How to hone in on what you want

How to hone in on what you want

“When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it.”

— Jim Rohn

I was reading a short article on Ray Dalio the other day on the five steps that he believes are the keys to success. It's a short article summarised from his 600 page biography. Who is Ray Dalio you ask? Well, he is one of the previous generation of entrepreneurs who made their money from doing things differently in the money market. Regardless of what one thinks of that generation of entrepreneurs (think the movie "Wall Street" and the famous line "greed is good"), one can't argue with their success. You can read the article yourself here if you're interested: 5 Step Formula to Success.

But before I got too excited, I got stuck on Step 1... and the bad news is, all the other steps depend on you getting Step 1 right. After much consideration, I am willing to bet $100, that almost all of you, despite how badly you want to improve, and how much money you have spent on self improvement books or courses, none of you reading this blog have actually done Step 1 or done it to a level that would truly benefit you.

So what is Step 1 and why is it so important?

As Ray Dalio puts it, Step 1 of the 5 step plan to success is:

Hone in on what you want - "Step one is to know your goals and run after them," Dalio says. "What is best for you depends on your nature, so you need to really understand yourself and know what you want to achieve in life."

Why is Step 1 so important? Because if you don't know what you want, then how do you know what to aim for? How do you know what actions to take to progress you towards that goal? Most importantly, how do you know whether you've been successful or not?

I know what you're thinking right now! You're thinking that you do know what you want. You want to break down all the introvert limitations. You want to break down the negative thinking and self doubt that you have. You want other people to see you differently and see you as this self confident person, backed up by achievements but is not an office jerk.

But that's not Step 1 at all. That's just some high level blurry image of what you want. It gives you a rough direction, which is definitely a positive, but it's not a strong and clear enough image of what you actually want. If the end state is not clear enough, then it's not going to generate the level of desire needed for you to pursue it with all your focus and energy. It's a blurry image that gives you an excuse to say "bah... I'll work on self improvement tomorrow." And as I've said in previous blog posts, you will get to a point where there is no more "tomorrows". 

So what does a good enough Step 1 look like? I'll admit, when I first thought about it, I had no idea. No idea at all. Do I pick a movie character I look up to and say I want to be like them? How do I go about getting enough detail to establish a clear enough image of what I want? 

Well, this is where reading a lot of books helped. In Tony Robbins book "Awaken the Giant Within" there is an in-depth and precise exercise to help you establish your goals. I know there's some controversy about his recent comments on #metoo. But let's put aside that for now and focus on the exercise that will help you formulate what you want.

I don't know what the copyright rules are but I'm going to share them here with you unless Tony Robbins himself emails me and tells me to take this blog post down. Hey!!! If one day I get such an email, it actually means he's reading my blog... and that can't ever be a bad thing right.

Below, I've summarised the steps. I can't scientifically say that I've followed it 100% but I can definitely say that it's made a difference. The aim of the exercise is to elicit from you all the details of what you'd like to improve, and then establish the priority improvements for the next 12 months. Once you've achieved the first set of improvements, you can review and establish the next set and so on. Look at the goals on a daily basis (I look at them twice a day) to remind yourself of what you're wanting to achieve and most importantly, why you want to achieve it.

So here are the steps. Be warned, I thought I'd get through this quickly but it took almost 90 minutes of uninterrupted focus and attention to arrive at the list below.

• Establish your personal development goals. List all the things that you'd like to learn, the skills you'd like to master in your lifetime, the character traits you'd like to develop (this will take a while), what kind of friends you'd like to have, what kind of physical body/appearance you'd like to have, languages you'd like to study, etc. 
• Once you've completed this list, give each goal a deadline of when you'd like to complete them in terms of 1 year, 2 year, 3 year etc. I recommend not going beyond 3 years. It becomes too imaginary and gives you an excuse.
• Then, select the single most important goal with the 1 year timeframe. Just pick one. Once you've picked this goal, think about it for a long time and write down why this goal is important to you. This is the most important step. If you can't articulate a strong enough why, the goal won't generate enough of a desire for you to take action.
• Finally, review this goal and the "why" over and over again.
• Make sure that each day you review this goal. Close your eyes and feel what it's like when you've achieved this goal. What you'll find is that after about a week of doing this exercise, potential opportunities that come up during the day that help you get to this goal become easier to spot. All you need to do is then take the actions, which will also become apparent. And you'll see that it won't be "massive action" you need to take but simple, small actions that are just slightly out of your comfort zone but not impossible to take.

Once you're comfortable with the above steps, you can then repeat the step for any other category of goals; Career Goals, Adventure Goals, etc. 

So there you have it. A guide to help you establish Step 1 of your self improvement journey. Remember, getting a strong, clear, and firm image of what your new and improved self will look like is critical. Because a clear image will generate in you a strong commitment to improve, while a blurry image will give you nothing more than a nice fuzzy feeling. If you've been on the self improvement journey for a while and just realised that your end state is unclear, then do Step 1 now. It's never too late to redefine the best version of yourself.

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Blog Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash