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Game Changer Goals – by Alexandra Coulter

In setting Milestones, we are reaching beyond our grasp, to keep growing. Say your Milestone is to increase your income by a specific amount. You never know when a freak cold spell might reduce the number of surfboards you were counting on selling.  Losing 25 pounds is a fine Milestone. But you can’t be certain that you won’t be asked to participate in a prestigious food tasting event that could shatter your Milestone at the last minute. Milestones are not meant to be a sure thing.  But you can sure up your bets by using Game Changer Goals.

The One Year Vision exercise we do before beginning with the Accountability Club, showed me there are certain plays I need to make to reach my Milestone of growing my business. Reading is one of them. It fuels my creative juices and inspires me.  Reading is essential to my career and professional development. But I have a lot of it to do: between books, newsletters, blogs, and listening to internet broadcasts, I was feeling overwhelmed.

I needed to come up with realistic, specific, measurable steps that will mark my way to my goal.  Like sketching out a basketball play.  This is the flow of movements I can take which will effect the play of the game.  Where I can put my energy to impact the game in my favor.

Each month, before the Accountability Club call, we choose 3 to 5 Game Changer Goals to accomplish in the next month. Libby says we should answer these questions about them:

• Can I realistically expect to do them all in a month’s time?
• Are they specific enough so that I will know exactly what I need to do?
• Will I be able to say for sure, at the next call, that I have accomplished these Game Changer Goals?

These questions assure our actions will be within our control and not subject to the whims of life which can toss our bigger, bolder, Milestones asunder.

So I set a Game Changer Goal around reading because I know that will directly effect the growth of my business.  Just saying I need to read isn’t very clear. I needed to think about how much I can expect to actually do in a month, a week, in a day.  Can I be more specific about what I want to read? Libby Gill’s “You UnStuck” is a good place to start. Which blogs?  Which Newsletters? How will I know when I’ve reached my Game Changer Goal?  The answers to these questions will  allow me to take concrete steps that will move me in the direction I want to go.  I want to read these 2 books, keep up with these 4 blogs and read these 6 newsletters.

On the monthly Accountability Club call, if you’ve been there before, you tell us how you did last month in meeting your goals. (The place of accountability.)  You’ll hear praise and congratulations if you’ve met them.  If not, there is encouragement and one-on-one help with Libby (one of the best in the business) who will guide you in finding ways to meet your Game Changer Goals next month.

In between calls, we can assign the same kind of choice-making to what we do each week, each day.  So that we know, in the moment, which actions will change the game.

Meeting these Game Changer Goals (coupled with accountability) has a direct impact, a game-changing effect on our success at reaching Milestones.  It puts control back into our hands.  So the capricious winds of change can’t throw us completely off course and we can keep moving forward.

Reading is now an integrated part of my daily routine.  Easy and enjoyable.  Keeping me moving forward.  With a couple of Game Changer Goals in my pocket, I can see the guide posts clearly.  I know exactly what I need to do to score and win the game!

P.S.  When you’re attention is on the tasks at hand, it’s easier to let go of the outcome, circumventing some of the fear that comes up as you approach new territory.

Alexandra Coulter is the owner and chief writing officer for the growing business UpWrite Words, offering online and print writing services to the Personal Growth Community.  Check out her web site at http://www.upwritewords.com/ and read her Positive Slant blog at or through the web site.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Featured, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.