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10 Steps to Setting Life Goals

1. Start with Prayer

If you set goals in the context of prayer, there is a much higher likelihood that your goals will glorify God, and if they don’t glorify God, then they aren’t worth setting in the first place.  So start with prayer.

2. Check your Motives

If you set selfish goals, you’d be better off spiritually if you didn’t accomplish them.  That’s why you need to check your motives.

3. Think in Categories

My goals are broken in five categories: 1) family 2) influential 3) experiential 4) physical, and 5) travel.  The obvious omission is a category for spiritual goals, but that is by intention.  All of my goals have a spiritual dimension to them.

4. Be Specific

If a goal isn’t measurable, you have no way of knowing whether or not you’ve accomplished it.  Losing weight isn’t a goal if you don’t have a target weight within a target timeline. 

5. Write It Down

I have a saying that I repeat to our family and our staff all the time: the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.  If you haven’t written down your goals, you haven’t really set them.  There is something powerful that happens when you verbalize a goal, whether that is in a conversation or in a journal.

6. Include Others

I used to have lots of personal goals, but I have replaced most of them with shared goals.  Nothing cements a relationship like a shared goal.  Goals are relational glue.  I’ve discovered that when you go after a goal with another person, it doubles your joy. 

7. Celebrate Along the Way

When you accomplish a goal, celebrate it.  Whenever I write a new book, for example, our family celebrates with a special meal on the day the book is released.  And I get to choose the restaurant!

8. Dream Big

Your life goal list will include goals that are big and small.  It will include goals that are short-term and long-term.  But I have one piece of advice: make sure you have a few big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs) on the list.

9. Think Long

The sad truth is that most people spend more time planning their summer vacation than they do planning the rest of their life.  Goal setting is good stewardship.  Instead of letting things happen, goals help us make things happen.  Instead of living out of memory, goals help us live out of imagination.

10.  Pray Hard

Dreaming is a form of praying and praying is a form of dreaming.  The more you dream, the more you’ll pray.  And the more you pray, the more you’ll dream!  

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markbatterson@churchleaders.com'
Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C., a multi-site church and a leading fellowship in the nation’s capital. Meeting in movie theaters and Metro stops throughout the D.C. area, NCC is attended by more than 70 percent single twenty-somethings. Mark’s weekly podcast is one of the fastest growing in America. His book, In A Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars peaked at #44 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. He has just released his newest book entitled, Wild Goose Chase: Reclaiming the Adventure of Pursuing God. He and his wife Lora live on Capitol Hill. They have three children.