Why? Goals! How?

I woke up about a month ago feeling low. Just low. Stuck in a place where I wasn't sure what I should do, which direction I should turn my life, how I could even begin to achieve anything.

I was feeling sorry for myself. It was pretty pathetic.

I had come up with this $100/day idea prior to that, which probably made me feel even more sorry for myself because I wasn't even coming close to achieving this goal, and no idea how to even begin approaching it. Very lost, very frustrated, and tired of not winning.

There are all sorts of motivational materials out there that deliver a single message with a lot of fluff around it: set goals. Goal setting is the message that everyone teaches, and I've spent plenty of my own time talking about goal setting and how it gives you a strange hope for the future, despite hurdles along the way.

The little seed behind goals though is not as often discussed, and that's "why". Why do you want to set goals? What is it, exactly, you want out of meeting your goals? I mean sure, meeting my earnings goal of $100/day is going to make me feel pretty good about myself and could very well change things in my life, but the "why" needs to be clearly defined before truly embarking on reaching your goals.

I'm going to take a side tangent for a moment: I have my professional training in accounting and auditing. I was taught and trained to be methodical, skeptical, and pay attention to details. I'm going to come out and say that all of that was a bad fit for me, and I decided to leave the profession to the people who it was a good fit for.

What I found funny about the people I worked with in this setting was that they seemed immune to motivational speakers. We had plenty of people come to our office to provide enthusiastic trainings, funny stories, and overall tried to provide a message of improving and goal setting and blah blah blah. I remember after almost every training I went to, there was always the group of people who grumbled "That was a complete waste of time. That's not relevant to us."

For some reason, I liked the motivational speakers. Maybe it goes beyond your day to day lives, and is meant to inspire you to be the best you can be.

I don't know why I added that side tangent, but I think it was to say that after leaving the audit community, it opened me up to freely listening to more motivational speakers, stories and messages about achieving what you were meant to achieve.

Also, the more messages I listen to, and the more books I read on success, the more I don't want a job. I don't mind having a part-time job to get me out of the house, but I also have found more and more reason to be my own boss, work my own hours, own my own job. I want to be my own story and be successful on my own terms.

Now for the plug, and this is absolutely true for me. When I woke up that morning a month ago, sleep still in my eyes, I crawled out of bed and went to go make some coffee. I decided to check craigslist for work and I came across DS Domination. It immediately made sense to me, but as a trained skeptic, I decided to do some research on it. Ebay is free. Amazon is free. The only cost is learning how to piece them together to make your own store. Your own store you can run from wherever your computer sits.

I decided to try it and before I did anything else, I made a list of "Why? Why? Why?" What do I want to achieve? What will I do if this actually makes money, etc. I then made a list of "Goals! Goals! Goals!" Starting small: 1) Make $1 online. 2) Make $100 online. 3) Make as much as I make at my part-time job. 4) Make twice as much as my part-time job. 5) Make as much as my wife's part-time job. Etc.

I looked at these lists and decided I needed on more list: "How? How? How?" 1) Complete all provided training. 2) Commit to putting time in daily (with minimum set goals and weekly big goals for myself) 3) Learn how to talk about this with other people.

What I find the most interesting about all of this goal setting, why's and how's is that ever since I found a vehicle to exert my worries and efforts, I haven't felt down. On the contrary, I've only made about $70 so far with this program, but I'm excited about it. I'm confident that I'll reach goal #2 in the next couple of days, and that next month will see a surge of growth and the month after will be even more.

I have a vehicle to accomplish the things I want, and it's on my own terms. I can't begin to tell you how excited that makes me about our future.