Drop Your Goals (And Manage Your Life) by Michel Fortin is a book written over a decade ago as the author was going through some tough times.

The result is a powerful look at how to stop setting goals and to start looking at your priorities and values instead — called “guides” rather than “goals.”

It’s a bit spiritual and metaphysical in nature, so please read with an open mind. However, the strategies it offers are real and practical.

I highly recommend that your read this book, which is brought to you free, and start using the G.O.A.L. method outlined in the book, with templates at the end.

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Michel Fortin: People have egos and it’s normal and it’s natural and we all have things that are near and dear to every single person. People will fight for what their egos tell them that they need to fight for.

I’m a very humble person. I always like to take the low road. I do like the approval. I do like the limelight. But, if I feel that somebody else can take it for me, if I feel that if there is something that I can do, that it takes away from me, but it makes somebody else’s life better, I will do that. That’s a really hard lesson to learn in humility.

Whenever you look at, for example, some of the discussion boards that I’m participating in, sometimes you get these really fierce battles. And there was a couple of times when people actually were against some of the things that I’ve either actually said or had done.

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“The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what’s important and what’s not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. As the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what’s going on outside.”
– Robert Stuberg

“First, all relationships are with yourself — and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life — the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die — is with yourself.”
– Peter McWilliams

Remember that your inner self is your greatest source of all that feeds you along the road of life. It’s what builds you as a person. It’s your values, your priorities, your mind, and especially your peace of mind. Most important, it’s your self-image. Since your image is a mere reflection of your self-image, then what goes on outside of you is an indication of what goes on inside.

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“Are you green and growing, or ripe and rotting?”
– Ray Kroc (Founder of McDonald’s)

What is a problem? There’s a saying, which says that obstacles are what happens when you take your eyes off your goals. I don’t agree because problems can occur even when you are focusing on your goals. However, I would certainly agree that obstacles are what happens when you take your eyes off your priorities. In fact, to the congruent person, problems are not problems but considered as growing pains.

You are always growing no matter what. Change is, in essence, the result of growing. A “Help Wanted” ad caught my eye when it said: “We embrace change by hiring people who create it.” We do create our own changes. We are always growing, always evolving, always changing. Therefore, since we can not stop that growth, the key to living a fulfilling life is to choose how to grow and to grow in the right direction.

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“There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
– Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.”
– Miguel de Cervantes

In everything you do or want to do in life, you are always governed by law and not by chance. Natural laws are principles or explanations of why things are the way they are. Principles defined by Webster are “fundamental laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, however, that is the foundational principle to all success.

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“Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.”
– Kenneth Hildebrand

While statistics prove that 90% of heart attacks happen on Monday mornings, it goes to show that motivation doesn’t come from work. In reality, most people find themselves working in jobs they hate.

Some wake up in the morning feeling lethargic and hit the snooze button one too many times. Some work only “for the weekend” and take more time to prepare their vacations than they do their own lives. And some who become “workaholics” end up working themselves either out of a job or into a grave. In short, getting motivated by one’s work is impossible. In fact, getting motivated by anything outside of oneself is impossible.

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“Perfect self-expression will never be labor; but of such absorbing interest that it will seem almost like play.”
– Florence Scovel Shinn

In Succeeding Through Inner Strength, Dr. Nathaniel Branden says that people unconsciously lower their self-esteem through their goals.

They usually start by writing down some nebulous wish and may start working on it with the best of intentions. They may even know exactly what they want and work really hard in order to get it. However and more often than not, they quit and do so sometimes just as fast as they have written it down.

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