*Caution- Self awareness ahead*
Every day the little dog would spend hours barking and chasing cars after cars. His owner, a farmer would sit on the sides and do his work unbothered by his dog. One day the farmer’s friend noticed this and asked him, “Aren’t you worried about your dog chasing every car that passes?” The farmer smiled and said “Nope, I am more worried about what he will do after he catches the car” and he chuckled.
Let’s say you are standing on a bridge. The end of the bridge is where YOU want to be. It’s the outcome and your goal.
Now ask yourself:
Why is this goal desirable to me? Why would I want this outcome? What makes me chase it? For the most part you somewhere feel you are deserving of this outcome. Why wouldn’t you be, this is what you want to achieve and spend your precious time on. Now between you- that deserves and the outcome that is desirable, you need to have a PLAN of action, to take a path to meet your outcome.
The Plan: The plan has a lot of capabilities of the self like:-
Skills,
Abilities,
Environmental factors.
This will further enhance and shoot a new behaviour which is appropriate and in ecology which will bring in the alignment.
Generally, we get tired before reaching our goal because it is not appropriate and it’s not in ecology with ourselves.
Of the 100 and more paths that can lead you towards or away from your outcome, this puts us into the path of what is possible.
Now how do you choose which path?
That’s the path of possibility, what enables you to be on the path is the capabilities.
This is how you reach your outcome.
Goals are drivers which help us look into tomorrow.
Every individual at some point or the other has/had a goal. It isn’t always something big like taking a trip to all over the world or becoming the richest person, sometimes it’s as simple as wanting to get up on time everyday or reading few pages of a book before going to sleep every night.
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible to the visible”
Goals are particularly of 3 kinds. Let’s say you want to be a millionaire and buy yourself a BMW. So here your Regular goals will be how to be motivated, hydrated and balance everyday and complete smaller tasks, your Bigger goal will be to a millionaire and your Reward goal will be to buy yourself the BMW. Goals come in all shapes, sizes and realities. As we start 2020, I am sure you must have made few resolutions or goals like every year and maybe you’ll end up going through it or falling out of it. Here is a fun fact- Gym memberships raise up to 100% in the month of January and decrease at least 60% by the end of the year. All those people sure do want to be fit, but they lose their focus after a point. This blog explains why it happens. So let’s try to set goals that we are going to succeed in no matter what. The Goal First and the most important are to know your goals. Ask yourself ‘what is my goal’ Write your goal down, make it visible.
Check your goal – is it a reward goal or a goal that you are responsible for its actions. Like deciding you will work out for 20 minutes every day is an action goal as you have to take the action everyday to complete the goal. On the other hand, wanting to buy a 2bhk house or experience a luxurious trip are reward goals.
Action Goal - A series of actions you will have to take to reach that goal.
Reward Goal - Is putting it out in the universe and waiting for it to come true.
That’s the vision, the metaphor of what you see. The vision is the goal you are driving yourself towards, it could be action or reward goal.
The Value
What makes that vision possible is the value you attach with the goal.
Ask yourself -“What value am I associating with that goal?”
The value also brings out the ecology whether it is possible or not.
Why is it possible?
How is it possible?
What would happen if I get that goal?
Get all the answers before making a goal.
Look at the goal you just noted down and further ask yourself-
How will it affect my life?
How will other people respond to it?
How would I feel?
Now look at it again and ask yourself:
What would happen if I don’t get that goal?
How would I feel?
Would something really change?
Do I really want that goal?
How bad do I want that goal?
This is a good way to know if you are investing on the right goals for yourself or not.
When you decide on a goal you have to make sure you are going to stick through it for the right reasons. Keep questioning yourself:
When adversities strikes in will I still pursue the goal?
Am I going to continue with actions to reach my goal through thick and thin?
This is where the value proposition comes in.
It’s important to have a vision but value is the litmus step to your goal.
It’s the value that made Lance Armstrong go behind his goal no matter what happened, it’s the value that made Malala pick her bag up and march to school after which she got shot. It’s the value that makes Narayana Murthy to keep going when everything falls down around him.
All these people and many more overcame adversities and reached their goal as the value attached to the goal was very important to them. There must have been something so important to them in respect to that goal; they didn’t stop till they reached it.
For an instance, you see someone reading a book, you buy the same book but you don’t end up completing it. This is because the value to that goal was not enough.
On the other hand, the person finished reading that book.
Basically, you bought a book for the shelf and he bought it for knowledge.
That is the difference.
Every time you pick a goal ask your self-
‘Is this MY goal or did I borrow it from someone else?’
‘Am I taking it because of others?’
If it doesn’t serve You! – your identity, grow you, evolve you, or nurture it. Drop that goal; pick it up whenever it serves your existence.
Goal should make you bigger than who you were, which should serve and align yourself with your own congruence. It should make you better, stable, calm and flowing.
Now that you have the Vision and the Value associated with it, you have concluded that this is the reason why this goal important to you. The Method: Let’s start with the most important step- CHUNKING. Chunk your goal down to the smaller pieces, Next, you decide what you do with these pieces or as we call it the 5 D’s
Do you want to do it? – Do it yourself as these are the top priority tasks.
Do you want to delete it? – Sometimes you realize that even if you don’t do it won’t affect your bigger goal.
Do you want to delegate it? – It’s delegation with supervision. Don’t just delegate it and leave it, keep checking on it so that you get your work done in a timely fashion.
Do you want to dwell on it? – Sometimes you need to dwell on it to know it has to be done or could it get delegated.
Do you want to develop it? – You make a decision to develop an additional skill for this goal.
The method you take is very important as the method is where the resource comes in from.
Resourcefulness
The resources can be emotional resources or it can be a coach state- a state where you are composed and calm. This is called resourcefulness – this is what fills you.
Now you will need additional resources like money, technology, and mentor or more, these are called external resources.
To enable and empower you to reach to those external resources you will need a state of resourcefulness.
This is where the practice comes in play to empower, grow, anchor you to ground and stabilize you even when everything else is falling apart; that is resourcefulness.
Once you are resourceful, that’s when you come to a state of passion, compassion, empathy, value alignment or value congruence.
Now your passion is visible and you will see that people subscribe to you and your vibe.
The method you take is the key; where dreams meet logic. So you have the dream , the vision to chase that, now you need the methods or stages – this is the logical part where realists come into the pictures.
What combines the realist and the executioner is the Dreamer. The dreamer is the visionary.
✓ Set the vision
✓ Align the value
✓ Seek the method
Once you met all 3 parts, you will start getting your resources.
This will help you to bring together the value of the goal.
If you are not ready to practice the practices, you will not create the difference that creates the differences. These are strong NLP training techniques, once you put it into your muscle you’ll realize that it stays forever just like riding a bike.
Like Robert Dilts says
“That’s the difference that creates the difference”
Now you have all the tools and resources.
You know how it works, so the big question is what is stopping you?
Why haven’t you taken the first step? People say they want to learn new things but never get around it. WHY?
Find out the obstruction and the objection because somewhere it is not aligned and congruent and imbibed into the values that you bring to your goals.
Dick says “If there wasn’t an objection or obstruction you would have already got it”
Ask yourself- Why haven’t I taken the first step? Some people say they want to learn new languages or go travel different countries and more but what is STOPPING them? The Obstruction
Identify that obstruction.
Remove the negative self believe, remove and work on the concept of self and add additional resources to the state of resourcefulness. Once you do this you’ll be able to move from where you are to where you want to be.
The question now arises is what is your current state? You must be having a dream, goal, resolution but the question is where you are right now. Ask yourself and find an honest answer: Where am I right now? The key being honest, have a self talk and understand.
Present state ———> Your goal ———> Your desired state
There is a possibility that acceptance of where you are; may give you pain, but being aware so can help you to move on to better things. Where do I want to move? Better relationships, better financial health, better opportunities… The obstruction is stopping you form moving from your current state to your desired state. Let’s take a deeper dive. How does the obstruction look like? The obstruction has negative self talk, a sense of helplessness, a state of hopelessness. How do you overcome this? The bridge The state of resourcefulness, right mentors, practices, design, sponsorship which will touch you, move you and will see you and take you around these obstructions towards your goals. Once you are in the path towards your goal it’s important to have regular measurement. Measurements to know where are you — where you are going. Ask yourself: Am I being stalled? Is my team member progressing? Am I progressing? How is the progress going? When will I reach the goal?
This measurement is important. The other part is to know that you have reached your goal; otherwise you’ll be beating a dead horse even after it’s dead because; you’ll still be working towards a completed goal.
The tiniest step ahead is still progress; don’t beat yourself up about it. It doesn’t matter how small or slow it’s a PROGRESS!
If for some reason you are not being able to progress go back to the 5D’s and dwell on it, understand the reason behind it.
Sometimes when the goal is stopped or stalled you need to delete that goal and move on. It won’t be a failure but a progress of not wasting your precious time beating a dead horse.
This is an important thought. Are we sometimes chasing meaningless goals? If yes then why? Just drop it. You rather have aligned goals than merely chasing cars like the little dog without an objective.
We have limited time in this world; spend your precious time creating your identity.
As Judy put it “When the wave rises, it’s all the identity it had. Before the wave it was the sea and after the wave it goes back being one with the sea.”
So in that wave identity whatever you create stays. We don’t know what we had before this and we sure don’t know what we will have after it. It’s all going to be a vast sea.
So what are you going to do is in the tide? The flowing river of tide, pick out that moment of the wave and hold the time that you have. Build your goal which is meaningful and valuable to spend, to spread, to grow, to align and to be in ecology with the people you love the most. That’s where goals come in picture and where your family and friends will subscribe to it.
Align your goals well, in the end it’s only the sea and the wave will flow again.
If life was Google Maps, it would point out where you exactly are and where you want to go. You decide, choose and overcome your obstacles and chose the best road to your destination.
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar