The Stars out of Reach

Here we are, close to the end of October. Today in my sales class, we discussed goal-setting. The underlying concept is that, once you have some idea what your life goals are, you have more motivation to succeed in sales.

I'm a strong proponent of setting goals, regardless of whether it helps you in your sales career or not. I've been looking over my list of 101 goals for 2007. By this time I'm probably around 80% done with them, right?

Not really.

It's actually closer to 40%. I might make it to 50% by the end of the year.

So what happened? Why am I not further along? Was this a complete failure on my part?

I don't view it as a failure. Some of the goals are time-based and I won't finish them until later (though still before the end of the year). Getting my third degree black belt falls under that category. Others ended up not making sense after investigation. I had intended on joining a particular networking group which proved to be not as advantageous as I had originally thought. Still others, well, OK, with some of them I just didn't manage my time well.

Still, one of the great things about making goals is that, even if you fall short, you can still be proud and even happy with the result. After all, suppose you had a goal of making a profit of a million dollars on your first book sale and you ended up with only $900,000. You'd hardly be crying on your way to the bank, right?

So, I'll be getting busy on my goals, both my list of 101 for 2008 and with my longer-term goals to make my life that much more exciting in the years to come.

So, are you proud of any of your goals which you failed to reach?