How to Set Goals for Your Family and Personal Life

Decide specifically what you really want to achieve in your family life. This is a key part of the Focal Point Process. The clearer you are about the things you really want, the more rapidly you will bring them into your life. The happiest people spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to be, have, and do. As a result, their lives are far more interesting, exciting, and enjoyable than those of people who just drift along from day to day, with no clear idea of where they are going or why.

You can set both tangible and intangible goals for your family and other personal relationships. Tangible goals refer to homes, cars, bicycles, boats, clothes, and other physical objects. Tangible goals are important. You should give a lot of thought to the type of tangible goals you want for yourself and your loved ones. Intangible goals are qualitative. They refer to time with your family and friends, vacations, walks, quality of life, health, the security of your home, and the well-being of each person. Intangible goals deal very much with the senses and the emotions and are therefore more important and immediate than tangible goals.

Remember that performance standards are measures you use to determine how close you are to achieving your various goals. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it or improve it. What gets measured gets done. The more specific you can be about the critical success factors in each part of your personal life, the more likely it is that you will make your personal life into something truly extraordinary.

Tangible Goals

Some of the tangible critical success factors you might use are the following:

1. What is the current size and layout of your home? Are you happy with this? Would you like to change it or improve it in some way? If so, how?
2. How satisfied are you with your household finances? What improvements would you like to make in the months and years ahead?
3. How secure is your family with regard to insurance? Do you have sufficient life insurance? Health insurance? Accident insurance? Car insurance? Disability insurance? What changes or additions should you make?
4. How prepared are you for education and college expenses for your children? How much will you need? What actions should you take today to start making proper provision for them?
5. Are you happy with the other material components of your life: your car, furniture, clothes, and appliances? What would you like to change, improve, or have more of?

Determine what you really want in each of these areas. Set each of them as a goal, make a plan, and go to work on your plan. Set standards or measures for each goal and then compare your progress against these measures on a regular basis. You will be amazed at how much you accomplish when you are clear about your targets and how you will measure your progress toward them.

Intangible Goals

Once you have set your tangible goals, you can set your intangible goals. These can be far more important than material goals that you can touch and measure.
Time is the critical success factor in all relationships. The quality of any relationship is directly related to the amount of time you invest in that relationship. You demonstrate a person's importance to you by spending time with him or her.
You can dramatically improve the quality of a relationship by investing more and more time in that relationship. This is the key intangible goal. Here are some questions for you:

1. How much time do you spend daily with your spouse or partner? How much time would you like to spend?
2. How much time do you spend daily with each of your children? How much time would you like to spend?
3. How much time do you spend daily with your friends? How much time would you like to spend?
4. How many days do you take off with your family or friends each week?
5. How many weekends away do you take with your spouse each year?
6. How many vacation weeks do you take with your family each year?
7. How often do you have dinner with your entire family?
8. How do you start each day with your family members?
9. What would you really like to have in your family or personal relationships that you don't currently have?
10. What grade would you give yourself on the quality of your communication with your loved ones? What grade would they give you?
11. If your family and personal life were ideal in every respect, how would things be different from what they are today?

In each case, determine how you could measure a change in your situation. What would have to happen? What would it look like? How could you tell that a change had taken place?

Select a single focal point and bring all your attention to bear on improving in that particular area. As you focus on one measurable change, improvements in other areas will start to take place almost immediately.