All goals are not created equal. To set goals that truly lead to a flourishing life, you need an approach that ensures clarity, contribution, and action. That’s where the Excelerated Life™ practices come in.
Title Photo By Christine Gretland
Building on a Strong Foundation: The Path to Meaningful Goals
The key to a flourishing life isn’t just setting goals — it’s setting the right goals and ensuring they align with what truly matters. Excelerated Focus™, Excelerated Contribution™, and Excelerated Goal Setting™ work together to help you turn aspirations into action.
Before a tree can reach skyward, it must establish deep, sturdy roots. The same is true for living an Excelerated Life™. You need a strong foundation before you can stretch toward ambitious goals.
That’s where the Foundation principles of Get On Solid Ground and Happiness/Positivity come in. Get On Solid Ground ensures you have stability – physically, mentally, and emotionally – so you’re not attempting to set goals from a place of confusion, disorder, or uncertainty. Meanwhile, Happiness/Positivity provides the fuel because research shows that we’re more productive, creative, and resilient when we cultivate positivity.
But a strong foundation alone isn’t enough. Once you’re steady, you need a Framework to build on, one that helps you move forward while increasing your ability to be outstanding, first-rate, and exceptional. For this, we turn to the principle of Goals and Goal Setting.
Once your foundation is strong, goal-setting becomes the way you go about creating a life of flourishing, meaning, purpose, and Service.
So let’s step back and look at how we can set and pursue BIG (Bold, Important, Gratifying) goals using the Excelerated Life™ approach: ensuring that your goals align with your true desires (Excelerated Focus™), create meaningful impact (Excelerated Contribution™), and are structured for success (Excelerated Goal Setting™).
Why Goals Matter
“Success is goals. Everything else is commentary.” ~ Brian Tracy
Why are goals and goal setting necessary parts of creating your Excelerated Life™? The short answer is “to give you a target to aim at and something to focus on”. Because, as Yogi Berra famously said: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” We must have a target to focus on and a plan to measure our progress and know when we get off track. It is possible to achieve some desires without a clear goal, but it is rather hit-or-miss and takes much longer than necessary.
In Lead The Field, Earl Nightingale, radio personality, speaker, and writer, says: “To understand the subject, and the importance of goal setting, we have to realize that it is the very basis of any success. It is, in fact, the very definition of success. The best definition of success I’ve ever found goes like this: ‘Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal.'”
But not all goals are created equal. To set goals that truly lead to a flourishing life, you need an approach that ensures clarity, contribution, and action. That’s where the Excelerated Life™ practices come in.
The Excelerated Life™ Approach to Goals and Goal-Setting
In the Framework principle of Goals and Goal Setting, the three practices are Excelerated Focus™, Excelerated Contribution™, and Excelerated Goal Setting™. These practices work together as a powerful framework for setting and achieving meaningful goals. Each plays a distinct role, but they are interconnected, reinforcing and enhancing one another.
Excelerated Focus™ – Aligning Actions with Your True Desires
The first practice is Excelerated Focus™ – aligning actions with your true desires. Before setting goals, you must know what truly matters to you. Excelerated Focus™ helps you align your actions with your values, passions, and long-term vision.
Without focus, goal-setting can feel scattered or uninspired. You may set goals that aren’t truly meaningful, leading to frustration, lack of motivation, and eventually giving up. Focus ensures that the goals you set through Excelerated Goal Setting™ are aligned with your deepest desires and purpose. It also helps direct Excelerated Contribution™, ensuring that your achievements do not just include personal success but also allow you to make a difference.
For example, if your true desire is to live a healthier lifestyle, Excelerated Focus™ helps you stay committed to that vision, ensuring your goals are aligned with long-term well-being rather than just short-term fixes.
Photo by Alexander Nadrilyanski
Excelerated Contribution™ – Achieving Meaningful Objectives While Giving Back More Than You Take
True success isn’t only reaching personal achievements; it means making an impact as well. It’s a way we make our world a better place. This practice ensures that your goals contribute positively to others, whether through mentorship, leadership, service, or innovation.
Focus ensures your contribution is meaningful. Once you have Excelerated Focus™, you can see how your personal aspirations connect to the broader purpose. Then, goal setting channels contribution into action. It’s one thing to want to make a difference; it’s another to set concrete, achievable goals that allow you to do so.
Let’s say your goal is to advance in your career. Excelerated Contribution™ encourages you to do so in a way that helps others — perhaps by mentoring colleagues, improving workplace culture, or sharing knowledge.
Excelerated Goal Setting™ – Planning and Achieving BIG Goals
The practice of Excelerated Goal Setting™ provides the structure and strategy to turn vision and contribution into reality. It is, as they say, “where the rubber meets the road.” It involves setting BIG (Bold, Important, Gratifying) goals, breaking them into steps, and taking action.
Focus ensures that you set the right goals. Without Excelerated Focus™, you might set goals that are impressive but ultimately unfulfilling. Contribution gives your goals meaning beyond yourself. When you tie your goals to helping others or making a positive impact, they become more motivating and rewarding.
For instance, if your goal is to start a business, Excelerated Focus™ ensures it aligns with your passions, Excelerated Contribution™ encourages you to create value for others, and Excelerated Goal Setting™ helps you break it down into achievable steps.
Working Together in Action
Think of these practices like a tree:
- Excelerated Focus™ is the root system — it grounds you in what truly matters.
- Excelerated Contribution™ is the trunk — it gives your growth purpose and strength.
- Excelerated Goal Setting™ makes up the branches and leaves — it’s how your efforts expand and bear fruit.
When all three are in place, you’re not just setting goals, you are creating a life of flourishing, well-being, meaning, purpose, and Service.
Create Your Life
“Setting and achieving goals is one of the most important skills anyone can possess…And because humans alone possess the unique gift of prospection – imagining the future – having the knowledge and tools to make those dreams come true is a superpower everyone wants.” ~ Caroline Adams Miller
As Caroline Adams Miller reiterates in her book, Big Goals (not to be confused with our BIG Goals), goal-setting is a key ingredient for a flourishing life. When you put the practices of Excelerated Goals and Goal Setting – Focus, Contribution, and Goals – to use, you are beginning your journey toward well-being, flourishing, and achievement. You can make a difference and, hopefully, give back more than you take. And it starts with these three practices.
In the coming weeks, we’ll look at each of these practices in detail. For now, begin to think about a BIG goal that could make a difference for you, your family, or your community. Let it excite you and give you the motivation to begin. You have the foundation. Now, let’s begin to build the framework. It’s how you embrace your Excelerated Life™!
What is one BIG (Bold, Important, Gratifying) goal that excites you right now? How does it align with your values and desired contribution?
Which of the three practices — Focus, Contribution, or Goal Setting — do you need to strengthen the most to make real progress?
Share your ideas by leaving a post below.
Goals and Goal Setting is the first Framework principle for creating your Excelerated Life™, a life of flourishing and well-being, and a life of meaning, purpose, and service.
Read more about the Excelerated Life™.
Resources:
Miller, MAPP, Caroline Adams. Big Goals. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2025.
Nightingale, Earl. “Lead The Field.” PDFDrive. Asaha Inc., . Web. Date July 17, 2020. PDF file.
https://www.pdfdrive.com/lead-the-field-e186040772.html
This blog post includes research information and suggestions provided by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. To learn more about ChatGPT and its capabilities, you can visit the OpenAI website.