Creating Goals for 2020

Goals can help you drive yourself, your ministry and your family further. With well-defined targets, everyone in your circles will know what to shoot for and how to get there. As a Christian illusionist team, we have goals for our ministry, our family lives, our spiritual lives, our education and much much more. With poorly defined goals, you will struggle to maintain equilibrium.

It’s like riding a bicycle: When you’re pedaling fast, it’s easy to stay up. But once you slow down in, that’s when things start to collapse.

Here’s how you can set your goals.

Start with Your Emotional Core Goal

When Michael Dell was asked what goals he set for himself, he began by answering from core metrics and market inefficiencies – then he stopped. He realized what really drove him wasn’t any of that.

It was the flagpole he saw at the top of a skyscraper when he was young. He decided then that he wanted a flagpole of his own. He wanted to have that kind of presence in the world.

He now has three.

Knowing your metric goals is important. But knowing your emotional core goal is what’s really going to push you to do what you need to do to succeed.

Setting Long-Term Goals

Project yourself 10 years into the future. What do you want to have accomplished? For some, it might be to secure retirement. For others, it might be to start a new business.

Then, work backward to figure out what you need to do today to make that happen. Set 5-year, 2-year, 1-year, and quarterly goals. That is one of the reasons we plan quarterly “Dream Days” to set up and review our progress.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely

Every goal (except the emotional ones) should match these five criteria. They should be specific and measurable, meaning they’re metric-based. They should be attainable and realistic, but still ambitious enough that you’re excited about them.

Finally, there should be a time deadline attached to hitting your targets. That’s what really lights a fire under your chair to get you up and moving.

Write What You’re Willing to Sacrifice

Write down what you’re willing to sacrifice to hit those goals. Often times growing means sacrificing things you enjoy in order to reach something new.

If you’re starting a second service, that could mean less face time with certain congregants. If you’re planning a vacation, that might mean not having other luxuries throughout the year.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was a big fan of programming. But there came a time when he had to step away from writing code so he could actually run the company. It was a tough choice, but a sacrifice he had to make to grow the company. You’ll have to make similar choices.

Doing this process every year will help you set goals that personally excite you, which you can use to rally everyone else involved.