Many, many people mistake dreams for goals. You might set a ‘goal’ of selling a thousand copies a month of your new product, or getting new people onto your mailing list… While these are both good things, they aren’t actually goals. They’re dreams, and while it’s good to have dreams, you also need goals. Let me explain you why…
Goals vs. Dreams
A goal is something that you, yourself, have the power to make happen. Losing weight is a goal, albeit a vague one, because you are entirely in charge of all of the variables necessary to make that happen. Selling a thousand copies of your product, on the other hand, is not something you can directly control. People will buy it, or they won’t, and while you can absolutely influence, you can’t control it.
You need both dreams and goals, but you need to be able to tell the difference between the two. The problem with mistaking a dream for a goal is that if you don’t succeed with your dreams, which may be out of your hands, you’re going to be disappointed, and that’s going to drain your motivation.
What your goals should do is support your dreams. What I mean is that you should break your dreams, which you can’t control, down into things that you can. For instance, if your dream is to sell a thousand copies a month, then your goal could be to produce new content everyday, or to learn how to get Cheap PPC Traffic. These are goals, and they will allow you to reach your dreams.
Reaching a goal will however require more than just envisioning a positive result… I, for example, set myself a goal to produce new content on my blog at least twice a week, either with new blog posts like this one, or new videos like those you can find on CKTV. This is a goal I set myself and that will help me reach my dreams but it requires action and commitment.
So what are your goals, and what are your dreams? Do they sync up? Please leave a comment below! Remember you can also get in touch with me via my Facebook page!
I'm an avid fan of your blog, and the content is always top notch - great reading. I'm always impressed with the variety of content and the way you get all the important steps outlined for processes, but still manage to keep it short and simple - few people do that quite as well.
Mike Purvis
Andy Fletcher
Todd Gross
Hello Colin, nice post, and I absolutly agree. In the business term, vision is corporate dream and mission is something should be achieved as a target goal in a specified of time.