I am writing this at the very start of January. The start of the year is a perfect time to reflect on the past and to think about the future. However this article is just as relevant to you whenever you read it, as long as you take my advice and put pen to paper and write down your goals after reading this. If you do that, I can guarantee good things for the future.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
I am sure you will have come across countless statistics or been given advice about the power of setting goals both in your personal and professional life. I am also pretty sure that if I asked you today what your goals were for the next six months or year you would be able to rattle off a few goals, but if I asked you next week would you remember what those goals were? Probably not ….. because you didn’t write them down.
Writing down your goals is hugely important if you want to start achieving them. A recent study shows that committing goals to paper and regularly reviewing those goals will give you a 95% higher chance of achieving your desired outcome.
Goals vs Dreams
Don’t make the mistake of confusing dreams and goals. Goals have clear targets with specified time frames and action plans. They should enable you to focus your efforts, attention and drive your motivation. Dreams are wonderful to have but they are just conceptual they are wishes, or desired outcomes with no firm ‘call to action’.
Your dream might be to ‘be in Eastenders’, your goals would be ‘by February 2013 I will have sent my screen clips to the casting department of Eastenders’ & ‘by August 2013 I will have auditioned for the casting director of Eastenders’.
Your dream might be ‘I want horse riding as a skill on my CV’, your goal would be ‘By March 2013 I will have found a horse riding school and signed up for lessons’ & ‘By November 2013 I will have trained in horse riding to a proficient standard’
Goals
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Realise a dream or a wish for your life (personal or professional)
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Make a change in your life – adding the positive, or removing the negative
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Improve your skills and performance ability
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Start or change a habit – both positive or negative
Why set goals?
Setting goals and committing them to paper is a sure fire way to cultivate success.
Anyone who is in our industry can have all manner of dreams and ideas whizzing around their head, added to this is our home life responsibilities and quite possibly the responsibilities and duties of our ‘other job’. It can be hugely difficult to know what to concentrate your efforts on, and it can be all too easy to stretch yourself too thinly and achieve very little.
Life can get in the way.
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
By writing down your goals you are breaking down an idea, a dream, or wish into manageable and achievable chunks. You should have a route map you can follow to help you get to your desired outcome.
Writing Your Goals
Here are the Actor Hub tips for writing down your goals
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CreationHave a brainstorm, create a mind map of your dreams and how they translate into achievable goals. You can think about both your personal and professional life. -
DetailsKeep specific. Know exactly what you want to achieve and set a time scale.
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RealisticStay believable. Set realistic goals. Give yourself something to work towards, stretch yourself but don’t make it a completely unrealistic challenge.
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AccessibilityKeep them somewhere you can see them. Make sure your goals are somewhere easy to find, don’t file them away and make it easy to forget about them.
Print them out and put them on the inside of a kitchen cupboard door, or on the fridge. Why not mark off the dates in your diary for when you want to achieve the dream, Equity send out those lovely diaries so pop your goals into them.
You want to be able to remind yourself of them and see how you are doing. -
ReviewTick them off as you complete them. If you achieve a goal too easily, you can always set a new one. Remember to write it down and add it to your list. Marking them off keeps you motivated.
By the end of the year I can guarantee you will be proud of how much you have achieved, how many of your goals have become reality and perhaps how many of your dreams have come true.
