Growth doesn’t come by accident. You must be intentional.

[This is my free gift to you. I hope it will help you in your journey. Blessings! ]

“Vision is like architecture, if you plan it with a pencil, you will hold it with steel.” –TD Jakes

WHAT DO YOU WANT IN LIFE? WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT? You can’t achieve what you have not defined.

A research was done that revealed the following: Over 95% of adults have never written down their life goals. The amazing bit of the research was that, out of the remaining 5% who had clear and specific goals, 95% of them achieved their goals.

In another study done in 1953 at Yale University, 3% of the graduating class had specific written goals for their lives. The other 97% had no goals. They were the YOLO guys—those who just accept life as it comes. In 1975—22 years later—researchers found that 3% of the graduates who wrote down their goals had accomplished more than the combined accomplishment of the other 97%. This should give you a chill!

Most people fail in life because they don’t know what they want. They have no clearly defined goals. All they have is a fantasy of general ideas and some vague hopes that God will someday spot-light them and success will be their portion. Unfortunately, hope alone is not a strategy and faith without action is dead. Without clear goals, a proper execution strategy and relentless massive action, you can hope your entire life and still stagnate in defeat.

Effective goal setting is the master-skill for success and it is what separates successful from unsuccessful people. It is what draws the line between peak performers and the average and below-average performers. This is the reason why only 5% of people who have the habit of consistently writing and re-writing down their goals succeed while the other 95% live a life of defeat. This is the reason why 3% of people accomplish more than the combined accomplishment of the other 97% of people.

If you are going for a journey, you start off by determining exactly where you are going—that is, your destination. It’s only by doing so that you will be able to figure out the “effective means” you will use to get to your destination. In the same way, life can be likened to a journey. The worst mistake most people do is going through life not knowing where they are going.

People who have goals are focused and they take full responsibility for their lives. They succeed because they know where they are going. On the other hand, people who have no goals lead aimless lives with no sense of direction. They are like a ship without radar in the open sea. Instead of taking charge of their lives, life happens to them! I believe, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” Don’t be the YOLO guy!

When I was in my early twenties, I was really struggling in life. I had just finished college and I couldn’t get a job even after putting so much effort to get one. With no job opportunities coming my way, I was so broke. I lived in a little tin-shack in which I spread my mattress on the floor. Not having even a single coin in my pocket, many times I would go hungry for days. A dozen times I remember walking for more than 25kilometers looking for casual jobs. I lacked even 30bob ($ 0.3) to pay bus-fare.

I hated my situation and like anyone who can relate to such experience, I desired a better life. Looking for answers, I read all the books I could find, attended all the seminars I could—mostly the free ones—but nothing much changed. In the seminars, many times I got short blasts of inspiration that never lasted! Time and again, I remember telling myself, “From today, life will change for me. I’m starting afresh!” Well, you guessed it. That too didn’t last. After just a short while, the inspiration would fade-off and then it was back to the status quo, playing the victim card and grumbling about how life is unfair!

“What is wrong with me? Why are things not working out even after I try so hard?”

A remarkable turn-around in my life began when I realized the power of clarity. The universe has plenty of resources and opportunities for each and every one of us. However, we don’t get what we desire because we are simply not clear about what we really want. If you are clear on what you want, the universe will respond with clarity. This realization put a figure on the specific reason for my being stuck in a life of defeat and struggle. You see, like most people, I had many desires, dreams, and ideas in my head but I was never fully committed to any. With a lack of clarity, I wanted to do everything that flushed in my head. The outcome? Many ideas actually distracted me. I could work on one idea for one week and when there was no visible result, I would jump onto another one the following week. I had fleeting interests and it never occurred to me to clearly define what I really wanted and stick to it.

After that life-transforming lesson, I figured that for my life to have meaning and a sense of direction, I needed to live for something. Something I can clearly define, write down, and commit my whole life to.

The fact is that you can have great dreams and desires but unless you capture them from the air and crystalize them on paper, they are just wishes. And what are wishes if not a pretty good recipe for disappointments? Whenever I get an opportunity to train on goal setting, I use the analogy of a bird to explain the importance of clearly defining and writing down your goals. Unwritten goals and dreams are like birds that visit your backyard. Unless you capture them and put them in your cage, you can’t claim that they belong to you. Watching them in your backyard might make you happy but you don’t really own them? They’ll fly away any time they want to.

Back to my story. I was determined to put the lesson into action. With a strong conviction in my heart that my life was about to change, I went to the store and bought a small goal setting note-book.

The following two days I checked myself in a solitary retreat, far away from people, just to have a meeting with myself. Carried with me was just a backpack in which I had a bottle of water, a pen, a diary, and a goal-setting notebook. To avoid distraction, I didn’t even carry my phone.

During the two-days solitary retreat, I clearly defined my life purpose. I specified what I want to live for. I crafted my vision and mission for my family, my career and my relationships. I went ahead to write down all my goals. For the first time in two decades of my life, I truly ‘captured’ the dreams and desires that had been loitering in my head. I clearly outlined my personal development goals including career goals, health goals, financial goals, spiritual goals, and relationship goals. I also wrote the things I desired and the contribution I want to make to humanity. I made sure to include goals in all these areas because I always desired to have an all-round abundant-life.

Out of the long list resulting from the different categories of my goals, I chose key goals that I could accomplish within twelve months. I also did something which I believe was very instrumental in turning my life around. Every morning, upon waking up, I would re-rewrite my goals and review them in the evening before going to bed. By taking some time to re-write my goals every single morning and reviewing them before going to bed, I become goal-oriented and a totally different person. I became more driven and disciplined. With a clear sense of purpose, I began waking up excited and enthusiastic about life. From playing the victim card and grumbling about how unfair life is, my perspective changed and I began seeing every day as a precious gift and an opportunity to offer my contribution to the world.

A few years later, the transformation in my life is unbelievable! Despite the tremendous success I have experienced, I haven’t stopped dreaming. I still write and re-write my goals every single day. Every morning I’m excited because there is something definite I’m working towards. This gives me a reason to jump out of bed! I’ll tell you something I’ve come to learn. Most people are not really lazy. They lack a strong WHY, something that will make them jump out of bed!

WITHOUT A DEADLINE, PROCRASTINATION IS INEVITABLE.

Having your goals clearly and specifically written down is the first step. I learned a second and equally important step. The step is, introducing deadlines to your goals.
At this point, I wish to inform you that “a goal without a deadline is nothing but a wish.” Do you remember the birds’ analogy I shared earlier? Well. Having no deadline to your goals is like capturing “the bird”, putting it in your cage, but forgetting to seal the cage! Tell me, what will happen if you do that? Definitely, the bird will fly away and you’ll find an empty cage!
In as much as having a goal is of stupendous importance, if you lack a deadline, you’re doomed for mere wishes that only result in disappointments.

An open-ended goal doesn’t drive action! There is something about deadlines that makes men move and without a deadline, procrastination is inevitable. Maybe I should define the term procrastination for you. Based on what procrastination has done for me and a countless number of the sons and daughters of the soil, I define it as the heinous enemy that strangles people’s dreams.

You must have heard people who always talk along the lines of “someday I’ll…” They say things like: “When I finish college I’ll… When I get a job I’ll… When I get married I’ll… When my children grow up I’ll… When I retire from my very demanding job I’ll…” They wait for that “perfect time” which never comes. Procrastination—that heinous enemy—finally rules over their lives and regret become their new song. The “someday” they fantasized about becomes “never.”

CHUNKING

Having a deadline on your goals will also enable you to break down the goals into smaller manageable chunks. This is of profound importance. Without breaking your goals into small bits, they will be overwhelming and you will not be able to accomplish them. Chunking is all about deconstructing your goals and breaking them down into smaller chunks—yearly, monthly, weekly and daily milestones.

How do you eat an elephant? The answer is simple: one piece at a time. Surprisingly for most people, when it comes to action, that is not always the case. They want to trap the elephant and swallow him wholly! This mission becomes overwhelming. Unable to tackle the challenge, they then begin to procrastinate and finally give up on the elephant. They then live a life of regret for failing to achieve what they knew was possible for them!

Think of this: If you are a student and your goal is to achieve excellent performance in your final year of high school or college, you will have to break down your goal into small manageable chunks. Your effort to achieve excellent performance in your final exam must be distributed throughout your course of study. If your course takes 4years, your effort must be distributed to each of the four years. You can’t study in the last month of the last year and expect to excel.

WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE FAIL TO SET GOALS?

If goal setting is the lifeblood of all personal achievement, why is it that the majority of people don’t set goals? Before I take you through the practical step by step goal setting process, let’s briefly look at the four main reasons why most people don’t set goals. I believe awareness is the first step of any significant transformation:

• First of all, most people don’t set goals because they simply don’t know how to set effective goals. For these people, what they call goals are vague wishes which only leads to disappointments.

• Secondly, a great number of people don’t set goals because they don’t really understand the value of goal setting. Until you know the value of something, you will not treasure it.

• Thirdly, there is this category of people who don’t set their goals because they’ve become too familiar with the subject of goal setting that they take it casually. No wonder they are casualties! For a very long time, I was in this category. I had heard about goal setting so much that the topic became boring to me. Ironically, I never applied what I took to be so obvious! Every time someone would talk about goals, my inflated ego would begin screaming in my head and I would switch off, dismissing everything with the following phrases running in my head: “I’ve learned that already. Don’t you have something new?”

  In retrospect, I’ve found that there is a great danger with familiarity. When we become too familiar with things, we tend to take them for granted. As a result, we fail to benefit from the gifts such things present to us. The ancient aphorism counsels, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Perhaps the preceding statement will open our eyes to see the hidden treasure in the lessons we take for granted: What matters in life is not how much you know but what you do with what you know to make a difference.

• Fourthly, most people don’t set their goals because they are too busy to have quiet time to reflect on their life, hence their life runs on autopilot. It is disturbing to me that so many people today have been lured to think that activities mean progress. For this reason, they have allowed work-overload and frenzy-activities to deny them the privilege of connecting with their true selves.

  Let me ask you: When was the last time you slowed down, switched off everything, and just had a meeting with yourself? When was the last time you slowed down to just reflect and think about your life? Taking time to think and reflect on how you are living is the most important thing you can do. Otherwise, what is the point of doing so efficient what needs not to be done at all? What is the point of climbing a mountain only to realize you climbed the wrong mountain? The best way to increase your productivity is actually to slow down, examine your life and strategize based on your most important goals. In the words of the ancient Greek Philosopher, Socrates, “Unexamined life is not worth living.”
  
  Let me close this section with the words of Matthew Kelly, the Author of The Rythm of Life: “On the one hand, we all want to be happy. On the other hand, we all know the things that make us happy. But we don’t do those things. Why? Simple. We are too busy. Too busy doing what? Too busy trying to be happy. This is the paradox of happiness that has bewitched our age.”
  

GOAL SETTING EXERCISE

This is the most important section as it involves putting all we have learned into action. You see, ideas—no matter how breathtaking they are—are useless if you don’t act on them. One of the greatest lessons I learned in my journey is that effective people never leave the sight of a great idea without doing something no matter how trivial. I would argue that the difference between those who pursue growth and experience real transformation and those who attend seminars and read numerous great books but remain the same is ACTION.

With that said, I invite you to this life-transforming exercise. Your life is about to change and change forever! So, let’s roll!

To make sure you gate the maximum benefit from the entire exercise, create a block of time away from any form of distraction.

Items you will need for the goal-setting exercise:
⦁ A goal writing notebook or a diary specifically for writing goals.
⦁ A vision board or a vision book (the book can be A4 or any size of your choice)
⦁ A pen/ pencil.

In my Life Transformation Program, when leading my students through the goal-setting process, I usually advise them to start with their ultimate goal in life which should stem from and be driven by purpose. Your purpose is the WHY for being and doing what you’re doing.

The average person has never discovered their big “WHY” in life. To quote John Mason, the author of The Enemy Called Average, “The average person’s life consists of twenty years of having parents asking where he is going; forty years of having a spouse asking the same question; and at the end, mourners wondering about the same thing!”

Starting with your ultimate goal is critical. It offers you a solid foundation and a strong “WHY”. This will help you in two main ways:

• Starting with a strong “WHY” will guard you against having a hollow-victory. A hollow-victory is one that, though you are seemingly successful on the outside, you’re broken on then inside. And nothing is worse than nursing a wound that bleeds from the inside. The harder you try to smile and show the world that you are “happy” and “okay”, the more the sting that pierces on the inside. I’m sure you will agree with me that it will be of no benefit to be seemingly successful among your peers, or anyone for that matter, and yet have an inner void because you got it wrong with your spouse, children or those closest to you. Your happiness will always be found in the smiles of those you love.

  True victory on the outside begins with victory on the inside. And the only way to win both on the inner and the outer world is to start with a strong foundation. From the strong foundation will come strong values which should be the basis of your life-goals. When your life-goals are congruent with your deepest values, you experience inner peace and you become a true winner!

• As you commit yourself to pursue your life-goals, the reality is that the journey won’t be a walk in the park. Though the rewards are priceless, the journey is filled with ups and downs. However, starting with a strong “WHY” will give you the reason and the stamina to pick yourself up whenever you are knocked down in the pursuit of your life-goals. Not only that, a strong “WHY” will develop the burning desire and endurance which will serve as fuel to keep you going through the toughest moment. A strong “WHY” makes every form of trial and hardship bearable!

With the above thoroughly explained, the first thing I usually ask my students is to answer the following two questions. Please take some time to answer them as well:

⦁ What do you want to be remembered for?

……………………………………………………. 

⦁ What impact do you want to have with your life?

…………………………………………………….
[Surely, you don’t want your epitaph to read: “Here lies a man who lived so safe and dared nothing.” That will be your life’s greatest tragedy, and to echo the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “If a man or a woman hasn’t found something to die for, he isn’t fit to live.”]

After fully answering the two questions, I now challenge you to take your time to write down your vision and mission statements in different areas of your life. To help you to smoothly follow through the process, let me briefly define the terms vision and mission.

In simple terms, a vision is a statement answering the question, “Where do you want to be?” and a mission is a statement answering the question, “How are you going to get there?” In other words, the vision is the destination, while the mission is the journey.

Write down your vision and mission statements in the following three areas: Your life, family and career. (Please add any other area of great importance to you.) As you write, here is a very important point to keep in mind: Do not concern yourself with your current circumstance. Connect to your true nature—your soul, and just focus on your ideal life, ideal family and ideal career life. Go on and finish the process.

Life: 
Vision ……………………………………………….

Mission ……………………………………………….

Family:
Vision……………………………………………………

Mission…………………………………………………

Career:
Vision……………………………………………………

Mission…………………………………………………

At this point, you might also consider writing down your top values. As an example, let me share with you seven of my top values. I know this might leave you with the impression that I’m that “perfect” kind of a guy. No. I’m not perfect but work in progress. It is important to mention that my values are ideals I strive for and beat myself to live by. That means even though I’m not perfect, like the shining North-star, these values guide me towards the light and help me to correct course whenever I veer off.

Here are the values I live by. Before making any decision, I usually weigh it against the following:

⦁ I will honor God.
⦁ I will love and cherish my wife and children.
⦁ I will sincerely and genuinely love people.
⦁ I will commit myself to excellence.
⦁ I will live a life of absolute integrity.
⦁ I will be a reliable and responsible person.
⦁ I will commit myself to growth and contribution.

You can have your values on a laminated card which you can be carrying in your wallet or purse. Only a few treasures can be equated to this.

Now, we have set a strong foundation upon which to build our goals. Let’s go through the step by step process of goal setting.

STEP ONE:

Quick instructions:

• The biggest single obstacle to goal setting is “self-limiting beliefs.” When it comes to goal setting, most people think small therefore limit themselves on what they can achieve. Apart from the feeling of insignificance playing a big role in reinforcing self-imposed limitations, self-limiting beliefs are also propagated by misleading advice such as, “Be realistic.” Most people are advised to set “realistic” goals so that they don’t become disappointed if they fall short.

  First, the phrase—“be realistic” makes me sick. What it suggests is that you should set your goals based on other people’s expectations and what they think is possible for you. Tell me, will you ever have control over your life living based on other people’s expectations? Again, what is better? Falling short of a bigger goal, or falling short of a small stifling goal? Nothing can be further from the truth. You will achieve more and be happier falling short of a bigger goal than you will be falling short of small stifling goals.

  I challenge you to write big goals. In fact, if you so wish, be crazy and write down goals that are 10 times bigger than what you think is possible and then attack them with relentless massive action. I will tell you, just as your potential is unlimited, there is no shortage of success. Don’t be limited by your current circumstance or people’s expectations. Also, don’t listen to the negative voices in your head. Your mind is too rational and if you listen to it long enough, it will talk you out of what you know is possible for you by giving you all the reasons why it is impossible. Instead, tune and listen to your true nature—your spirit.

• Write all your goals starting with first-person pronoun—“I”. By so doing, they become part of you. You own them both consciously and subconsciously.
• Write your goals in the present tense as though they have already manifested. For example, instead of saying, “I will earn Ksh 6,000,000 by 31st December year X”, say, “I earn Ksh 6,000,000 by 31st December year X.” By writing your goals in the present tense, your subconscious mind accepts them as commands of things that have already occurred. This activates the law of attraction which will intern bring to you people and opportunities of all kinds to help you achieve your goals and dreams. In mark 14:24, Jesus said perhaps one of the most powerful statements, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received, and it will be yours.”
• Write your goals in a positive sense. For example, if you are hooked up in addictions such as smoking or alcoholism and your goal is to break the addiction, instead of saying, “I will quit smoking”, say, “I don’t smoke, or I am a non-smoker.” Instead of saying, “I will quit drinking.” say “I am not a drunkard.” Just changing the wording makes a tremendous difference. In the first case, the person identifies themselves as an addict while in the second case the person identifies themselves as someone free from addiction. It is easier to break an addition if you don’t identify yourself as an addict. See yourself not as you are, but as you would like to be. In other words, focus on where you are heading not where you are from. Those are two different worlds that requires totally different mindsets.

Following the instructions given above, now write the goals in three main categories. The reason you should focus on all these categories is to make sure you have holistic success and experience true wealth and abundance.

• The first category is your Personal Development Goals. These include your spiritual goals, career goals, health goals, and relationship goals. Write as many goals as possible in each of these sub-categories.

• The second category is financial goals and the goals on material things you desire to have. Write all your desires without reservation. The reason I say “write all your desires without reservation” is because most people feel guilty to ask for what they want, especially when it comes to money and material things. They are conditioned to think that asking for these things is being greedy. Some erroneously believe that you can’t be rich and spiritual. Such people are not informed about the spiritual principles for handling money and material riches.

• The third category is goals on the contribution you want to give to humanity. These can be goals like volunteering or giving financial support to charity drives; supporting a child from a poor background to go to school; cooking and taking food to a street family; donating blood, and so on. The greatest joy and satisfaction in life comes in contributing to the lives of others.

STEP TWO

Remember we said a goal without a deadline is nothing but a wish and that wishes are a good recipe for disappointments. Put timelines to all the goals you wrote in STEP ONE above. An easy way to do this is to write numbers beside each of the goals representing the timeline. For example, you can use 1 for a one-year goal; 2 for two years goal; 7 for seven years goal; 15 for fifteen years goal; and so on.

STEP THREE

You will not achieve all the goals in one run. You need to prioritize and decide what you can do first and what you can do later. From the long list of goals in the three main categories above, pick at least 6 goals that you can accomplish within 12months from now. Re-write these goals on a clean page.

STEP FOUR

Execution: This is where the rubber meets the road. Most people are lazy to follow this process, no wonder they have ineffective goals. The first thing to do in this step is to deconstruct and dissect each of the goals you wrote in STEP 3 above. Have your goals broken down into small manageable chunks of monthly, weekly and daily goals.

STEP FIVE

Focus, discipline, resilience, and consistency are the keywords here. Do something EVERY SINGLE DAY that will move you at least one step closer to accomplishing your most important goals.

You remember the analogy I gave you earlier about eating an elephant? Use that very strategy to triumph over your goals. Have your vision and the big goals to motivate you but remember it’s the daily-little-steps that get you there. Epic life is not built by what we do once in a while, it is built by what we consistently do.

Another key is this: For whatever tasks you commit yourself to accomplish in any given day, discipline yourself to follow through. Focus single-mindedly on one task at a time until it is 100% complete. You see, all success comes not from starting tasks, but completing tasks.

Execution is tough and most people will dread doing the things that actually move the needle. Instead, they’ll busy themselves with menial tasks or even invent tasks in order to avoid doing the uncomfortable tasks which are often the most important ones. To conquer this battle, refuse the temptation to jump to other low-value-tasks that seem easy, leaving the most important task partially done. Again, low-value tasks—the tasks that we are often tempted to clear first—have a strange tendency to expand, swallowing the precious time that can be used on high priority tasks.

To help you in execution and getting things done, let me share with you something that greatly helped me in my journey, which is reciting my Goals Integrity Pledge. I learned about Goals Integrity Pledge from Gary Ryan Blair, famously known as the goals guy.

The Goals Integrity Pledge has 3 pledges:

1. If you make a commitment, you honor it.
2. If you make a promise, you keep it.
3. If you set a goal, you achieve it.

Every day recite the pledge to help you follow through what you say you will do. 

 

STEP SIX

Evaluation: Measure progress. From the outcome, improve where necessary and reward yourself for good results. If you deserve, reward yourself time to play or a good treat. Whereas I push for a solid work ethic, I also know that “All work and no play made Jack a dull boy.” …especially if Jack deserves it!

STEP SEVEN

Whereas the average people are very passive in their approach to life, successful people take charge of their lives. Instead of just letting life happen to them, they happen to life. The way they do this is by conditioning themselves to be goal-oriented. They are clear about what they want, and every time they are thinking about their goals.

This step involves making re-writing and reviewing your goals a DAILY ROUTINE. Every single morning when you wake up, take some time to re-write your most important goals.
At night, before going to bed, review these goals and as you do so, ask yourself these two questions:

• What steps have I taken today that have moved me at least one step closer to my goals?
• What can I do better tomorrow?

Make this process your sacred routine. Though the process of DAILY re-writing and reviewing your goals will take you less than 5minutes, the reward is priceless!

Repeat this process over and over until it becomes a habit. By re-writing your goals every morning and reviewing them before going to bed, you internalize them and they drop into your subconscious mind. Once something is in your subconscious mind, it becomes part of you. Without even thinking about the goals, you’ll find yourself naturally gravitating towards them. That’s what it means to be a goal-oriented person. 

Vision board/ Vision book

Congratulation on coming this far. Having followed through all the above steps, you can now go a step further to make a “vision board” or “a vision book.” A vision board or a vision book is a board or a book where you stick the pictures of your goals. The aim is to offer a visual representation of your goals. Just as the architectural plan comes before a house is built, a vision board will serve as a template or a blueprint of the kind of life you are pursuing. It’s a constant reminder of the rewards that await you when you finally achieve your goals.

On your vision board/ vision book, stick the photos of all that you desire to experience, accomplish or own:

• If your goal is to build a school in a given community, find the pictures of the school you envision and stick them on your vision board.
  
• If your goal is to start a business, stick pictures of the office with all the furniture and everything else you envision.
  
• Include the pictures of the people you model; the people you want to meet someday and perhaps share the stage.
  
• If your dream is to have a wonderful family, find pictures of the wonderful families and stick them as well.
  
• If your goal is to own a beautiful house, find pictures of the house you envision and stick them there.
  
• If your goal is to be a published author, design/have someone design the cover of your book and stick it in your vision board/book as well. Claim the book before you even write the first paragraph. There is nothing as powerful as having a visual representation of what you are striving to achieve.

Do this for all your goals in all categories. Let it be an ongoing process. You can trace these photos from used magazines, periodicals or newspapers. You can also find photos on the internet. Download and have them printed.

Follow this procedure and you’ll be amazed at the accomplishment you will make. From my experience, few things are as powerful as having a visual representation of the goals you are working toward. Perhaps this power lies in the inability of our brains to differentiate between realities and imagination. Every time you look at the pictures in your vision board, your dream rekindles, you become alive, and you get a new fire to pursue your goals. This reinforces your focus, discipline, resilience, and consistency. Before you know it, you’ll be living your dream.

All the best, and please share this with someone 🙂

Much love + Respect,
James Serengia