How To Pick Your Goals And Get Started
The funny thing with most goal setting guides is that you are usually told to form a life long, 25 year plan and work your goals back from there and you will achieve a magnificent life. Well I’ve been there and tried that. The problem is that you truly don’t know the person you are going to want to be in 25 years. If you are living life fully, you never know what experience might turn all your best-laid plans on their ears!
10 years ago I was in the Canadian infantry and my goal was to become a sniper, crawl around in the jungles of panama and save the world. Now I’m writing self-help books. How does that work?
Life has a habit of changing and that means you and your goals will too. Why do you think there are so many divorces? People grow, they evolve and they become new creatures. Sometimes they turn into creatures that just don’t see eye to eye on things anymore. Their goals and expectations for life change.
What I am trying to say is that while it’s nice to set goals and know where you are heading on this trip, sometimes you just decide to change your course because the old destination doesn’t interest you anymore. Strange, but that’s just the way it goes. We change our minds about what we like and enjoy. We change and so our goals change in time too.
You’re probably thinking, “Great, now what am I supposed to do with that?” Well, here is a way of setting goals that you’ll never regret.
Enjoy Everything Or Don’t Do It
Here is one of the most important things I have ever learned. It doesn’t just apply to setting goals either. Ready? Here is is, “Enjoy what you are doing at all times.” If you don’t like something, get it out of your life. Get it out of your life or at least have a plan that you can start on immediately that will change your circumstance.
I honestly feel that people concentrate way too much on the end point of goal setting. The result or the payoff if you will. What ends up happening is a lot of investment in an usually unpleasant activity in the hopes that all that agitation will have a payoff once the goal is achieved. HOPEFULLY.
The flip side would be to always do something that you enjoy and then if the payoff comes, great. If there is no payoff then you were happy the whole time and in fact, that is really the payoff you were after anyway.
The only reason we set goals in the first place is to achieve something at the completion of the goal that will either cause us more happiness or avoid further pain. That is the general way of thinking at any rate. But what if the process of achieving the goal had its own rewards. Would you worry then if your goals changed at some point? Would you stress that you weren’t getting there at mach 1? Would the effort expended be classified as work? NOPE!
It’s all about the process, the journey. Learn to enjoy each moment of the process and the journey will be spectacular. That way you won’t just be happy at an end point, but happy all the time.
