How Uncovering Your “Pain Points” Can Clarify Goal Creation This Year
One of things I wanted to share as I closed out 2019 and prepared to enter 2020, was that in the last three months leading up to the end of last year, about October, I always, always, especially because my birthday is in October, but I always start to reflect and write out my goals. This has been habit-forming and ritualistic and I can’t remember having any difficulty in getting it done. I also like to pray over it around midnight the last and final day of the year.
This particular time however, when it’s usually smooth sailing, not to mention exciting, I had some struggles. It’s the time for all of us to start reflecting about all the accomplishments we’ve made, those marks we had in mind, but missed for whatever reason and the resolve to dust off your shoulders and try again. I also usually get a new planner about October too. Okay, I have five now but anywho, who doesn’t?
I was growing frustrated at not having written anything, being a writer and all, was a new experience so I had to do some work and some digging. Fortunately, I had a meeting in December with a coach and from October – December’s end, I was able to meet with two coaches and I wanted to meet with one more to compare notes, get varied perspective and simply check out their different styles. They were both stellar mind you, and I talk about their enlightenment they provided to me, in an IGTV video, here.
A coach can turn issues around and give you different sets of eyes. One thing that’s really important about coaches is how they form and ask the right questions, deep thought provoking questions and while I also do that for many people as writing coach, it’s hard to do that to yourself. You’re often to close to the issues you face and haven’t thought about them in a different way. How often do you get to talk aloud, and really listen as others can do, to what you have to say, but then have your thinking challenged to assist you in coming up with totally different things? It’s so hard.
While the coach asked a number of questions, it all came down to one very important question, simply:
WHAT ARE YOUR PAIN POINTS?
Mind blown. You know every year there are these buzz words and phrases and it seems every now and then, you hear something and you’re like I’ve heard that before, I know that, I got nothing. Simply meaning that you hear things in passing, when you’re focused on something else and it really does mean absolutely nothing to you in that moment, an thus it doesn’t seem applicable nro relevant to you, right? And that is okay. But you hear it again, and it’s like ohhhhhh. The thing is you have to get in a different mind set to hear some hidden gems and you have to pay attention.
I couldn’t receive that pain point thing, I wasn’t in any pain. I had pain and frustration (but later, in October) as a result of not being able to get my goals out.
Also, things were totally unrelated. The coach and I were having a conversation about sales, upping my game as far as selling my courses and then I was having an A-Ha moment about applying the pain point question to my development of life goals and actions. She meant pain points as a way to identify the problem for others (which would be the frustration folks experience navigating the publishing industry and knowing what to do to realize their goals of publication, and ultimately to sell books) and how I solve folks’ pain points (through my main class – but like more in depth than I’m telling you here, it’s a whole thing that I won’t list now), but you can certainly read about it, here.
So, what are the pain points in the seven areas of the usual goal setting categories?
My own goals are to write them out in seven key areas. Note, I’ve always had my writing and publishing Career as “Career # 2” so that’s what I mean when I say that, below, and I’ll also note that one of the eventual goals is to have enough in Career 2 so that it becomes Career 1 (and only) and omit the need for two altogether. Hope that made sense… So we have the following:
Career 1 (my work, work)
Career 2 (publishing/writing/speaking/coaching and teaching)
Health/Wellness
Financial
Spiritual (also includes relationships)
Education and
Travel/Leisure
So pain points, not like physical pain but it could be, but more so a recurring emotional, mental anguish, and unease, a dissatisfaction, a recurring uh, can’t get this right…UGH…. Drat, boom, dangit, meh… LOL
Doing this exercise helped me not to over think the usual goal setting methods and zero in on the main points. I had the larger goals but I couldn’t narrow down my focus.
Secondly, a few rules as far as the identification of pain points go and this exercise overall, are: For one, I didn’t want to allow myself more than 2-3 pain points per goal category. If you have too many, you’re libel to be overwhelmed, develop analysis paralysis and you end up doing nothing.
Also, IF you’re not able to get to all of them, then they may not be something you can fix completely; you’re not interested in fixing; or other things need to occur in other pain point categories to influence that particular one.
The final steps are
- After you develop the pain points in each of the categories
- List possible solutions to the pain points. You came up with two – three pain points per category, don’t limit yourself in the solutions (think crazy-radical-outta sight-it’s gonna take a million dollars-blah-blah and blah…type solutions that seem impossible).
- Maybe even a final step after the two, is to circle the most doable ones and create a more detailed plan outlining how you’ll begin to reduce and ease each of the pain points you’ve listed
One of the points of this exercise is like writing out your fears and trouble spots. You can’t confront and tackle if it’s just a big thing in your mind, usually made bigger and more fretful when you keep thinking about it. Moreover, if you believe in the power of writing things down, you can believe that whatever you need can come and can reveal itself to you in various forms, whether that’s helping to solve the issue, ease the burden of it, or just come alongside and help you.
Deciding What to Work On?
The final issue is what to work first and that depends. I know I honestly hate when people say this. Depends on what? It’s really simple, depends on what’s causing you the greatest deal of pain and is it the appropriate time to deal with that. By time, I mean, there may be some things that won’t be fixed until it’s that season – whatever that season is. Okay, so it’s a spring thing you have to worry about. But you should have developed the
- Categories
- Pain Points for each category
- 2-3 bullet points for each category
deeper dive or detailed plan (action plan) regarding implementing the solutions that you will come up for each of the 2-3 pain points to be tackled
So go through the list, maybe star the issues 1 through 5, with 5 being the greatest, most excruciating pain.
5 stars
4 stars
3 stars
2 stars, and
1 star
You can work on the issues with the highest amount of stars, which equals the greatest amount of pain. Now, while I think that’s one approach that can work, I was thinking about this and metaphorically, I likened this to the credit card debt that Suzie Orman is famous for speaking about. She always said to pay the highest balance and greatest APR credit card off first. Okay fine, but guess what, you may feel like you are getting nowhere. I think we’ve evolved into just getting going on something rather than sweating over the order of it, so you can feel like you’re getting SOMEWHERE!! So, an idea do the most starred one and do maybe another that has the lowest amount of stars. No, it’s not urgent at all but it will also give you a sense of accomplishment. Whatever you do, don’t get bogged down in trying to fix everything all at once.
That is the most important thing.
So, what are your pain points?
Share some thoughts, a pain point, your number of stars and possible solutions right here on the blog in the comments.
Cheers to Goal Clarity.
