If you’ve been reading my latest articles from this week (and if you haven’t, here they are: Into The Great Wide Open, Identifying Areas Of Your Life To Change), you’ll know that I’ve been talking about how I want to transform my ordinary life into an extraordinary life. Today, I’m going to wrap things up by going over the goals I have for the next six months. By doing this, you and everyone else can see what progress I am making along with seeing what goals I reach and / or achieve.
There are three reasons I have chosen to do six month goals. The first reason is six months is a relatively short period of time but long enough to make real progress towards long-term goals in addition to achieving short-term goals. The second reason is to help keep myself motivated. I believe the more time that is allotted towards achieving a goal, the less likely you are to stay motivated. And the last reason is things change. No one knows what the future may bring. My feelings or motivations for a particular goal may change in time. It’s only natural. Besides, the shorter time span means you will enjoy the fulfilment and happiness achieving your goals even sooner!
With the time frame in place, now is the time to go over the goals I have for the next six months:
My Health Goals
I’ve always been conscious about my weight. I was overweight for most of my teens and early twenties. Before going into the Air Force in my early twenties, I weighed around 250 and wore a size 40 pants. Not a healthy place to be. After my basic training, I slimmed down to around 200 and wore a size 34 pants. I stayed around this weight and size till about a year ago when I slowly began to put some weight back on.
As of today, I weigh 233 pounds and wear a size 38 pants. So my six month goal is to get down to 200 pounds and be able to wear a size 36 pair of pants comfortably. I plan on doing this by following a high-protein diet (LINKS) and exercising, at least, three times a week. This equals to about five pounds a month which is very achievable, in my opinion.
My Professional Goals
All of my professional goals surround one of my passions: writing. So my professional goals are to make money from my writing. With that said, here are my professional writing goals for the next six months:
- Write the first draft of a screenplay
- Create a personal blog which I will use to market my writing
- Write an eBook to give away on My Adventure Today
- Continue posting three times a week on My Adventure Today
- Write and submit a guest post each month to a popular blog which shares the same audience as MAT
Besides writing goals, I also have some business goals which should generate some profit. They are:
- Land, at least, two consulting jobs for my consulting business
- Have an eBook site to sell my horror graphic novel, Before Dawn
- Have over 250 unique daily visitors to My Adventure Today
My Financial Goals
Money is very important in achieving a lot of my goals. Sounds materialistic but it’s hard to travel or buy a new vehicle or anything else without it. So here are my financial goals for the next six months:
- Generate over $300 a month with the Before Dawn eBook site by August
- Generate over $1,000 a month with my consulting business
- Bring in over $500 a month advertising with My Adventure Today
- Raise my credit score to over 700
- Have no credit card debt
Pretty ambitious goals but achievable!
Personal Goals
As you will see, most of my personal goals involve travelling. With five of us (myself, my wife, and three kids), travelling is very expensive regardless of the mode of transportation. So for the next six months, I have trips planned: one to see my family in the States, and one family vacation. My other personal goal is to learn some basic French. My wife and her family speak French as do my kids. So to make sure they are not talking about me, I need to learn some basic French 
I have already purchased some learning material. So now it is just a matter of making the time to learn it.
Thing Goals
And finally, here are my thing goals for the next six months:
- A 2009 Toyota Sienna
- A 42-inch LCD Flatscreen TV
- A Nordic Track treadmill
- 10 DVDs and 10 books I have been wanting to buy from Amazon
The biggest purchase is obviously the Toyota Sienna but my wife and I have been wanting to get another minivan and you almost need one when you have more than two kids. The Nordic Track treadmill is also for both myself and my wife as we are both in the process of losing weight. The 42-inch TV, the DVDs, and books are for my entertainment.
The Gameplan
As I’ve mentioned in the Into The Great Wide Open article, I will be writing about my progress towards achieving these goals along with what is working, what hasn’t worked, and any other information I feel will be of help to those who are actively working towards their own goals. I am always open to suggestions and /or advice which I’m sure will be helpful to others reading as well. It will be an interesting journey to be sure. You can always keep up-to-date on everything by either subscribing to the My Adventure Today Newsletter (which you can do via the form on the right side of every page), or by subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed. Many thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments!
Photo courtesy of bfick
