Who should you share your personal goals with? There’s a magnitude of research showing that you are far more likely to achieve your goals when other people know about them. The power of accountability is pretty well documented.
But who are the best people to share your greatest aspirations with?
I know for me personally I’ve tended to keep my goal sharing segmented in areas of interest. Desired triathlon results are shared with my coach and training buddies, family goals are shared with my partner, financial goals with my adviser.
The thing I have come to realise, however, is that all areas are interconnected. It can be a challenge to achieve your goals when looking at parts of your life in such a segmented way. Let me share with you an example.
In a recent meeting with our adviser Sam, my partner and I were talking a lot about outcomes. We want to grow our investment portfolio to $50,000, we want to save some extra cash, we want to focus on home loan repayment.
At every juncture, Sam would query, “why do you want to do that” and we would respond with answers about financial security. Finally Sam asked “what are your life goals that are pushing you to want financial security, what’s the end goal here?”
One of my favourite designers/podcasters Debbie Millman has her design students undertake an exercise where they write a full description of a day in their life, 10 years from now. It starts from when you wake up and details everything about what you do in that day, who you are with and where you are.
I love that stuff, so I have my ‘day’ 10 years from now written in a silver notebook at home. It describes the ‘dream life’ we want to create.
During our meeting I realised we’d never shared this with Sam. Previously we’d focused on goals that were more quantifiable; saving for an overseas holiday, working towards a house deposit.
It struck me how much harder we were making Sam’s job by keeping our lifestyle goals to ourselves.
Well, as you might imagine the remainder of the meeting was very exciting. We talked about our ideal life that we wanted to create. We bounced around ideas as to how our financial strategies can make the pipe dream a reality.
Six months on from that meeting, we are feeling like the dream is definitely an achievable reality. Not only is it exciting to have someone else take your life goals as seriously as you do, but our focus is sharper than ever.
When we get bogged down in the day to day financial decisions, Sam is now here to remind us “how will get this you closer to your ‘day’ 10 years from now?”
I wont lie, it can be bloody frightening sharing your greatest goals with others. But it can also be magic and empowering. The next time you think about your personal goals, also consider who best to share them with.
Share it with your adviser or coach. Letting others into the pipe dream may just add the right amount of magic to get you there sooner.
Want to discuss how you can create your ideal life? Contact us here.
