After the tragically early passing of a friend last year at the very young age of 42, I wrote the number 42 on my hand and kept rewriting it there for days afterwards. I was stunned that someone so vital could have their life cut short at such a young age.

Right now, I have the number 42 on the side of my laptop, always in sight.  It’s not there to be macabre, it’s not even just there to remind me of this fabulous man I knew.

42 reminds me that:

1. I probably won’t have much of a say in when my last day on earth will come (difficult for a control freak). 
   

2. That day could come when I’m in my 80’s (http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/Trends/20080707-Women-live-longer-by-the-beach-men-in-the-cold.html?source=cmailer) or it may come sooner or later, either way, see point 1.
   

3. When that day comes, I do not want to look back and say “I wish I’d done…” or “if only…” or “why didn’t I make time to…”.
   

So often people ask me about how to set goals for themselves. When it comes to life’s larger goals, I use 42 and ask myself the question: “If I could transport myself forward in time to my last day on earth, what are the things I would have liked to accomplish during that time?”

When you ask yourself that question, often you’ll find a list of life goals will simply flow.

To check out one man’s adventurous search for goal achievement in his life head to: http://johngoddard.info/

To listen to a truly inspiring speech entitled “the last lecture” by Dr. Randy Pausch often spoken of as “the dying man who is teaching people to live” head here http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/wow-last-lecture.html

To see what short term goal I just achieved, check out http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/goal-achieved.html

If your goals includes travel, you might enjoy: http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/goals-need-update.html

To see how I keep track of my goals: http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/02/secret-weapons-to-success-could-be.html

http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/ and check out the final blog of “the world’s” oldest blogger, who lived and blogged into her 106^th year before her passing on the 12^th of July 2008.

Postscript: I wrote this blog last week, and then this week I was sadly informed of a distant friend, a father of two young boys, who passed of cancer at age 33. I’ve held the blog back, not even sure that I wanted to print it given the recent news. But then a conversation with this man’s close friend showed me that I needed to print this. In his last months, knowing that his last day might be very soon, this father of two took his family away and they enjoyed the trip of life time. They really lived, loved and enjoyed his last few months. My wish for each of you reading this is that you can look back and say that you truly lived as many of the months in your life as possible. Don’t wait until an illness makes you realise your mortality, 42 and now 33 remind me of that each day.

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of http://www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: http://www.kirstydunphey.com

Want to be an entrepreneur? So do a lot of people! And a lot of people go to their grave saying “I wish I’d…” and “If only I’d…”. If you’re determined not to be one of them, run through the A-Z and see if you’re on track.

Action – nothing starts without it. What are you doing today, right now (not tomorrow) to get you closer to your goals?

Bare yourself… (to yourself). Ask what it is you really want, what are you passionate about and what are you prepared to do to get there. More importantly, what are you not prepared to do to get there.

Care – Any entrepreneurial endeavour that has clients who care about the company has one leg up. Who are your raving fans? Who cares about what you do? What can you do to further cultivate that?

Dare – Risk doesn’t necessarily have to mean risky, but any entrepreneur dares where others don’t. Are you ready to be daring?

Eat up knowledge – anywhere you can and do it daily.

Friends – know who your real ones are and keep them close to you as you rise to the top.

Get up and go. No-one can train this into you. If you get up in the morning and want to go back to bed rather than off to pursue your entrepreneurial visions – get new visions that inspire you to get up and going.

Hug it out. Thank often and sincerely. Clients, staff, mentors, friends, parents and even your garbage person if they’ve helped you.

Individuality – what makes you special, unique and individual? How can you harness your special talents

Joke – keep laughing and smiling, you’ll need it for those less than perfect days.

Kill them with kindness. There is only one type of revenge you should ever enact on people who’ve slighted you in the business world, or said you couldn’t make it. Become amazingly successful! Nothing else you can do would make their stomachs turn even half as much.

Leverage – get the most talented people you can around you (people who are a heck of a lot smarter than you in their field). If you want to be all and do all yourself you’ll never have a saleable scaleable business.

Motion. Stay active in your mind and in your body. You’re no good to anyone if you’re not fit and healthy.

No. Learn how to say it. You can’t get to the top being everything to everyone.

Off switch. Find yours. Whether it’s yoga, gazing into your partner’s eyes or a marathon xbox-ing session, learn how to turn it off when you need to.

Passion! Even if your business is cleaning toilets, find something you can be passionate about within it. Whether it’s the systems, the service, the clients or even the relaxing sound of toilets flushing!

Questions – ask heaps! Find people who have done what you want to do, who drive the car you want to drive, whose staff think of them the way you want to be thought of and ask them questions.

Rough, tough and ready for critics. Got your tough outer shell on? The ride won’t always be easy and the comments about you won’t always be pretty.

Systems. Put them in place early and assess often. If your business can’t work without you – it’s not a business, it’s just a job for you.

Toxic people – get them out of your life! If you work with them, are friends with them or even have them in your family – stop hanging around them all the time. Strive for associations with positive, fabulous people who make you a better person.

Ubercool. Can you and your business be übercool? Are you setting in place the things that will make people one day say “I want my business to be just like ”

Voice. Find yours and make it heard. Publicity, press releases, media schmoozing – it’s all out there for free if you can make your voice heard.

Want a lot of stuff (success, things, travel, lifestyle, to be able to be philanthropic). Want it badly. And then get out there and get it.

X-ray like vision – use yours to stay on top of the latest trends, movements and shifts in your industry and in others. Challenge the status quo at every opportunity!

You are the CEO of your own life. What are you going to do with it?

Zorbing – do it or something you think is as much fun (skydiving, ride a roller coaster, travel to the pyramids, join the mile high club) as often as you can – why do you want to be an entrepreneur if not to do amazing things with your personal life as well.

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of http://www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: http://www.kirstydunphey.com

Goal setting can be a painful process.

As I write this, my lower thigh is bunched and labouring under thick sticky tape which is pushing my iliotibial band in a direction it just doesn't want to go. Earlier this morning for the third time in as many weeks a lovely lady with a deceptively sweet smile massaged the area sending bolts of red hot poker like pain shooting down my side and then she also stuck a few acupuncture needles in (just for good measure).

Yes indeed, this is what goal setting has done to me.

Each year for the past four years I've set myself the goal of running the Burnie 10, a 10 kilometre road race here in Tasmania, in under an hour.

Problems with this scenario:

1. I'm not a runner. The 2 kilometre race I ran in last year scared me!
2. Each and every year in my lead up training I've injured myself in some way (back, knee, ankle) causing me to drop out just before the race.

Race day arrived and my knee was beautiful… until the 2km mark when it started to ache and cause me pain. I pushed through it. At 3km I shed a surreptitious little tear because the pain was so great. I thought about stopping so many times, but I knew if I did I'd be back in the same spot again the next year, trying to achieve this goal that had eluded me for so long.

I kicked through the pain and pushed on. At the 6km mark (which was my previous mark for most distance run without stopping) I kept going, no walking for me. At 8km, despite the pain, I actually was able to speed up.

As I crossed the finish line I felt a lot of knee pain, but also a lot of personal satisfaction. The time read 1:01:40 - I was at first dejected, but then elated when I realised I didn't cross the finish line when the starting gun went off, but over 2 minutes later, leaving me with an eventual time of 59:14.

And now - I'm dealing with the knee pain that follows from pushing an injury a little too far. But every time I feel a little twinge in my knee - it reminds of me of the goal that I've finally achieved.

My 10 kilometre race run involved so many of the same steps that I've needed to achieve goals in my business life:

Know your weaknesses and plan to minimise them

In my race preparation I knew that there was going to be at least one large obstacle (my knee injury) so I did everything possible to mitigate the effect this would have (I went to my sweet smiling physio, I trained specifically to avoid the injury with my fabulous personal trainer and I rested the knee as much as I could).

In my business career, when I first started selling real estate I was a baby faced 19 year old. To mitigate the effect this could have had on my ability to succeed I took every course and read everything I possibly could, what I didn't have in experience I made up in knowledge.

Know when to take the more difficult option

When I wanted to give up (and walk) I pushed on, knowing that what I was striving for (the achievement of a four year goal) was more important than the pain in this case. Now I'm not saying that you should always exercise with injury and tough it out - but in this case, it was the right decision for me to do this.

In my business right before I opened my own real estate agency at 21, I had an opportunity to stay overseas, travel, see the world and take the easy option out. We all will be confronted with difficult choices in our working and personal lives. Taking the tougher option at the right time can open amazing doors.

Written goals are vital

Each day next to my head at my desk I had my training program which I would tick items off daily. At the bottom of my training sheet written clearly was my goal time - 59:00. I finished only seconds off despite my knee.

I write down my goals (personal and business) and I check them weekly - sometimes more often when the time frame is pressing. Three years ago I wrote down that I wanted to speak at NAR (the world's largest real estate conference.) I have studied that goal so often and I fly out to Las Vegas to do just that on Friday.

Whatever your goal, whatever your personal challenge - I wish you every success!

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia's most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books - Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: www.kirstydunphey.com