Defining your goals will help you achieve your business goals and become your ideal future self. Read on to finally stop doing ALL THE THINGS and work with intention.
In Episodes 50 and 51 of the Marketing Matrix Podcast, bestselling author and entrepreneur Dr. Ben Hardy shared how to design your own life and succeed in your business by defining your goals, starting with a clear vision of your future self and reverse-engineer the steps to get there.
Here are some of the most notable takeaways:
Your Past Experiences Do Not Define Your Future Self
Whether trauma and bad experiences litter your past, or you’ve had a myriad of successes, your past does not define you. Traditional psychology focuses on how your future may play out based upon how things have gone in your personal history—but this is not the way your life needs to be.
Dr. Ben Hardy says that your personality is merely a byproduct of your own identity, and YOU have the power to define that. Your identity is the narrative you have about yourself, which in turn drives your behavior and shapes your personality. Therefore, you have the power to choose your future self, which is really a different person than you are today.
Ben says, “Anything I went through in the past is all beneficial. It happened for me, not to me.”
By re-attaching to your future self instead of linking yourself to your past, you can establish and achieve amazing goals. Reframe your mindset, and you can change your reality.
Defining Your Goals in Clarifying Your Future Self to Design Your Own Life
Ben Hardy started with the sheer inability to succeed at community college…
…but is now a bestselling author whose books and blogs have touched over 100 million people’s lives!
Because Ben determined a clear vision of becoming a successful author, he was able to outline the steps he needed to take to achieve his goal.
In the entrepreneurial world, if a lack of clarity shows up in your personal life, it affects your ability to accomplish things. In turn, that affects how you serve your customers and holds you back from success in your business.
Design your life by clarifying your future self. Make your decisions and set your goals, and then make it happen by reverse-engineering the process. In practice, Ben recommends journaling and writing about what you want to achieve. This will give you the clarity you need, which will fuel your motivation and hope. The beauty of this approach is you can execute these steps over and over again.
With Clarity Comes Business Growth
When you have personal clarity and you know what you want your future to look like, you pave the way to your own success.
For example, in Ben’s business journey, he knew he wanted to become a bestselling author. But where does an aspiring writer start? He knew he couldn’t get a book deal without an audience, so he began by writing on Medium.com and pitching articles to small online publications which yielded some growth in his email list.
To skyrocket his subscriber numbers, follow these super simple steps:
- Include a call to action in your blog posts.
- Send visitors to a landing page (not your home page).
- Add a small freebie to convert more people to sign up for his mailing list.
Ben went from about 1,000 email subscribers total to 20,000 or 30,000 new subscribers per month by implementing these changes! An email list is a powerful asset that’s worth millions of dollars…
But Ben was still committed to his one goal: to become a professional author.
About the success of his singular goal, Ben said, “People try too many things all at once. Motivation requires focus, right? If you have too many goals at once, that’s the definition of not having focus.”
When you’re committed to a definite goal, you have inherent purpose and meaning in the present, which in turn gives you a deliberate process to achieve it.