One of the individuals I conducted an interview with was Robert Ashton. Robert is one of the UK’s best selling authors in both the business and entrepreneurial world. His book 'The Entrepreneur's Book of Checklists' is consistently the UK's third best selling practical business guide.

What Do You Want In Life

One of the great ideas Robert shared with me was a different approach to understanding what you want in life. This idea is that you describe your future life in the present tense.

For example, you could say it is now 2010, I have no debt, I’m an author selling my books in 20 different languages, and am touring the world speaking about my passionate subject. You describe what this is like, the feedback you got and how you felt about it.

Describe Your Picture And Write It Down

Then write it down as if it's already happened, in the present tense, but date it in the future when you have decided it will happen e.g. 2010.

The future date you choose might be a year away, or it maybe a month away. It is your choice.

Another example could be, it’s January 1 2009 and I’ve just had a New Year's party. I've got a bad headache and I can't cook breakfast because of last night. But actually, there's a huge cheque sitting on the side that came in after Christmas from the royalties of my first book and when I look out the window I see my new car that I bought in November.

Check That It Is What You Want

To make you feel better, you can just take this picture of life as you want it to be on that day looking at the positive things you want in life rather of the negative ones.

These ideas are ways of actually checking whether you want them or not. If they don't feel right when you write them down or picture them i.e. you realize you don’t want a Nissan 350Z, but you'd be happier with a Mazda NX5 then these goals are not right for you and need changing. You can be quite specific regarding what you want as it is you who's going to actually be driving that car, living that life, or going to that place.

Share It

Robert also stated you should share your future plans with anybody whose life would be influenced by them. So if you live with someone for instance, then it's quite important for them to know where you're looking to head to, otherwise it could come as a shock to them, when you suddenly start behaving strangely and doing different things.

For instance, maybe you decide you want to run a marathon and you start training for it. So instead of you spending Sunday morning in bed with the paper, like you always do, all of a sudden, you're going out in your shorts and trainers on and disappearing down the road for a 10-mile run, then they would want to know why you're doing that and what you're trying to achieve.

It may even encourage them to embark on things that they want to do as well and if you don’t share your goals with others, you may start growing apart and leading separate lives.

It Works!

So since learning these ideas from Robert, I have put them into practice.

I have always had goals / plans in my life but this approach has made me add the emotion and gauge how I would feel once the goal is fulfilled. These emotions and feelings change or cement what you want. It really does make the difference.

Another difference I learnt to do was to share my goals and I now have family and friends helping me achieve my goals, which is great.

So give it a try and see what difference it makes to your goal setting.