My take on goal setting

I am one person who doesn’t shy away from setting ambitious goals. I have been setting goals for some years now but the weakness that I have is that I don’t always see them through. I have a funny habit of buying cute looking notebooks from the dollar store and I always have the best intentions of using them as my goal and idea books. I always start off well but somehow midway through the year I find myself forgetting all about these little notebooks, when I find them a year or two later I see all the ideas and goals that were great on paper but that never amounted to anything. I sometimes look at some of my goals from 7 to 10 years back and ask myself where would life be if I had put these ideas into action. I try not to dwell too much on the what might have been but rather also focus on the fact that everyone’s path is different and oftentimes there are  reasons why god lets us take the paths we lead.  I am accepting of the fact that my journey was meant to take me here. Now is my time to Stop, Take a Breath, and Reassess Life. With that has come the realisation that I have been going about this whole goal setting business the wrong way. I have always had great goals but I lacked a method of  sustaining the interest that would have encouraged me to take the action necessary to achieve the goals.   I came to this realisation as  I was going through a change management online course the other day. Within the course content there was an old Japanese proverb that I believe was directly speaking to me.

“Vision without action is a daydream , action without vision is a nightmare.”

What this means to me is that all those goals (vision) I had were daydreams because I did not take any action towards them or even attempt to have a strategy thinking session as to how I would achieve them. At the same time starting out with action without really having a clear vision is a nightmare. To break it down even further, if my goal was to run a marathon and I did nothing towards this goal that goal would mean I was just daydreaming. Similarly if I just started running without having a clear vision of why I was running , I would be setting myself up for failure (nightmare).  I therefore came to the realization that the goals that I had been able to achieve in my life were due to the fact that I had a clear vision for them and actually took the action towards them , such as pursuing my PhD or starting my fashion business with my best friend.

What I am trying to share is that when you set your goals you have to have a clear vision of what the outcome is going to be, the goal has to be able to move you towards taking the steps and action necessary to get you to where you want to be. Goal setting should not be taken lightly , it should be taken as a major responsibility to be treated with the utmost importance. After all, this is you finally giving yourself the permission to do something about living the life you want to live. You are now saying to society ” this is not what life is all about, I can be more than this, I can do more than this , I wasn’t meant to be mediocre, I was meant to be great.” Once you give yourself the permission to improve your life and to live your best life now, you will find that the goals come to you. What have you always wanted to do, what have you always thought was out of reach?Once you start to visualise and set the goals, your mind opens up to opportunities that can lead you to your better life. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you set goals and sit back, you have to take the action necessary to reach your goals. Take the example of the marathon, just because I say I want to run a marathon does not mean the opportunity for a marathon will just come to me. I have to start taking the steps to get me there. This would require researching types of marathons, cost of marathons, training required etc , etc, . Then followed by the action of training until the point that I would feel prepared to run the marathon. Goal setting can get you to where you want to be if approached the right way. I hope my take on goal setting has triggered a small desire in you that will encourage you to do some soul searching about whether you are living your best life now or whether you need to Reassess where you are in life.

I hope this  blog post has some of you thinking . As always I encourage you all to Stop, Take a Breath, and Reassess Life.