Goal Stetting: My Story

My Story
I was first introduced to goal setting in March 2004. At the time I was working in a sales job, barely scraping together enough commission to earn £15k a year. I was living in a one room bed-sit, hundreds of miles away from my wife. Our house, which I only got back to some weekends, was small - barely big enough for the two of us let alone for a family that we had been trying for years to start. And I had a beaten up car that was repeatedly broken into because the bed-sit was in such a poor part of town.

Worse still I thought I was doing OK.

A friend of mine recommended I try a tape set, part of which included a section on goal setting. I listened to what was said and with a good deal of scepticism humoured my friend (and the speaker on the tapes) and sat down to write out a series of goals.

Bearing in mind my situation I wrote down the following goals to accomplish in 2004: -

• I want to earn £30k
• I want a BMW z4
• I want to be able to live with my wife on a daily basis again
• I want to start a family
• I want to buy a new house with enough space to be comfortable

Some of you will be looking at those goals and be thinking, “outrageous how can you go from your current situation to achieve these goals in just one year!” Well all the advice I had received about goal setting was think big goals. But what I find interesting looking back on things a year later is what I have actually accomplished over that year: -

• My current salaried income is over £50k
• I didn’t get a BMW z4 – I decided to get a more practical 5 series sport (about £5k more than the z4)
• I now live back with my wife in a house that is about twice as big as the old one in a better area
• We had our first child in September 2005

For every goal I set, I met or exceed the benchmark. Not only that but, with the exception of our first child they were all achieved in about half the time I had set myself.

Far fetched? It may seem so for those not familiar with the power of goal setting, but to those who know and use its power these kind of results are commonplace.

Close friends and relatives have been astounded by the changes in me over the last year. They like to put it down to luck – being in the right place at the right time.

Living by a code of conduct

Living by a code of conduct.

The other day I was at the office when a call got put through to my desk. It was a call from one of our suppliers – a girl who had been chasing me for a couple of weeks about a new feature in their software. Frankly I had no interest in the new feature and was ready to make another excuse not to take the call.

But then I thought to myself “Hang on, you make sales calls for a living. How would it make you feel if this happened to you?” And then I remembered something from the past about a code of conduct I created for myself. One of the primary points was: -

· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day

If I didn’t take this call would I be living by my code of conduct? No is the answer – so I took the call.

Another point on the code of conduct was: -

· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity

So I have here a girl chasing me about a feature of the software I wasn’t really interested in. “How can I make her laugh so hard it makes her whole afternoon?” I won’t go into the details but lets just say that my willingness to be playful and ability to slip ‘double entendres’ into almost any sentence – made her day! Even though she didn’t come away with the result she wanted she thanked me for the enjoyable conversation. And it brightened up my day too, I had fun, I felt alive! And I went back to the task I was doing with renewed vigour.

But it got me thinking about my code of conduct again. For me the code of conduct defines you as a person. It sets how you will act or your default behaviour for situations and can help you enormously when making decisions. I also find it useful to focus on when you in difficult or tiresome situations.

My code of conduct is as follows: -

· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity

· Always ask the questions; Where can I add value? And How can I add value

· Smile at anyone who makes eye contact with you

· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day

· Never waste a moment

· Never be afraid to ask a question

· Question everything

· Try to think out of the box

· Make every day a school day

It’s a simple task that should take less than an hour, but here’s the kicker – EVERONE HAS ALREADY DONE THIS AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL.

By taking the time to look at your code that you have and consciously focusing on whether the code is helping you or hindering you, you can take out the points that don’t work for you and install new points that will help you.

From now on I will be looking at my code of conduct every morning before I start the day. And living by it.

So, take the time out to create your own code of conduct and if you live by yours I can promise you, you will feel alive too.