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Knowledge Portal/
GOALS MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL
By: Dr. Tony
Alessandra
(Philippine Daily Inquirer, January 23, 2005)
There’s an old saying:
“Most people aim at nothing in life… and hit it with amazing
accuracy.” It’s a sad commentary about people, but it’s true. It is
the striving for and the attainment of goals that makes life
meaningful. Lewis Carroll stated this point beautifully in “Alice in
Wonderland:”
Alice: Mr. Cat, which of these paths shall I take?
Cheshire Cat: Well, my dear, where do you want to
go?
Alice: I don’t suppose it really matters.
Cheshire Cat: Then, my dear, any path will do!
No matter what kind of traveling you’re doing, whether it’s through
life or across the country by car, if you don’t know where you’re
going, you’ll never know if you’re arrived. Taking just any road will
leave your fulfillment to chance. That’s not good enough.
People who have no goals feel emotionally, socially, spiritually,
physically, and professionally unbalanced. This can only cause
anxiety. People who have goals are respected by their peers; they are
taken seriously. Making decisions that affect the direction of your
life positively is a sign of strength. Goals create drive and
positively affect your personality.
THE THREE-PERCENT SOLUTION
Time magazine reported on a national survey several years ago that
only three percent of those surveyed had written personal goals; 97
percent of the people had no goals at all or had only thought about
them. They had not committed their goals to writing. Interestingly,
the three percent who had written goals were found to have
accomplished much more than any of the 97 percent.
STEPPING STONES TO GREATNESS
Achievements come from awareness, which starts with evaluating your
strengths and weaknesses in the light of your current situation. You
then expand your beliefs (assumptions) to accept more goals for
yourself. This leads you to set plans and expand your actions to
eventually achieve your goals. The model for this process is:
Awareness > Beliefs > Goals > Plans >
Actions > Achievements
One step leads to another. After an achievement, you re-evaluate
yourself and find that each new feather in your cap makes you feel
capable of accomplishing more and more. Your beliefs (assumptions)
then expand, making more goals possible. The effect gains momentum and
grows like a snowball rolling downhill. In this way, greatness is
achieved through small stepping stones.
RULES OF GOAL-SETTING
Most people, when asked, “What are your goals in life?” say something
like, “To be happy, healthy, and have plenty of money.” On the surface
this may seem fine. As goals leading to actions, however, they just
don’t make it. They don’t have the key ingredients necessary to make
them effective, workable goals.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE PERSONAL
This means your goals must be uttered with sincerity. It must be
something you want to do rather than something you think you should
do. Know your reasons for having the goal. Whether you want to achieve
something fro status, money, or good health is secondary as long as
you want it badly enough to work hard for it.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE POSITIVE
Try not to think of green elephants! You can’t do it. It’s an
automatic response to think of the thing you’re told not to think
about. This is because the mind cannot think of something when told
to. We tend to focus on ideas and actions from a positive framework.
When you think a negative thought such as “I will not smoke today,”
your mind perceives it as “I will smoke today.” You end up thinking
more about smoking than if you phrased it differently. “I will breathe
only clean air today” is a statement that serves the same purpose and
is more effective.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE WRITTEN
Writing a goal down causes effects that are a bit difficult to
explain. It does nonetheless, prove effective. Written goals take a
jump in status being nebulous thought (which you didn’t care enough
about to bona fide entities on paper. Perhaps their being written
serves as a visual reminder and, thus, continually reconfirms their
importance. Another possibility is that they can be seen in the
statement from the movie “The Ten Commandments:” “So let it be
written, so let it be done.” When things are “put in writing,” they
become official in our minds. A written goal strengthens out
commitment to accomplish it.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE SPECIFIC
If you set your goal by saying “I will increase my sales next year,”
chances are you won’t do it. You need to be specific to avoid the lack
of commitment that comes with being vague. A more workable and
motivating goal would be, “I will increase my sales next year by 10 to
15 percent.” This revised statement has several advantages. It defines
the increase that you are striving for as well as the range of the
desired increase. Giving yourself some leeway is more realistic than
expecting to hit your goal at exactly 15 percent.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE A CHALLENGE
A goal must motivate you to work harder than you have in the past. It
must move you forward. Set your goals just beyond your reach so that
you’ll have to stretch a bit. The more you stretch, the limber your
goal-achieving abilities will become.
YOUR GOAL MUST BE REALISTIC
Everything is relative to time and space. What is unrealistic today
may be totally within reasons five years from now. For years it was
believed that the faster a man could run a mile was in four minutes.
It was unrealistic to aspire to running any faster until Dr. Roger
Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. Since then hundreds of
runners have done the same. In any field, we never really know what
the upper limits are. How, then, do we define realistic?
For our purposes, the best definition must come from you and your
values. You must ask yourself, “What price I am willing to pay to
accomplish this goal?” You should always weigh the payoffs and the
sacrifices involved before coming to a conclusion. Being realistic is
ultimately your decision.
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