Anisa Marku - The Art of Setting Smart Goals: Set Winning Goals and Live a Life of Abundance, Success and Achievement

T he A rt O f S etting

SMART G oals

Set winning goals and live a life of abundance, success, and achievement.

Anisa Marku

Copyright 2019 by [Anisa Marku]

The Art Of Setting SMART Goals

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to:

My Boys

-Thank you for always inspiring me, loving me, and bringing me joy! You are always my inspiration and motivation for everything I do.

My Best Friend

-Thank you for supporting me and my crazy ideas and never giving up on me. Thank you for being my best friend, my rock, and my partner for life. I can do anything with you by my side!

My Parents

-I am your only child but I have not been the easiest one to raise. Thank you for never turning your backs on me.

Setting goals
is the first step
in turning the
invisible
into the visible.

Tony Robbins

I am writing this book because I want to help people improve their lives. I am inspired to motivate, encourage, and help them be the best version of themselves.

It is my main goal that this book not only has a positive effect on anyone who reads it but that it also helps them achieve their own goals by following the steps that I share.

Have you ever thought of how your life would change, if you accomplished something really important?

If you havent already figured out what this big, important thing is, dont worryI would love to help you out.

This book will be your guide to find out exactly:

1. What you want to accomplish

2. Why you want to accomplish it

3. How you are going to accomplish it

Are you ready to get started? Lets go!

We all have the desire to change, improve, and create a better life for ourselves, but all too often our fears and doubts hold us back.

We think:

What can I change?

I am too old.

I dont know where to start.

Its too late for me.

The truth is:

You can always change and/or improve something in yourself and your life.

You are never too old to achieve your goals and dreams.

If you never start, you will NEVER reach the finish line.

It is never too late!

For most people, changing their mindset is more difficult than anything else. Most of the time, we are too hard on ourselves.

Many of us dont have a great support system in our life, and while that can be challenging, that shouldnt stop us from reaching our goals. After all, if we dont believe we can do something, how is someone else going to believe we can?

We have created this hamster wheel life that we just cant get out of. And if nothing changes, we will keep going in circles until the end.

I hope that by the end of reading this book you will be able to find out:

What you want to achieve/accomplish in your life. What are your goals?

The reason why you want to accomplish them. What is your WHY?

How you are going to accomplish them. What steps are you going to take?

I have always been a planner, and I have always loved setting goals for myself. But until I learned about goal setting, all of my goals and ideas about what I wanted to do with my life were just floating around in my head.

I never wrote anything down and I never thought it could make any difference.

I was completely wrong!

When I started to write down my goals and break them into smaller tasks, I immediately saw what a difference it made. Before I knew it, I was achieving my goals.

When I started college, one of my professors asked us to write down the goals that we want to achieve in five years. It was January of 2012. Here are a few goals that I had listed at that time:

Graduate college

Travel more

Visit my family

Get my citizenship

At the time, all of these things seemed impossible or very difficult to achieve. Let me explain why.

Graduate College The possibility of failure was real from day one because the odds of graduating were mostly against me.

First was the language issue. English is not my first language. I was able to communicate pretty well, but the writing and reading part was very difficult.

I was always afraid that I would not be able to understand the lecture or the assignment, which would mean that I wouldnt do very well on the tests and therefore fail some of my classes.

The second was the issue that I had so many gap years in my education. I never even graduated from elementary school. My family moved to Germany when I was in 6th grade, so I missed the chance to graduate from 8th grade (which was the end of elementary school in my country). I never finished high school either, because I decided to drop out when I was 16 years old.

My academic years could have stopped at that point. But instead, I decided to stay true to my goals.

I started college 10 years later at the age of 26, while raising two kids.

Even though all the obstacles were going through my head when I was writing down my goals, graduating from college was on the top of my list.

I wanted to make my parents, my husband, and my boys proud.

I wanted to be able to find a decent job, but mostly I wanted to make myself proud by achieving something that was really important to me.

It took me almost 5 years, but I graduated in June 2017.

Travel More My husband and I loved going on family vacation or road trips, but we werent able to travel as much as we hoped we could. There were financial issues and time constraints. My husband worked long hours and sometimes weekends as well. I had started college and most of my weekends were spent doing homework and assignments. Having only one paycheck didn't leave much to save for a vacation, either.

In the summer of 2012, my husband opened his own company. He was still busy, but he no longer had to ask someone elses permission to take time off from work. That's one of the perks of being self-employed.

We managed to take advantage of my semester breaks to travel. Over the five years, I was in college, we went to New York, Myrtle Beach, France, Belgium, Las Vegas, Albania, Florida (Disney, Universal, Fort Lauderdale, Clearwater Beach), and many road trips around Michigan.