We practice goal setting all the time in business settings. If you’re an employee you usually receive your goals every year or every six months, which would align with the strategic goals of the company.  At the end of the semester, you review your achievements with your boss against the defined goals, you discuss what worked, what didn’t, and why.  

However, we usually coast through our personal lives, letting things happen to us and reacting as necessary. We are not charting our own paths to where we want to go. We are walking pre-defined paths for us. That’s why our days and years look a lot like each other. We are not living goal-oriented lives, we are not living on purpose.  This gap in goal setting between our work life and personal life was an insight that clicked for me in a conversation with a business leader and a mentor I’m lucky to have met called Iman Mutlaq. I’ll be always grateful for helping me notice this.  

It’s true, many of us set new year’s resolutions, but resolutions without a plan are not goals, they are only hopes and aspirations, and that’s why they fail by mid-February.  

Lucky for you, I have good news. Goal setting can be done anytime. You can do it at the beginning of each year, on your birthday, every month,  every quarter, or whenever you decide to pursue something new. As Lara Casey always says: “There is nothing magical about  January 1^st“.  

In this series, I will share with you what I have learned about goal setting from my favorite authors on the subject Michael Hyatt and Lara Casey. 

This Post is part 1 of 4.  

Goal Setting Starts in the Past.  

Your past has only one value, learning from it. Reviewing your past will help you design the right goals for yourself. If you start goal setting by reviewing the past you’re more likely to set meaningful goals that you will invest time and effort to achieve. 

First: Do a Life Audit 

Our lives are multi-faceted as Michael Hyatt asserts. Our lives are not just our careers or health or families. These life domains are all connected. When we’re not doing well in one domain of our life we can feel it impacting the satisfaction we have in other areas. 

We start the life audit by rating the key life areas on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 means you are not satisfied and want to see a big change there and 10 means you’re happy with how you’re showing up in this domain. While at it, write a few words about the reason you selected the score for each domain. State facts and how you feel, honesty is key here because the opportunity for improvement starts taking shape now, the lowest scores indicate the bigger opportunity to make a change.  

Life domains are differently grouped depending on the writer, you can add categories or remove those that don’t apply to you. Feel free to make your own life categories that work for your unique life. 

The categories I recommend are: 

• Health: How you feel about your body. 
• Mental/Emotional: How you feel about your psychological well-being. 
• Relationships: How you feel about your relationship to: 
  • Spouse/Significant other 
  • Friends
  • Family
• Finances: Your personal or family’s financial situation 
• Work: Your job, your 9-5, and side projects.  
• Spiritual Growth: Your connection to God. 
• Learning: Your educational development. 
• Personal Environment: Your home and work environment.  
• Fun & Recreation: Your hobbies, playtime, relaxation, and adventure experiences.  
• Service & Contribution: how you serve the world/volunteering. 

You can also take an assessment I really like by Michael Hyatt to assess how you are generally doing in life’s different domains by answering a series of helpful questions. Make sure to save your answers so you can go back to them after a while. I guarantee you will see improvements after you commit to setting goals in areas where your satisfaction was the lowest.  

Second: Evaluate your past. 

Select how far you’d like to go in your past, 6 months, one year, 3 years? Answer accordingly.  

I assumed you want to go back one year and wrote the tips accordingly: 

• Start with the positive: While our human tendency is to remember the negative first, it is recommended to start with the good. This will help us have the energy to complete the past exercise. Write a list of the wonderful things that happened to you. What are you most proud of? What worked well last year? A few ways to remember:
  •  You can consult your family and friends to remind you of your highlights 
  • You can check your social media posts to remember  
  • You can go through your camera roll. 
  • You can check your calendar or planner. 
  • You can check your goals from last time, and celebrate what’s done. 
  • You can check your past financial statements, this will remind you of your priorities and events. 

• Name the challenges: Write a list answering questions like what did not work this past year? What disappointments or regrets did you experience? What goals did you want to achieve but did not? What were some blocks you faced? What achievements did you want to be acknowledged for but were not? It is hard to write our answers here. But power through it. This list will guide your focus when you set your goals, your challenges are your biggest opportunities for improvement.  
• Distill the lessons: What did the positive and the negative from the past year teach you? Make them into short sentences of wisdom that you can repeat over and over to yourself.  

Third:  State what you are grateful for. 

• Gratitude time: Write the names of people who helped you during this past year. Find a way to thank them for specific things they did for you or ways they stood by you. Feeling gratitude is one thing, expressing it to those who caused it is an another level. They will be so surprised, and you are going to make someone’s day.  

Bonus Step 

• Identify your hidden opportunity. The opportunity principle states that feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment are strongest where the chances for corrective action are clearest. Consider your setbacks this past year, and brainstorm how they might point you toward your next opportunity.  

Now you are ready to move on to the next step of goal setting which is: dreaming about the future. 

New post coming up soon. 

I’m deeply grateful to Michael Hyatt and Lara Casey for all that they taught me about Goal Setting that I have shared in this blog post.  

You can listen to this blog post in Arabic through episode 7 of my podcast: