In Part 1 of this installment, I talked about my sister Kim sacrificing much in order to reach her big goal of becoming a Physician Assistant. Part 2 talks about another ingredient to reaching a big goal -“Chunking” your goal down.
A big goal is called such for a reason. It is BIG! Here are some examples of big goals…
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Losing 30 pounds or more
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Changing careers
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Starting a business
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Running a marathon
Any of these goals can seem daunting if you don’t break them down into smaller sub-goals. Here are some of the sub-goals Kim needed to reach in order to complete the gigantic goal of becoming a PA.
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Research career – Before she could pursue any other steps, she had to see if this was the field for her. This included talking to people in the field as well as reading up on the requirements.
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Finishing up pre-requisites – Kim hadn’t been in school in years so this “sub-goal” took a while!
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Getting accepted into a program – This included checking into, contacting, and applying to different programs.
Again, these are just some of the steps. The “getting accepted” part alone included other things like getting letters of recommendation and such. Just think. All of these things are required to happen before even starting PA school.
While it may seem like a lot, it’s much more manageable when you break it into chunks.
Backwards Planning
One simple way of breaking any large goal down is something called backwards planning. Picture yourself having finished your goal (that alone is useful) and write down all the steps it took you to get there. This is your master list. Next, complete each item from your list one at a time. You can complete any goal with this method.
I know Kim personally (obviously). She decided what she wanted and went after it. She could have made a million excuses (as we all tend to do) of why she couldn’t do it. However, she persevered and completed what she set out to do.
If you have a big goal that you want to pursue…just do it!