Goals

The “cool kids” of this day and age like to post Instagram pictures of what appear to be perfect couples with the caption #relationshipgoals. In reality they’re just fabrications of what they want people to think their actual lives look like. News flash- there’s no such thing as perfect.

True relationship goals would be a relationship WITH goals. Goals for their business and their family life.

It takes a lot of work and planning to get to where you want to go. Adam and I have tried every way possible to get organized on this topic and we’ve borrowed from standard business practices to make it work.

Here’s what we do: once we have decided on a VISION and the VALUES we’re attaching to them it’s time to formulate a plan. Goals are smaller achievements to hit while on mission to the bigger VISION.

Adam has a formula he likes to keep in mind when making business decisions and we use them in our family as well. That way all the goals line up. We use the acronym SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based.

These are the criteria for setting goals, keeping in mind that every goal needs to fit into a bigger strategy that moves us towards our VISION.

So, if your goal is to lose 10lbs in 30 days through exercise and diet, that meets the criteria for being a specific, measurable goal. If you state that you just want to eat more healthfully, that’s just a nice intention, not a goal.

We try and keep everything to a reasonable time frame as well. We like to do 90-day sprints on our goals. And we only try to manage 3 goals at once. It’s too easy to get overwhelmed when managing more than 3.

Goals have to be realistic and fit well together. You don’t want to try to boil the ocean; doing everything at once just isn’t possible. For instance, trying to lose weight AND watch finances might be a recipe for disappointment and frustration.

We try to have these three key areas of focus have short term achievements, but they also need to fit into an overarching, long-term goal. Also, it’s ok to have additional personal goals as long as you take care to fit them into the bigger picture to ensure success.

All of these goals should be recorded and documented somewhere that can be regularly kept up with. Adam and I add them to our family business meeting on a quarterly basis. That way we can see what changes need to be made, if expectations need to be adjusted, if the plan needs to be altered to allow for setbacks, or even just to see how far we’ve come from our last check-in.

What you tend to see happen is that all the priorities in our life change and turn toward the goals. It’s kind of nice because that really helps steer your time and resources. Once you know your priorities the only next step is ACTION.

Once you know how the business success feeds into the home life and how the home life can support the business, success is inevitable. By establishing the VISION, VALUES & GOALS for your family alongside those of your businesses, you set the mission for your whole life. And NOBODY can stop a family on a mission.

When you are successful across all areas of your life you’ve truly reached NEXT LEVEL #relationshipgoals. And the best part is that you have someone by your side to celebrate with you.