Have you achieved a significantly milestone in your life during the last few weeks or months? Can you look back and say that you have completed a task or challenge that has excited you. You have lost weight, ran a marathon, been promoted, made an investment, grown in your personal development, built your own home, landed that dream job, owned the coveted car, moved country. All of these are big steps that you could only have dreamed of one year ago. One year on you are not the same. You have grown and now the challenges are behind you and you look back and say it was not as difficult as you thought.

You are now on the other side of the gap. The challenges are not so big now. You have grown significantly to  overcome the task. Maybe you could do it again in half the time, half the cost, or half the stress.  Maybe you have grown so much that you could teach the new skill, task or experience to someone else. You have blazed the trail for your friends and family to follow.

I trust this is the case for you that you have grown significantly this year. I hope that you have not just re-written the same chapter of your life again and again.

When faced with a new challenge I always look at the size of myself and the resources I have to overcome the challenge. Challenges are a part of life, each day we are thrown a new task that we can chose to accept or walk away. I ask myself – Have I faced a similar problem before?  Who can help me? Can I delegate to someone else or outsource and still achieve what is required and get to the other side of the gap.

I find goal setting relatively easy however, I find it difficult to set Stretch Goals. These are goals that are outside my comfort zone, my current knowledge level, financial blueprint or current skill. I wanted to share with you some particular goal setting advice that I found useful for setting Stretch Goals. Paul McFadden in Glasgow, Scotland suggested to use a goal setting technique called ‘MTO’.

• M – Minimum goal you will accept, anything less and you will not be happy or contented.
• T – Target goal, this is the goal you will plan for and take deliberate actions to attain.
• O – Outrageous goal, the clue is in the name. It is a big stretch. You may never reach it however, if you can dream it then there is a chance you may meet it!

I have found Paul’s advice particularly helpful. Sometimes we do not like to stretch ourselves however, MTO helps with this. A goal that is well defined is half way achieved! A Minimum goal could be to run a half marathon, the Target may be to run a full marathon and an Outrageous goal could be to run two or even three marathons.

You will find that by using the MTO goal setting method it naturally drives you to think of an Outrageous goal to stretch yourself.

Now go Stretch…

Stuart

Making Steps and Leaving Footprints…