Episode Details

Episode 62 – Putting the puzzle together – 4 essential elements to achieving your big life goals

Here at Financial Autonomy, our focus is typically on the money side of how you achieve your goals and gain the choice in life that you deserve. But of course, achieving big goals requires more than just a financial solution.

And so in today's post we're going to take a step back and consider things a bit more holistically.

1. Start with Why

Executing a plan to achieve a particular goal rarely goes off without any set-backs or things out of left field that you hadn't considered. Adaptation is therefore an essential requirement in achieving success. In start-up land they call it a pivot.

The risk when faced with the need to make changes, is knowing which path is the right path, and that's where being clear on your 'Why' is so crucial. Your Why is your magnetic north. It guides you towards progress through the normal twists and turns of life.

Let's consider an example. You want to move to self-employment so as to have the flexibility to work around kids school drop offs and getting them to their after school activities. You use your skills as a compliance manager, built up over 10 years of employment, and start your own one person business, providing compliance services for 3 medium sized businesses, mainly from your home office with occasional site visits as needed. You're working around 20 hours per week. You'd like a few more hours, ideally about 30, but all things considered, you're in a good place.

One of your clients buys another business and in the process roughly doubles in size. They approach you about working 1 day per week on site at the new business to help with the integration. They would require you to be in the office at 8.30am until 5pm and the office is 30 minutes' drive from home.

Now without a clear Why, this opportunity would seem to be a good one. You wanted more hours - well here they are. But because you have a clear Why you can consider whether in fact this opportunity is one you should be taking. It doesn't provide flexibility, and the hours plus the commute don't allow you to do the things with your children that was the whole reason for moving to self-employment in the first place.

Knowing your 'Why' makes your decision process an easier one.

2. Set your Goals

So you know why it is that you're undertaking the change or challenge, the next step is to set some goals. There's a few crucial elements in this phase.

To be useful the goals you set must be specific, not airy fairy and vague.

They must be attainable – unrealistic goals lead to disappointment and abandonment.

And very importantly you need milestones along the way to give you little boosts of positivity and confirmation that you're making progress.

The SMART goals framework is very popular, you've almost certainly heard of it. The toolkit from episode 10 has some good information on how to use this framework to develop your goals, so if you haven't already downloaded that one, you might want to grab it.

3. Develop your plan

The next logical step is to develop your plan as to how you will make your goals become reality.

Now the content and structure of your plan will depend very much on the goal you're trying to achieve – retiring from paid employment in 10 years will require a very different plan to starting your own business in 12 months' time. But a common element of all successful plans is setting aside the time to make it happen.

So let's say your goal is to start a business in a years' time. You develop a plan to acquire the skills you need, get the necessary permits or licences, build your web site, and fund the