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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