Goals give you a starting point and a destination to reach for different areas in your life. You may have things you want to achieve in physically, mentally, and spiritually, but also goals for your career and professional development.

Writing Down Goals

The process of writing down your goals helps you clarify what you desire to do. By understanding the importance of pursuing them and committing yourself to making them happen, you will be able to achieve more in more areas of your life. Goals make you focus consistently. But, goals have value only if they help you develop and improve yourself or others’ potential.

Writing down your goals helps you manifest what your life will be like once you achieve specific goals.

I’ve adapted a method from the SMART goal setting methodology that is based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Most of the time when people set goals, it is their ideal. But when life happens, they’re thrown off entirely from their goal and feel unable to achieve it. I’m most concerned about how you can get back on your path as quickly as possible because life events will happen, and they should not entirely derail your goal progress.

AIM Goal Process

AIM is a method that you can use to have a range of achieving your goals so that when you get thrown off, you have a strategy that allows for flexibility. Once you’ve created a specific goal, transform it into an AIM goal before mapping out action steps to achieve it. AIM stands for Acceptable, Ideal, and Middle. You want to have a range of daily and weekly actions that bring you toward your goal to provide some wiggle room when life isn’t ideal. This will help prevent stopping all activity around your goal. Below is an example of how to incorporate a fitness goal:

A—Acceptable

• Walk five days per week for 20 minutes.
• Stretch and lift weights three days per week for 15 minutes.

I—Ideal

• Go to the gym or a fitness class three days per week.
• Walk four days per week for 30 minutes.
• Stretch and lift weights three days per week for 20 minutes.

M—Middle

• Go to the gym or a fitness class two days per week.
• Walk three days per week for 30 minutes.
• Stretch and lift weights three days per week for 15 minutes.

By making your goals AIM goals, you’ll be able to navigate when life isn’t perfect. This is a high-performance strategy to help you achieve more in life! 

Check out the video below for more examples of AIM goal setting actions, and find information about more virtual trainings here.