Pictures of planners, calendars with post-its sprinkled this way and that. 

Monthly goals, weekly, goals, daily goals. SMART Goals.

January is a happy, goal-setting month for most, but for some that can feel like a drag.

For creative visionaries, like you, sometimes all that granular planning makes you feel stuck, uninspired and bored.

You know you have to make a plan, but does that mean it has to feel like you’re back in school with a ton of rules to follow?

I’m here to tell you it.does.not!
Yes, SMART goals are crucial, but here’s what you can use first to make it fun again. (Warning, the name isn’t so PC, but the concept rock solid!)

INTRODUCING D.U.M.B. GOALS

Have you heard of DUMB Goals? While I don’t love the word “dumb” and if you’re like me, please don’t be offended. It’s just a harmless little acronym and I’m going to break down what each actuslly letter represents.

D.U.M.B. goals represent that step you take before you even think about your SMART goals and are really important to take into consideration.*

Let’s break it down to the ground, shall we?

So the D stands for Dream Driven

Consider what ideas or visions you can muster that are beyond your immediate comprehension. What can you dream up that’s big, larger than life? This is all about drumming up your big audacious dream or your hairy scary goal. This is all about claiming the impossible. It’s sailing around the world, when it was thought to be flat. It’s having the idea to send a man to the moon even though the technology to do so didn’t yet exist. You see, the idea, the audacious dream has to happen first before the innovation, miracles and magic can happen. So what do you dream up when you really let yourself dream the impossible dream? So exciting, right?

Next the U stands for Uplifting

Whatever your goal is, make it uplifting and make sure it lights you up. Just like you do with affirmations, you want to state your goal in a positive way. Pose it in a way that is uber attractive to you. Instead of setting the goal to “stop hanging around emotional vampires”, instead say, “I now surround myself with supportive individuals who believe in my mission, my abilities and my goals”. Now that’s uplifting!

The M stands for Method-Friendly 

The idea behind method friendly is that you can create practices around and toward reaching the Dream Driven goal you identified in step one. What could you do in your everyday life that you create a practice or ritual around? For example. If you want to feel more confident maybe you practice eradicating negative and critical thoughts of others. If you tend to be hyper critical of others guarantee you’re 100X worse to yourself. You’ll find that if you develop a practice of being less critical of others it will actually boost your own self-esteem. Once you create a practice around that, it will become second nature to you.

B is for Behavior Driven 

To further help you in your practice, you can create triggers around the behaviors you want manifest in your life (like being less critical, for example). One of the best behavior driven triggers to create as an entrepreneur is creating a morning ritual. For example, every morning when you wake up, drink a glass of lemon water, meditate for 30 minutes to an hour and write down your goals for the day. It’s the same thing every day and the trigger is your alarm clock going off. This is how you habitualize your behaviors that support your big Dream Driven Goal.

So that’s how you can create D.U.M.B. goals to support your vision or your big dream. What can you do to incorporate some D.U.M.B. goal methods into your everyday life?

Want even more help in create your dreams for 2016? Enter your name and email so you never miss out on this pertinent information!

*idea inspired by  Brendon Burchard