Posted by Click here to get a free newsletter Zen and a Way of sustainable prosperity: Balance, financial success, and sustainability with the secrets of the Japanese Omi-merchants.
If your definition of success is different from the general one, you will set your goal differently, too, and how you set your goal will determine how you move toward your goal.
Today, let me talk about goal setting.
Goal setting is one of the elements constantly appearing in motivational success philosophies. It is a widely recognized strategy to succeed. They all said that by setting a clear goal, it makes you easy to visualize your business outcome. They shared examples of people with written goals having a higher success rate than people without them. It is a common practice in the business world.
One of the most popular ways of setting your goal is a SMART goal. A SMART goal stands for, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. In simple terms, it means the goal you set for your business should be specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant to your ecosystem and values. It also needs to have a set deadline.
For example, your goal is to be successfully running an organic food restaurant in 3 years. Let’s check to see if it is SMART.
Is it specific? No, it isn’t specific enough.
Is it measurable? No, it isn’t. What do you mean by successfully? You want to project your yearly income so you can know if you will have achieved your goal at the end of the year.
Is it time bound? Yes, it is.
Is it attainable? You need to be more specific to assess whether it is attainable or not.
So, let’s make it more specific. My goal is to run an organic Italian restaurant with biodynamically produced ingredients. My targeted customers are health-conscious people who want to enjoy dining out in the evening. I will be earning $40,000 annually in 3 years.
Now, is it attainable? It depends on your capability, but 3 years may be a bit too short to achieve it since it takes time to establish your brand. How about in 5 years? Now it is more achievable.
Lastly, is it relevant to your ecosystem and values? In this context, ecosystem should mean your life as a whole. How it will relate to other areas of your life like your relationship with your friends and family, your health, your spirituality, and so on. These are the areas I covered in Zen and a Way of Sustainable Prosperity as the 7 elements of sustainable prosperity.
If you are targeting customers who enjoy dining out in the evening, your restaurant will be open at night. In this case, you can ask a question like, how will it affect your relationship with your family?
It is better if you can set a goal that is congruent with other areas of your life. If you can’t, you need to find ways to compensate mismatching elements. For example, you can make sure to spend time with your children on your days off. I have the same problem. My coaching sessions tend to concentrate in the evening, so what I do is I always make myself available for my son on the weekends.
In ZENWSP, we spend a lot of time checking whether your goal is relevant to the 7 elements of sustainable prosperity which include Sanpo-Yoshi. Therefore you will end up setting a very different kind of goal from a goal you would set based on conventional motivational success philosophies.
I have changed my goal income completely after checking the relevancy. I will talk about it tomorrow.
Omi-merchant's way of Sustainable Prosperity 