A benefited goal is one that benefits you – and others.

It’s important that the goal benefits you. Let’s be realistic. However ‘selfless’ you are (or think you are), there has to be some payoff for you (even if it’s the feel good factor of putting others first). The goal has to be something you can be passionate about. Something you can make a priority. Something that will be worth the self-discipline, sweat and (quite possibly) struggle it will take to make it happen.

It’s important that the goal benefits others. It needs to benefit your loved ones – your family and friends so it’s more likely to fit your core values and raise support rather than resistance. As you go on, you may also find special power in goals that benefit the wider circle of your influence and passion such the environment, the community, particular groups or other causes that touch your heart.

Sometimes, the goal has to benefit you before you can benefit others. You need to develop the resources first. For example, not everyone who wants to work with youth at risk at Toogoolawa is ready to do so. They need to develop skills, flexibility, discipline, detachment and self-care (among other things) or else they are not very helpful to the boys and they burn themselves out. You know how this works, if you’re caring for dependent children or invalids or elderly relatives, paradoxically you have to put yourself first sometimes because once you’re running on empty, you won’t be much use to anyone else for long. A key early goal for me was to build my dream home. I figured it was going to benefit me in many ways:

• The satisfaction of having designed and built it; the pleasure of living in it; the improvement in my productivity; the personal and financial security; the financial leverage to assist my business

• I also knew that this house would be a source of pleasure, security, stability and inspiration to my family and friends. Many people have visited my home and gone away with ideas (or faith) for their own place. Some of my friends have told me that it was the fulfilment of my ‘wild dream’, not the house as such that inspired them to do something out of the ordinary; they had been ‘dreaming too small’.

>>> Coming Next: SMARTIE Goals

Please note: This is an extract from the Goals Workbook– it may not contain the exercises from the full version of the book/audioset, for full version please contact us or follow our blog for more.

Thank you,
The team@Custodian