate about?
Are your goals just based on what you think you should do or should have or should be?
How much do you really care if you achieve your goals or not?
It might seem like a nice idea to own a gigantic yacht, have it moored at Cannes marina, wear designer clothes, drink copious bottles of champagne an party all night, because that’s what the celebrities do! But if this isn’t really your thing and you would rather have a romantic night in with a DVD and a takeaway curry then chances are that you won’t be bothered whether you achieve the goal or not!
When setting your goals for the up and coming year, 5 years or 10 years it is a great idea to start from the standpoint of your passions. It is then that you will feel really, dare I say it, “passionate” about achieving them. Your goals will also be closely aligned ...
... with your values or guiding principles. Your values are the things that are so important to you that you wouldn’t want to live your life without them.
When your goals have been created from this starting point and you achieve or experience them, you will feel a whole host of positive emotions. How about feeling a sense of aliveness, freedom, joy, pampering, excitement, confidence, recognition, or success to name but a few!? This also has numerous connotations for helping us to lead a life free from stress.
So, what things do you love to do, what excites you and which of those things would you really not want to do without in your life?
Make a list of 10 things and write down the answer to these questions “Why, do I love doing that” or “why, is that important to me”.
To give you an example; when I was trying to whittle down my list of passions to just 5, I realised that if I could connect with the feelings and qualities that I love to have in my life, then I am more likely to set goals which come from the heart. Goals that would feel truly satisfying and fulfilling, once I had achieved them. So for me, the feelings I love to experience are: joy; aliveness; a sense of being connected to others and the universe; a sense of luxury or being pampered; vitality & energy; feeling successful; confidence, honesty and intimacy, amongst others.

The next step was to ask myself “What things do I really love to do which help me to get in touch with these feelings?” Some of my answers were: travelling to new and exciting places; meditating & practising yoga; dancing (salsa); giving personal or wellness coaching to others; having the opportunity to attend workshops where I can learn more about myself and grow as a person; enjoying great food (but definitely not cooking it myself!) being in nature; enjoying open and honest communication.
In order for me to be able to experience and recreate the feelings that mean so much to me (as it is then that I feel like I am really living my life fully!) it makes sense for me to set my goals around the achievement of such feelings.
Following on from this, some of my goals (in a very general form) are:
1)To be a great Life Coach and continue to expand my business.
2)To continue my Meditation & Yoga practice – as this is where I feel abundant and connected and peaceful.
3)To travel to new places and attend workshops where I can learn more about myself & meet like-minded people.
4)To Dance (with my husband) as often as I can.
5)To work on having honest, open and authentic relationships.
Once you have worked out what you really want from your life, how you would like to feel and what you love doing, you are then in a great place to set your goals.
The following step would then be to be more specific about the goal itself and give it a time frame. Make it a SMART goal (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time specific) or in the coaching world replace the R with Resonant (does it get you excited?) and the T with Thrilling (does it sound thrilling to you?).