By the time you really stepped out, you start to get nervous. No one’s there to take you by your hand. You are really on your own now.

“As We Go On We Remember, All The Times We Had Together…”
Sounds familiar? This is the Graduation Song by Vitamin C. Read into the lyrics, and if you are the sentimental kind, I bet you’ll get all emotional.

An Exciting Life Ahead?
Don’t get too comfortable. At this phase of your life, you probably have a few things to think about. Like where you should be going for your graduation trip. Just kidding. It’s beyond that. Something like…

I’m not suggesting that you should turn into a worry freak. With proper planning, it’ll save you from all the unnecessary woes you may have in the future.

Let me leave you with an excerpt of a commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs at Stanford University, June 12, 2005:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” 
– Steve Jobs

What Usually Happens…
You give this a miss. Yes, as a matter of fact, only 20% of people set goals for themselves. Out of this 20%, only about 30% are committed to achieving their goals. You don’t really need statistics to back this up. Just look at the number of successful men and women out there.

I’ve Tried This Before, But It Didn’t Work?
Setting a goal is just the starting point. The key is to take action. Are you following through? You can set a thousand goals on a piece of paper, but without any action taken, there won’t be any tangible results.

Keep Your Goal in Sight!
Yes. Literally. Why? Ask yourself this. How many times have you written your goal on a piece of paper enthusiastically, only to leave that same piece of paper lying somewhere conveniently out-of-sight? And you forget about it!

Out of sight, out of mind. We need to be constantly reminded of our goals before we actually realize them. Don’t worry. Keeping your goals in sight is easy. You can write them down on…

Come up with more creative and effective ways on your own.

Spice Up Your Goals…
By now, you know that you’ll be forcing yourself to see your goals everyday. Spice them up a little then, for your own sake. Add in some little illustrations if you know how to draw. Else, decorate them with some downloaded images from the Internet. It’s the information age. Images are aplenty.

You can even personify your goals with a picture of someone who have achieved everything that you ever want to. We call this special someone, your idol. It’s healthy to idolize someone. Learn from them! Here’s how your personal goal may look like:

Lovely isn’t it?

Hold Yourself Accountable…
Here’s something that works – holding yourself accountable for your goals. In “Master Your Mind, Design Your Destiny” by Adam Khoo, he wrote of a method he used to achieve his goals – tell everyone about it. It works really well, especially if you are someone who values promises. By declaring to everyone about your goals, you feel obliged to achieve it. Or you risk deeming yourself a liar. Putting yourself on the line. Pretty neat way to do things isn’t it?

If being trustworthy isn’t really your thing, think of other ways to hold yourself accountable!

Time for a New Year Resolution…
How about writing down your new year resolution for the year? It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is when you are reading this posting. Better late than never isn’t it?

*Holy light shines down… Music comes in… *
 
Got the picture? Great! Let’s do a quick recap.

Post #1: “Discover Your Life Purpose in Ten Minutes”
Objective: Through creative imagination of your own demise, I hope to stimulate your mind to uncover your life purpose. To find the reasons why you need to succeed. Not to give you the chills.

Post #2: “A Near-Death Experience Changed Their Lives”
Objective: Same objective as Post #1. Talking about near death experiences experienced by others this time.

Post #3: “Discover Your Goals with Your Personal Mind-map”
Objective: To introduce you to mind-maps and how they can be used to obtain an overview of yourself and your goals in life. 

Post #4: "Discover Your Passion with Mind-mapping"
Objective: To help you uncover your passion with mind-mapping. Passion is the main driver behind your dreams.

Post #5: "Your Honour, I Plead Guilty (Part One, Part Two)”
Objective: To identify and remove your limiting beliefs. Self-belief and the removal of all doubts in your mind are important to prepare you for the next step – goal setting.

The New Enhanced Mind-map…
Now, update your mind-map before we proceed! Add in whatever you learned from my previous posts onto it. Your mind-map might look like this now. Click on it to enlarge.

Feel free to add in more sub-topics if you want. Start expanding on your goals (personal health, education, career etc) as you brainstorm about what you have written under “Interests = Passion”. Ignore the other categories for now while applying what you have learned from Posts 1 to 4. Throw everything in, ignoring whether your goals are currently achievable by your standards.

Introducing the REDS Way…
You have set your personal goals. Now, check whether your goals were:

The Final Touch…
Happy with your new-found goals? Update your mind-map again and check again. What’s lacking among your beliefs, knowledge and skills etc? Trace it and find a way to make up for it. Say you want to be a motivational speaker. You know that you have poor communication skills and you lack the qualifications. You know that getting a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner license will solve all these problems. And you are extremely interested in it. Go get it. 

The post is getting kind of long here. I’ll continue in part two. Comments please.

Where Does Your Passion Lie in?
To answer this question, ask yourself this:

Assume that you are extremely rich, and money is of no concern to you. Given also that whatever you choose to do, you will not fail. What will you do for free?

For me, music is my passion. I love to sing and perform for others. Hence, I would start a music cafe, putting in a lot of effort to make it the best music cafe in Singapore ever!

If you have talked to older people with rich life experiences, they’ll all tell you the same thing – follow your heart. I’ve seen many people who have pursued careers they have no interest in. Some have worked hard in the same company for years. They’re sick of the job, long for a career switch, but lack the courage to do so. Switching jobs means starting all over again, and giving up their current salaries and lifestyles. It’s a tough choice for them.

Also, these people aren’t happy because they aren’t being honest with themselves. Think about it. It takes additional effort to do something that you dislike, especially when it’s for 260 days a year (based on a five-day work week)! It’s really draining. When your job saps so much energy out of you, it’s no wonder that you aren’t happy.

Don’t put yourself in that situation. Think of how you can get yourself out! Start all over with your passion.

Still Can’t Find Your Passion?
Okay. Suppose you still can’t figure about what’s your passion. Remember the mind-map in my post on goal-setting? The sub-topic on interests? Expand on it! You may find your true passion among your interests! Passion is an interest at a level off the Richter scale.

Live Your Dreams!
Just imagine how great it is to have a job you are passionate about! You’ll have all the motivation you need to excel in what you do. Every minute of your work will seem like leisure time to you! Just look at some of the famous sports people who enjoy what they do, like Michael Jordan and David Beckham. To summarize, here’s what you can do:

Discovering Your True Self…
Before you go about identifying your goals, try making a personal mind-map. I’ve done it myself and found that mind-mapping really helps a lot in the process. A brief and simple one is illustrated here:

Drawing a mind-map is simple. Put your main topic at the centre, fill out your sub-topics in the next layer, and start branching like crazy for each sub-topic. Try to keep each new branch heading short, within 2 to 3 words.

The objective of this exercise is really to identify the various aspects about you that make up who you are. These include your interests, working experience, knowledge and skills, values, belief system and so on.

When I first started drawing, I kept thinking to myself, “Am I doing this correctly?” If you are like me, don’t worry. There’s really no right or wrong here. Focus more on the discovery process. Some people can’t really differentiate between beliefs and values. Doesn’t matter. Jot down what comes to your mind immediately. Changes can come later.

Upon completion, I came to appreciate three important points which I’ll like to share:

First. The different headings (values, beliefs, working experience and so on) all pointed to my goals. Simply put, they are all related to my purpose. For instance, my values revealed that I am people-centered. It then makes sense to me that while pursuing my dreams, I must always remember to spend enough time with my family and friends. That became one of my goals.

Second. It shows me who I am and what I’ll need to achieve my long-term goals. I knew that having a strong belief that I will succeed will help to propel me towards my goals. I didn’t have that belief. So I made up one. Also, one of my long-term goals is to become a wedding singer. To achieve that, I’ll have to become more proficient in guitar than I am now. “Improving my guitar skills” then becomes an important short-term goal for me.

Third. Work + Passion + Purpose = Success. Having both passion and purpose multiplies your success in whatever you do by three-folds or more. And passion = interests. Simple mathematics we have here isn’t it?

Achieving Success in Different Aspects of Your Life…
Success is not just about monetary gains. It’s also about your relationships, your health and other aspects of your life. When all these aspects become aligned with your goals, you become happier and more successful. 1 + 1 is no longer equal to 2. You rake in higher returns.

A Side Note… 
I used a software called XMind to draw the mind-map shown in the above illustration. You can download it here for free. It’s quite useful and idiot-proof. This post is just a basic introduction to your personal mind map. In the next post, I will be talking more about developing each heading and how mind-maps can be an important personal development tool.