Fifty Shades of Goals

Nothing titillating here. Just the title. Sorry.

This time of year, I usually write something about goal setting, Black Belt Mind, etc. This year though I wanted to do something completely different. I want to be very open and honest and share some of my goals with you. As an exercise, I want to share fifty goals. Some of them have been well formed for quite a while, some I am writing for the first time today. I’ll eventually add them as a separate page on the website (they may even find their own website someday).

1. School: Have 100 active students training.
2. School: Have dedicated facility with two indoor classrooms (with access to open air), good floor for falling, changing rooms, viewing area, and outdoor training area.
3. Business: Offer a class for children in the foster care system.
4. Business: Train a staff (receptionist, assistant, instructors) to handle day to day tasks so that I can focus on leading the school forward.
5. Business: Adequate income from school to cover my salary plus other expenses.
6. Personal: Move to a house that I like. (Four bedrooms, two baths, fenced yard, training area, big dog).
7. School: Start seed schools in Anderson, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne.
8. School: Develop fitness program for adults with Kuk Sool Weapons training.
9. Business: (Shared with a local martial art friend) Have a yearly Martial Art Expo where local schools come together to do a cooperative demonstration and festival.
10. Personal: Reach Fifth Degree Black Belt before I retire.
11. School: Travel to and train in every Kuk Sool Won school in the country.
12. School: Travel to and train in Kuk Sool Won schools on every continent.
13. Business: Start a school that helps young people explore occupations and careers that appeal to them. Arrange internships that take place BEFORE years of schooling to see if they have the aptitude and enjoy the field before they begin serious study.
14. Business: Have a facility that includes my martial art school, small cafe, cultural center, theater (showing classic films), and a modern fitness center.
15. Business: Redefine “modern fitness center” to mean “no machines”, lots of open space, gymnastics equipment, free weights, kettle-bells, club-bells, yoga classes, acupressure and massage classes, and dance classes (not for me).
16. Personal: Reduce body fat to 10% by June.
17. Personal: Achieve 100 push-ups in a single set.
18. Business: Have an impact on the Muncie community so that people are more likely to work together towards shared goals and peaceful resolutions.
19. Business: Develop professional relationships that enable me to reach more people who share my vision of a happier, healthier community.
20. Business: Build a community garden at the Senior Center. Have it be organic and share the produce with the clients and neighborhood.
21. Business: Replace the unused horse shoe pits at the Senior Center with knife throwing targets. Conduct knife throwing seminar and donate sets of throwing knives.
22. School: Offer a Kuk Sool Won for Seniors class at the Senior Center. Teach a modified version of hyung and techniques with very low impact.
23. Business: Design a graphic wrap for the KSWHHR that will be a rolling advertisement for the school.
24. Personal: Build a computer for the school that will look cool and be super-functional to make all of the video and graphic design that I need it to.
25. Personal: Attain a 90% Paleo/Primal lifestyle by the end of January.
26. Personal: As my kids leave the nest, keep up contact with them and make sure that they talk to each-other.
27. School: Design systems to keep people interested in their training.
28. Personal: Spend Christmas on the beach in Hawaii with my wife.
29. Personal: Break a head-high board with a jump spin kick.
30. Personal: Achieve 180′ splits.
31. Business: Create a foundation that will work to eliminate the cycle of addiction and poverty in populations in Muncie.
32. Personal: Leave a legacy for my family that includes the ability to provide for themselves, to manage their own lives, and to write their own destinies.
33. Business: Adapt and develop systems for running my martial art school that take advantage of discipline and my natural sense of order and “rightness”.
34. Business: Write an iPhone app that will help people keep track of and log their Kuk Sool training.
35. Business: Create and share with other Kuk Sool Won school owners a catalog of ad copy and images to aid in marketing. Track performance of these items across so that that information can be shared as well.
36. Personal: Write and publish a series of books for Young Adults about teens training in martial art.
37. Personal: Write and publish a book about flying (like Superman, not like Rutan).
38. Personal: Learn to talk to my wife when she needs me to, and not when I have to.
39. Personal: Plant a natural garden to learn the local plants that have food and medicinal value.
40. Personal: Meditate daily.
41. School: Visit and train in a Buddhist temple in Korea.
42. Personal: Take a vacation on a sailing vessel of some kind (wind powered).
43. Personal: Learn to swim.
44. Personal/Business/School: Stop listening to people telling what I SHOULD be doing, and do what I KNOW to do.
45. Personal: Take a trip with Chip and Kristofer to hike the Grand Canyon.
46. School: Have two schools in Muncie, one North and one South.
47. Personal: Change from coffee to tea (nobody ever complains about “tea breath”).
48. Personal: Identify and eliminate remaining addictions (sugar, caffeine, wheat, etc.).
49. Business: Remember that I am in responsible, not the economy, market, or other unseen factors.
50. Personal/Business/School: Double this list for next year.

I have just one more thing to say.

Holy cow that was hard.

At any rate, I reserve the right to edit this list. I might add time lines and I might not. Please don’t respond with how my goals should be S.M.A.R.T. or anything else along those lines. Not interested.

Other, constructive input I welcome wholeheartedly! And, of course, instructor that I am, I challenge you to do this exercise as well.