If any of you are following our tweets or Facebook posts, you’ll already know that I registered for a course with one of my all time favourite authors and speakers; Robin Sharma.  This course is designed to get you out of your own way so you can succeed at whatever goals you desire to achieve.  I’ve taken several courses such as this in the past and I contemplated for weeks about even signing up. I wasn’t convinced that this course was going to teach me anything I didn’t already know. In the end I decided to enrol because I have a lot of big work related goals this year that I really need to achieve and figured Robin would help keep me on track. The course has videos, podcasts, tutorials and conference calls.  Once a month I am going to write about what I’ve learned, what I’ve implemented and what I’m struggling with in an effort to share with you as well as have you hold me accountable for my progress.

Our first conference call was last week.  It was just under an hour and Robin interacted with us by answering our questions and concerns throughout the call.  As this was our first call, a lot of it was fairly introductory with respect to setting the tone for the course, instructions on how to get the most out of it as well as bringing to the forefront some mental obstacles we most likely will encounter.  Robin tied all of these things into our first lesson ~ New Science of Goal Achievement.  In a nutshell, we learned how science plays a role in both failing and achieving goals and the steps we can take to use this scientific knowledge to create behaviours and habits that will lead to success.  I have included the steps below but didn’t tie it into the science discussion as that is fairly involved. If you would like to know more about that part, let me know.

1. Catapult forward to the end of 2013. If everything went according to plan, what would your life (work, personal, financial, health, spiritual…whatever area(s) you want to focus on most) look like?
2. What 5 (not 4 not 6) goals/changes do you need to accomplish to reach your end of year vision? Write them down.
3. Break those 5 things down into 10 smaller quarterly goals. Write them down.
4. Break the quarterly goals down into smaller weekly goals. Write them down. This yearly plan needs to fit on one page. Forces you to keep things precise and simple.
5. Do 5 small steps every day that will move you towards reaching your weekly goal(s).
6. Plan your week every Sunday (should take about an hour). Must be written down.
7. Review your previous week’s plan noting what victories you had and what actions you encountered obstacles with. Incorporate these into the upcoming week’s plan.
8. Create your weekly plan that includes your 5 daily small steps into your upcoming week’s plan.
9. Review your 1 page plan every day.
10. Create the daily habit of the “holy hour”. The concept of the holy hour is to start your day off right by making the most of your mind and body’s strongest time of the day…early morning…5 AM to be specific. The hour is divided into 3 practices.  20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of reviewing your 1 page plan and daily plan, 20 minutes of learning/education or journaling.

Reality check ~ how am I doing so far?

• The 5 goals for the year are established.
• Quarterly goals are roughed out.
• Weekly goals are not so clearly defined.
• Documented on a 1 page plan still needs to be completed.
• Weekly planning habit – 3 weeks so far (this was part of a tutorial I read so I had a couple weeks head start on this one)
• Holy hour – I get a big F on this one so far. I am not an early riser, so this is going to be a big challenge for me. I am going to baby step this one and aim for 6 AM as a starting point. I am doing the 3 practices (exercise, reviewing and learning), just not at 5 AM.

One of the questions on the call was how to not feel overwhelmed by all of the planning and action steps. Robin’s answer…small daily changes and steps will result in achieving big results.  Think about it, if you did 5 small steps a day towards a big goal, at the end of a year that would be 1825 steps…I believe that would equal big change.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Or share any goals/changes you want to make this year.  More updates to follow.