If you haven’t found your goals in life by now, I wouldn’t be surprised. Finding our path is never easy, especially when life offers so many options. Even if we know in our hearts our true desires, we tend to hold back due to certain fears and limiting beliefs. Before I digress, a useful tip that I believe will help you get going is this – start by discovering yourself.

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.