This one step ... choosing a goal and sticking to it . . . changes Everything. (Scott Reed, African-American writer)
In my line of work, setting goals is essential. There are literally millions of ways to generate positive Public Relations, but what I like to tell my students is: “there are only a few ways that demonstrate the most effective way to spend your limited time and money.”
As a young executive, I saw how goal setting helped the company I worked for achieve its objectives. Eventually, I began incorporating goal setting into my own life. It started with simple New Year’s resolutions, which grew into page-long, bulleted annual-planning documents.
As I began to achieve my goals, I was more motivated about setting them. I attribute getting my master’s degree and finally working at a daily newspaper at age 35 to my regular practice of goal setting.
While there are many resources for organizational goal-setting, resources for setting personal goals are more scarce. I’m talking about goals that really turn you on – that you may not get a lot of social support for – that some may even think you’re a bit crazy for pursuing: like running a marathon, writing a book, becoming a painter, beginning a jewelry-making business, starting to play an instrument, or learning a language later in life. Research
Some people see life coaches or therapists for help in defining their purpose, which I think is a great idea. Having a powerful goal and staying on track is motivating and rewarding. And it gets back to my premise that if you set the right objectives, you’ll be most successful in expending the limited time and money that you have.
Questions to consider
As you begin your own goal-setting process, alone or with the help of a guide, here are some questions to ponder:
1. What are your three most important goals?
2. Why are they important to you?
3. How will you deal with fears and other barriers?
4. Until now, what’s most helped you become successful in reaching your goals?
5. If you could do over parts of your life, what would you change?
6. What are you most proud of to date?
7. At your funeral, what would you like to be acknowledged for?
To figure out your true passions may require peeling away layers of expectations and clutter that have gotten in the way of you pursuing your dreams. Since my early teens, I’ve been warned by my parents and others not to depend on a chancy career like writing to support me. This well-meaning advice sidetracked me into public relations, a career that I enjoy and that has been lucrative, but it has also contributed to my fears about becoming a full-time writer.
My dear friend Chris Wing is one of the wisest and smartest women I know. A couple years ago, I consulted her on goal setting because she has accomplished some big goals in her life. She’s the mother of two extraordinary daughters and the wife of a wonderful man. She’s been a small business manager, a school board member, and a hospital manager. Chris has two master’s degrees and is working on completing her Ph.D. She’s also worked for X years as a speech pathologist with some of the poorest children in Minneapolis, driving 100- mile roundtrips each day to do so.
She acknowledges doing a lot of personal therapy as an adult to heal abuse she experienced as a child. “It will always be part of my life process,” she says. “As I got older, I went from trying to keep things from happening to me to being in charge. The problem was that I didn’t even know what I liked.”
This is a common dilemma for people who have experienced abuse and for children who grow up trying to please a controlling parent.
As Chris got older, she realized that “A true goal gives you energy back while ‘shoulds’ drain us. A real passion makes your heart beat faster. When you take something on, consider carefully: is it a goal or a should? I have this goal because: ask three times to make sure your goal is something you want to pursue.”
One of Chris’s goals is to Have Fun! “Part of me just wants to play and enjoy life,” she says. “Spending time in therapy has giving me more capacity for that. I now believe that it is a worthy goal to Have Fun.”
Dealing with fears and other barriers
Accomplishing goals requires discipline and tenacity. It also requires changing your goals if you obtain new information that suggests you should re-examine your goals or if the journey toward your goals is no longer fulfilling. This doesn’t mean backing off when the going gets tough, but it does mean not mindlessly pursuing a goal just because you set it. There’s a lot of value in regularly considering:
• What progress am I making?
• Am I getting out of this what I am putting into it?
• Given my limited time, money and talent, is this the best use of my precious resources?
At work, we don’t set goals and then operate on autopilot. We must be conscious and reflective about our personal goals as well. It took me seven years to get my black belt in karate. During the process, I quit training to focus more on graduate school. I got pregnant and lost a baby, and during sparring, I got hit in the head so hard that my jaw clicked for a year. Still I persevered because the rewards in terms of what I was learning about myself and how I operated in the face of adversity were so valuable to me.
On the other hand, if karate had begun to hurt me more than it helped me, the intelligent thing to do would be to give up even if I have an aversion to being a quitter. Taking a balanced approach to life requires considering the black, the white and everything in between. During my corporate years, I was very ambitious and rose quickly to be a director in the company. After 10 years, some of the people I loved to work for left the company, and I was no longer being treated well or being intellectually challenged, so I quit my prestigious job and went to graduate school. Instead of viewing it as quitting, I eventually embraced leaving as my chance to do the next things in my life that I had been longing to do.
The years have taught me that I don’t always reach my goals the way I thought I would, that I will not always get what I want, and that I likely will experience discomforts I didn’t anticipate along the way, but if I stick to what’s important to me and follow my path despite the stumbles, eventually, I will reach my goal if it’s truly important to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment