Do you have a goal-setting or visioning process for your life?
What comes to mind when you think of goal-setting? Is it something you tend to ascribe mainly to work or professional areas, or something mainly to be done during notable times like the New Year?
The truth is, we are always creating in each area of our life (whether consciously or not!) – so bringing strategy and intentionality to the process is the roadmap for a self-actualized life brimming with growth, new experiences, and fulfilled potential.
Goal-setting can be made creative and fun – taking a broad perspective on where you’re at, reflecting on where you want to be, then implementing the steps to bridge that gap. And the BEST part? Is setting up exciting goals, then living them out with your Tribe (and celebrating your wins, of course!)
The Goal-Setting Power of a Chapter
Curating a specific space and time period can be really helpful towards honing in on your goals, as it creates a clear time structure for that action to come to life
. Joining a chapter is essentially entering a monthlong space for transformation, if you so choose! It’s an opportunity to assess where your life is at before, during, and after – and set specific goals to track along the way. Four weeks is the perfect amount of time to set a goal, put it into action, and measure its progress.
Many of our members, such as Caroline Lupini, use their chapters as a chance to move forward in their personal and professional goals.
Here are Caroline's thoughts about goal-setting on chapter:
"I think Wifi Tribe is the best for focusing on something new and trying to improve in a specific way or a few ways over the course of a chapter. For the first chapter I did (Bolivia), I focused on just one goal which was to catch up on writing by writing at least one article per week day. Bolivia was a super productive chapter for me, so for my second chapter (Santa Teresa), I decided to set multiple goals. I went a little overboard and actually bit off a little more than I could chew that month with multiple professional and personal goals, so for my next chapter I’ll dial it back a bit.”
Having one solid goal per 28-day chapter is the perfect place to start – and for those feeling a bit more ambitious, try one personal and one professional goal!
Personal Goal-Setting
Personal goals span a huge range of life areas – you may be looking to improve your health and fitness, confidence or communication, learn a new language, cut out sugar, or meditate daily... or any other new habit or behavior which will benefit your personal life.
So how to choose an area to focus on first, whether it’s a month on chapter or a longer-term goal-setting period?
Personally, I love starting with the Wheel of Life – a simple yet powerful process to visually see your current state in the 12 areas of life balance. Each segment represents an area of your life (you can use the 12 categories given, or feel free to replace with any that feel more relevant for you!)
Download the Wheel of Life PDF (or create your own on a piece of paper!)
Next, ask yourself for each category (or "piece of the pie"):
- How fulfilled am I in this area of my life right now, on a scale of 0-10?
- On a scale of 0-10, how am I fulfilling my potential in this area?
Note: This is to assess your current state in each area – drop in to your intuition if need be to feel what that number is for right now.
Draw a line to indicate how “full” that category is – if "health" is a 5, for example, you’d connect the 5th dots so the segment is cut in half. Then, fill in the bottom part with color so you have a piece of the pie which is 50% colored in.
After going through all 12 categories, you’ll have a visual "pie" representation of where you are in this snapshot of your life.
Your filled-in Wheel of Life will look something like this!
Now, the idea is not to achieve a perfect 100% score in all areas! To be honest, that would probably be impossible. ? These are called the 12 Areas of Life Balance because of just that – it’s about balance (and awareness!)
Often, we don't consciously realize that we're feeling off because one area of our life is being neglected – so these lower areas are a great place to start setting personal goals to bring things back into a healthy balance.
Selecting Your Personal Goals
Most meaningful goals lie in one of three categories:
Experiences
Growth
Contribution
So when selecting your personal goals, think about questions related to these three areas, as well as the category of your life you’re working with from the Wheel.
By asking yourself the questions:
What experiences do I want to have in my life (and why?)
What are the ways I want to grow in my life?
How do I want to contribute to the world?
...you'll be well on the way to setting meaningful goals in each of your life areas.
These worksheets are a great place to start brainstorming your goals:
Professional Goal-Setting
Being on a chapter is an amazing opportunity to set professional goals, as you’re literally co-working and co-habitating with other remote workers for a month! Not only is it the perfect focused environment to nail your goals, but you’ll most likely inspire a group to join you.
Your professional goals will obviously depend on your particular area of work, but you can use a similar process to identify the area(s) that currently need a bit more attention.
Professional goals often use more quantitative metrics than personal – such as increased revenue, customers, # of articles written or pieces produced, etc. But keep in mind that while your professional goals may be a bit more “concrete” in terms of results, your progress spawns from your personal habits and areas of life balance that you worked on above. It’s all connected! ?
Mapping & Tracking Your Goals
When on chapter, it’s good to have a place to track your goals and how you’re doing with them, whether that be in a Google Doc, spreadsheet, or a journal.
Caroline loves to track her goals creatively:
I’m a pretty visual person and I like to-do lists, so I decided to buy a nice notebook with grid paper and set my goals for the month by identifying each square as the number of times I wanted to do that specific goal. For me, I think the sweet spot going forward will be to have one personal goal and one professional goal that I try to do 4 to 5 times per week.
If you use your time and energy on chapter well, you can achieve a LOT! There is a huge power in community to stay motivated and accountable – so when you identify goals that have intrinsic meaning for you, there's no limit to what you can create and cross off your goal-list!
How about you? Any favorite goal-setting techniques?
Drop a comment and let us know. 🙂
