Table of Contents

Read This First..........................................................................................3

Why Set Goals?........................................................................................ 5
Step 1: Celebrate Your Strengths & Past Victories..............................7
Step 2: Define Your Vision & Mission................................................... 9
Step 3: Design Your Ideal Self..............................................................11
Step 4: Create Your Goals & Decide Your Milestones......................13
Step 5: The Weekly Action Plan........................................................... 15
Whats Next............................................................................................ 17
About the Author...................................................................................18

Read This First

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat,
determination and hard work.
- Colin Powell
For a long period of time I was a habitual procrastinator and I
seemed to get worse with time. Whenever I needed to get
something done I just couldnt seem to get started.
Pretty soon I viewed myself as lazy and accepted that as the way I
was.
But now I know that the problem wasnt that I was a born
procrastinator. The problem was I had no direction. I had no clue
what I stood for and what I wanted to achieve. And without
direction there will be no motivation.
I believe that anyone of us can be infinitely motivated if we just
find what were meant to be doing. And that process starts with
setting your own goals. We need to shape our lives instead of
letting our lives shape us.
Ive tried every goal setting technique Ive found and what youre
about to read is a hybrid of the very best Ive discovered.
This is a blueprint of what turned me from a constant
underachiever to a highly motivated action-taker who constantly
shows up on time and get things done.
I know that this guide could potentially have just as huge of an
impact on you but its going to take some work. Youre going to
have to be honest with yourself, go deep and figure out what you
truly want to do with your life.
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The good news is that setting these kind of goals is an evolving

process which means you dont have to get them exactly right
before you can start acting on them.
In this sense going for perfection is actually an imperfect approach
as it just stalls you in starting to take action on your goals. Your
goals are going to be modified along the way either way so just do
your best going through the guide and then start taking action as
soon as possible.
I suggest reading through the entire guide once before starting to
complete the actions. This will help you get a grip of what the
guide is about and lets your mind start chewing on the material.
Youre going to need:
A pen and paper or a word processing program of some sort
A journal or calendar (if you dont have one there are plenty
of free versions out there, for example Google Calendar)
Thats it!
Oh, and when the confusion and overwhelm kicks in (it most
definitely will) just know that these feelings and thoughts are a
sign that youre learning something new. Just keep taking one step
at the time and do your best.
If any part of the guide gets you stuck just shoot me a quick
message and Ill be happy to help you out.
Lets get going, shall we?

Why Set Goals?

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change
your direction overnight
- Jim Rohn
Before any kind of meaningful life change can occur we need to do
3 things:

1. Take responsibility of our own lives

We need to realize that everything that happens in our lives is the
result of the person we have become. We need to stop blaming our
surroundings, circumstances and other people and accept full
responsibility for our own life.
If we want to see change, we need to change. Not the economy, the
society, our boss or our friends.
If we refuse to accept this and keep hoping for stuff outside our
control to suddenly change, we will inevitably see the same results
as we always have. But if we take full responsibility for our life,
the sky is the limit.

2. Set our goals

This is possibly the most valuable skill we arent taught in school.
Without goals were like a boat captain navigating without a map
or sail on the sea of life letting the currents decide where we go.
Before we can go anywhere, we need to decide where want to go.
If we dont someone else will, and they likely wont have much of
a plan in mind for us. This sounds self-explanatory yet hardly
anyone have clearly defined goals.
Some people get mixed up and dont write their goals down
because they want to live in the moment. But setting your goals is
actually the first step to doing just that.
By having your aspirations in life clearly defined you can finally
stop contemplating them and start living in the moment.
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3. Realize that all that is stopping us, is ourselves

If you are going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill
This goes back to the first point. Your personal philosophy and
mindset decides what is possible or not. Anyone whos considered
an expert at anything used to suck at what theyre doing. But they
kept doing what needed to be done anyway, one step at a time,
and so can you.
Make a commitment to your goals and rule out quitting as an
option. Dont let temporary defeat stop you. Just keep going, one
step at a time, doing the best you can at the present moment and
youll be amazed at what you can achieve.

Now is the time

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is
now.
Chinese Proverb
Now, theres nothing new under the sun. The power of goal setting
has been known for ages. The question is, will you act on it?
No matter how much inspiration I put into this guide, the sad fact
is that the majority of the people who read it still wont follow
through and create their own goals.
According to Brian Tracy only 3% of adults have the clear, written,
specific, measurable and time-bound goals. By every statistic, these
people accomplish ten times as much as the other 97%.
What Im asking you now is to turn your back on the majority and
join the 3%. You are capable of so much more than you give
yourself credit for. You just need to specify what you want, and
start acting on it.
Let this guide be the turning point at which you simply wouldnt
waste anymore time feeling lost, unmotivated and letting others
decide what to do with your life.
Lets get started!
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Step 1: Celebrate Your Strengths & Past Victories

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
- Jonas Salk
For five years, I played poker for a living. When I think back on
when I was a beginner at the game with the experience I have now
its clear to me that I used to make pretty much every mistake
possible.
I called when there was no way I had the best hand, I bluffed
when there was zero chance of my opponent folding, I was sitting
in too expensive games for my bankroll and kept playing when I
was not concentrated etc.
But as I hung in there, studied the game and got more experience
my game kept improving until one day I went from being a losing
player to a winning one. In poker, this process is called plugging
leaks in your game. The more leaks you plug, the higher your winrate will be.
Life is a lot like this. If you want to get good at anything, you need
to be okay with being a complete beginner at first. Youll have to
make tons of mistakes in the beginning but as you keep showing
up (no quitting allowed) youll keep getting better and one day
soon youll be surprised when people come to you as an expert.
The first step in the goal setting process is reflection. You need to
celebrate your past victories.
Thinking back on your life, what areas of expertise have you
acquired over the years? What do people keep asking you for
advice on? How did you get to that point?
The purpose of this step is to make you aware of your personal
strengths and accomplishments. Bringing these into awareness
will help you realize that the obstacles and challenges you
overcame is what made you proud of your accomplishments in the
end.
The clarity of what your natural strengths are will give you
motivation and help shape the path you will lay out for yourself in
this guide.
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Actions
1. Write down a list of at least 5 accomplishments from your
life that youre proud of. These can be successes from any
area of your life and it doesnt matter how big or small they
are. The important thing is you get them on paper.
2. Contemplate how you achieved each of these goals. How
much work went into them? How many obstacles did you
have to overcome to succeed? How does that proud feeling
manifest? What happens inside when you think of these
accomplishments?
3. Send an e-mail to at least 3 people (the more, the better) that
know you the best and ask them what they consider your
biggest strengths and interests to be.
4. Finally, do a free online Myers-Briggs personality test. I like
this one (please let me know if the link is not working).

Step 2: Define Your Vision & Mission

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in
finding something to live for.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In order to craft our personal vision and mission we need to start
out with the ever so popular topic of passion.
For some people passion shows itself naturally at an early age but
for most of us (me included) you have to put in some serious work
to find it.
So what is passion anyway? Its quite simply the excitement that
your heart tries to tell you about. The passion formula looks like
this:

Talent + Values + Love = Passion

Your passion will be found in the intersection of what youre
naturally good at, what your personal core values are and what
you love doing.
So in this step youll need what you learned about your strengths
in step one and combine them with your values and what you love
doing.
When you have an idea of what your passion might look like well
move on to defining your vision.
This is what Simon Sinek calls your Why. Your vision will give
you direction and serve as a source of power and inspiration.
Finally well define your mission that puts everything you do into
a bigger context that will lead to a greater sense of meaningfulness
and satisfaction as you deal with everyday life.
When youve decided your vision and mission the rest of the goal
setting process becomes much easier and coherent. All of your
other goals will align with, and strive towards this overarching
commitment.

Actions
1. Print out this list of values and scan through it. Mark all the
values that stand out and feel like a part of you. Then list
those values in order of importance and write down your top
5 values. Feel free to add any value you want that is not
included in the list if you think of anyone thats important to
you.
2. Write down everything you love doing. It doesnt matter
how silly or small or how big and impossible it seems. What
makes you the happiest in life? What gets you excited? What
would you do if you had all the time and resources possible
and knew you couldnt fail?
3. Now look at your top 5 values, the list of what you love to
do and what youve previously learned about your own
strengths. Do you see any interests that resonate with all
three? Write these down. If you feel stuck, move on to the
next action and come back.
4. Watch Simon Sineks TED talk on how great leaders inspire
action if you havent already.
5. Take a new piece of paper or create a new document on you
computer and write down your own personal vision and
mission statements. The only rules here are that they show
the way for all the other goals and that they give you a good
feeling.
Your vision should describe why you do what you do and
your mission how you do it. They dont have to be specific or
measurable, all that stuff comes later.
If you get stuck Id recommend starting with the vision
Make the world a better place and the mission To make
other peoples lives easier and then modify them as you go.
These are generic statements that most people can resonate
with.
Remember not to go for perfection; taking action is where
the gold is!

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Step 3: Design Your Ideal Self

When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I
should have been more specific.
- Lily Tomlin
In order to live in alignment with your vision and mission you
need to decide who you want to become.
To get clarity on what person you want to be you need to start
with figuring out what truly matters to you.
This requires understanding what your very own definition of
success looks like.
You see, most of us have a perception of success that doesnt even
come close to what our true values are. We chase after money,
status, security and so on without having actually thought about if
these things truly are what we are craving on a deeper level.
And if we keep chasing success that doesnt truly align with our
values, we can never be fulfilled.
So, figuring out our personal definition for success is the first step.
The next one is deciding what is most important to us in our lives.
For most people the three most important life areas are:
1. Health In my book, health is always going to be my
number one most important area in life because without it,
everything else suffers. To be able to achieve what we want
in life were always going to need a well functioning body
and mind.
2. A mission We all need to feel that we are needed. That we
play an important role on this planet whether it is through a
meaningful job, taking care of someone or something else
that gives us a feeling of being valuable.
3. Meaningful relationships To feel and function well we all
need other people to care about and that care for us. This
means having a loving and well working connection with
friends, family and people that comes into our lives.
Do these areas resonate with you? Feel free to add or replace any
or even every area to the ones that mean the most to you.

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Next youll decide on your 3 fields of action within each area. For
health, this could mean for example nutrition, exercise and
mindfulness meditation. Then youll decide what success in each
field look like and let the conditioning begin.
It's so simple and yet so powerful. The only thing required is that
whenever you find yourself in a situation where you have to make
a decision, simply ask yourself what the perfect version of yourself
would do, and then do that. Fake it until you make it. Or rather,
fake it until you become it.
This wont always work out in the beginning but you will get
better with practice and as time goes by, these once hard-to-make
decisions will become habits that you dont even think about. Rain
wont stop you from working out, tiredness wont stop you from
getting out of bed, and watching TV will no longer keep you from
studying or starting your own business or whatever you want.

Actions
1. Think about the definition of success have you been
following and why? Where did it come from? Where has it
taken you?
2. Now scrap that definition and create a new one that makes
sense to you. Use what youve picked up in the previous
chapters and write down a definition. Refine it until it makes
you proud and inspired.
3. Decide upon your 3 most important areas in life.
4. Pick 3 fields of action for each area.
5. Write down a lifetime goal for each life area. Who do you
want to be within each area to consider yourself a success?
For health this could be always putting your health first and
always working out both physically and mentally, for a
mission it could be making a living from your passion and
for relationships an example would be to always be
surrounded by passionate, interesting and loving people.
6. Image your ideal self. How would he or she go about
mastering these areas? Start faking it!

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Step 4: Create Your Goals & Decide Your

Milestones
The greater danger for most lies not in setting our aim too high and
falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark
- Michelangelo
By now you have a great understanding of what you want to
achieve. In this step well cover how youll do that.
For each of your lifetime goals you created in the last step, its time
to create five milestones. These will be goals that align with all of
the previous steps while at the same time being very specific and
measurable.
The key here is to find goals that are inspiring to you. If your goal
seems to take more energy than it provides, its counter productive
and in fact the very opposite of a goal. Scrap it or refine it until it
truly motivates you to act on it every day.
If the thought of completing a marathon a year from has you
excited, then go for it! Life is an experiment and too short not to
try what youre capable of. Also, doing the impossible is the
biggest self-growth nitroglycerin there is.
If a marathon doesnt jive with you then find something else that
does. Get creative! There are countless ways to push your
boundaries whatever your current situation is. Just make sure
youre actually pushing yourself with every goal.
These goals have to be a lot more specific than the previous ones.
It's important that you know exactly how and on what date the
goal is going to be completed. It also has to be completely within
your control (you cant control how much weight you lose, but
you can control how many calories you eat and how often you
show up at the gym).
Make sure the goal contains a deadline and is written in a present
tense with action verbs and specific details. Going along with the
marathon example it should read:
On the 20th of April 2014 (deadline) I am (present tense)
completing (action verb) the Virgin London Marathon (specific
details).
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Actions
1. Make a list of at least 5 things within each life goal area that
youd like to achieve within the next ten years. Big or small.
This could be taking a course in meditation, reading a book
on marketing psychology or climbing a mountain. Its totally
up to you!
2. Write down a 1, 3, 5 or 10 next to each goal. A one means you
think you could accomplish this goal within one year. A
three means you should pull it off in three years time. A five
within 5 and a ten within 10 years. Make sure you have at
least one goal for each time frame.
3. Rewrite the milestones so that theyre inspiring and
energizing to you. Make sure the they contain deadlines and
are written in present tense with action verbs and specific
details.
4. For each milestone, ask yourself what it would feel like to
complete it. Come up with at least three reasons to follow
through and write them down next to the respective
cornerstones.
5. Ask yourself what needs to be done in order for you to turn
every cornerstone into reality. What research needs to be
done? What do you need to learn? Where do you have to
improve? If you need help from others, then who and how
can you get in touch with them, and so on.
As always, dont get hung up on this step though, write
down what comes to mind and keep moving to the next step.
Things will become clearer as you start taking action on your
goals.

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Step 5: The Weekly Action Plan

A goal without a plan is just a wish.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupry
The final step is what transforms all of your goals into reality by
taking massive action. This is where the rubber hits the road, as
they say.
Its time to break your milestones down into manageable pieces
and put them into your weekly planning. If you dont have a
journal or calendar of some sort, now is the time to get serious
about your time.
"Don't trust your memory, keep a journal."
- John Earl Shoaff
Besides the nice benefit of actually remembering your ideas the
journal has another very important function. What were going to
do next is turn your milestones into small chunks that you get to
cross off your list everyday. This small action of getting to check
that next thing off will serve as a reward that lets your brain turn
your progress into a habit.
It may not sound like much of a reward if you havent tried this
before but youll quickly see what Im talking about if you try it.
As soon as you get into the groove of checking things off, youll
begin to have a small craving for not leaving any boxes unchecked.
If you manage to check off everything on your list by the end of
the day youll have a great feeling of accomplishment that youll
want to repeat again and again.
Keeping a journal will also give you a great way of looking back
and analyze what worked and what didnt so that you can
effectively improve your planning for the upcoming week.
I usually go through my weekly planning on Sundays. It takes me
about an hour to connect with my vision and goals as well as get
total clarity of what Ill want to achieve the upcoming week. If
Sundays are no good for you feel free to do your planning on
whichever weekday you want as long as you make sure youll be
consistent and do it every week.
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Actions
Create a weekly ritual devoted to you. This will be your special
time to reflect on the past week and get you ready for the next one.
The process wont take more than an hour and will save you those
60 minutes many times over. Preferably sit somewhere nice and
quite with your favorite beverage at hand and go through the
following steps in your journal:
1. Connect to your vision and life goals Take a deep breath,
close you eyes and imagine that youve already achieved all
of your goals and become the person you want to be. Notice
how good it feels. Let the pleasant feeling linger for a minute
and then come back.
2. Revise your goals Do your goals still feel right and
inspiring to you? If no, give them the necessary tweaks.
3. Celebrate last week List at least 10 things that you
accomplished that youre proud of. It doesnt matter how big
or small.
4. Remember the major lessons Write down any key
learnings from the passed week. Major lessons, meaningful
quotes, sources of inspiration, people youd like to connect
with and so on.
5. Analyze what didnt happen What big things didnt you
manage to pull off? Write down what didnt happen like you
wanted it to and how you can improve for next time.
6. Define to your biggest outcomes What needs to happen
the coming week to make progress on your milestones?
Decide on a maximum of 7 outcomes and write them down.
7. Add the other stuff What else needs to get done?
8. Get it on your calendar Pick your most important tasks
and schedule them throughout the week. Not more than 3
tasks a day. Make sure your tasks are super specific and that
you know when theyre done. Add them to your calendar in
a way that allows you to check it off when youre done.
9. Fill in the gaps Fit in the little things from your to do-list.
Ask yourself who you can help this week and who can help
you. Make a note of how and when in your calendar.
10.Check weekly planning off your list Make sure you plan
out when to do your next weekly planning session and then
congratulate yourself on taking action on your life goals once
again. Well done!

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Whats Next
If youve read through the guide Id like to congratulate you on a
job well done! If you havent completed the actions for each step
now is the time to do it.
Dont expect to complete all of the exercises in one sitting. Setting
your goals will (and should) take serious effort and a lot of time.
Simply do your best completing each step, do what you can right
now and keep coming back to the guide until youve completed it.
Also remember not to go for perfection. Your vision and your goals
will evolve with you so theres no point in trying to figure out how
to make them perfect before allowing yourself to move to the next
step. Youll look everything over in your weekly planning anyway
so dont sweat it.
Once youre done I recommend putting your goals somewhere
you can see them everyday. This will help remind and condition
your brain to focus on whats truly important to you.
Also get some accountability if it feels right to you. Tell a selected
group of people about what youre trying to achieve and have
them check in on your progress once in a while. Reaching goals
tend to be a lot easier if we tell others about them.
If youre having troubles coming up with goals Id suggest you
pick up a book within that particular field and make it a goal to
finish it. If you dont know what you want your mission to be,
borrow a book on passion or purpose from the library. That will
certainly get you going and if it doesnt then just get another book.
Refuse to give up on yourself and your goals.

Moving Forward
Make sure youre on the Selfication newsletter so that youll
receive free weekly resources that keep you on track on your
personal transformation quest.
Oh, and Id really appreciate it if you shared this guide with your
friends. Youre free to distribute it in whatever way you want.

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About the Author

For about five years, I played poker online for a living. From the
outside looking in, it seemed like a pretty sweet lifestyle. I was
making a good amount of money, I was my own boss and I could
work from anywhere as long as there was an Internet connection.
But I still had a feeling of discontent that kept getting stronger as
time passed. I felt like there was something else I should be doing
with my time but as I couldnt figure out what that was, I kept
going.
Then disaster struck. My dad unexpectedly passed and I was
devastated. As I was trying to piece my life back together I realized
I just couldnt ignore the feeling of discontent anymore.
I was lost and didnt know what to do. Luckily I stumbled across
and joined an extensive course on personal development and
mental training and since then I havent looked back. In 2014 Ill be
a certified mental trainer.
Now Im on a mission to show others what Ive learned through
my studies and my own experience in personal transformation.
This guide is a direct result of what Ive learned about the
importance of having a vision and setting proper goals in life. It is
what I wish someone had shown me when I was trying to figure
out what to do with my life.

Feedback
If you have any feedback or questions, do
not hesitate to email me at
patrik@selfication.com.
Id love to hear what you have to say,
even if its just a simple hello
All the best,
Patrik

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