Goals, Focus and Action

“When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.” Greg Anderson Goals I firmly believe that a life with ever expanding goals will energize you and stir your passions. As each goal is pursued, we grow mentally and emotionally, opening vistas of experience that, otherwise, we would never know. I have to admit, I have spent much of my life living “by default”. Sure, I had minor aspirations. Day to day desires. Where I fell short was in setting big goals for myself, objectives that would really allow me to grow and enjoy more of my life. Then, one day, I woke up and discovered that almost half of my life had been spent and I was experiencing mediocrity. I had painted my life on a canvas that was too small for the potential that I have with me, finding myself going to a dead end job with each day being almost a carbon copy of the day before. There is a power that you awaken within you when you set a target for yourself. People often talk about setting achievable goals. I do, and do not, agree with this. For myself, I have found that setting a huge goal that really fires up my emotions is the key to getting me to bring movement into my life. Then I progressively fragment the goal into smaller and smaller chunks – “mini-targets” that are attainable in smaller and smaller periods of time. Let’s take buying a new house as an example. You might follow steps similar to these: 1. Set a goal that gets you excited and makes your heart pound – one that is realistic, but at the same time big enough to be more than a little challenging. In this case, buying a bigger house. 2. Assess your goal and how long you think it will take to achieve your goal. Be realistic. Will it take a year? Five years? Ten? Get a broad overview of your goal, the general steps that might be required to achieve it, and make a rough estimate of how long it will take you to reach that goal. When purchasing a larger house, you might estimate that it will take you 2 years, once you look at what it would take you to save a down payment, finding the right house in the right area and price range, packing your possessions, etc. 3. Cut the time to achieve your objective by 10-15%. We have more resources at our disposal than we credit ourselves with. A defined timeframe that is a little tighter than we are initially comfortable with, in my own experience, has the power of focusing our energies towards our goals. In this case, you would look at trimming your timeline from 24 months to 20 months, perhaps. 4. Now fragment your goal into smaller and smaller chunks. If your goal will take what you estimate a little more than a year and a half to accomplish (after trimming 10-15% off of your time estimate), what do you see needing to have been accomplished in 9 months? 6 months? A month? What can you do in the next week? Chunk down your overall goal to sub-goals, allowing you to determine concrete actions that you will take. These chunked-down tasks might include speaking with several realtors, determining which expenses are non-essential (freeing up more money for your down payment), what items you can begin packing today, etc. The more specific the tasks, the more measurable, the easier it will be to make concrete movement towards what you want to achieve. You should be clear in what you are aiming for. Do you want to earn more money? If so – how much more do you want? Do you want a larger house? Do you want a better relationship with your spouse or significant other? Bring clarity to your goal – an outcome that you can recognize when you have achieved it. What is the measure of your success for this goal? Have the goal be something that stirs you emotionally and that you can visualize what its attainment would look like. For example, using the example of a new house from above, see yourself in the house of your dreams. Move from room to room in your new house in your imagination. Look out the windows and see how your yard would look. See how you have decorated the rooms of your house. In this process, you will clarify your desire and build up an emotional head of steam that will propel you towards its accomplishment. Focus Initial enthusiasm often peters out and achieving your goal can become drudgery. You can expect that hard work may very well be a component to the attainment of your objective – you will need to keep your emotional fires burning as you pursue that goal. With a large goal defined, I have found it essential to have emotional alignment with the goal in order to maintain energy and focus in the long run. What do I mean by emotional alignment? By emotional alignment I mean not only desiring some particular outcome in your life, but being clear about an emotional investment in the goal. I am sure that at some point you have come across the idea of WIIFM – “What’s in it for me?” For instance – buying a larger house with a bigger yard would give you more room for entertaining friends, a yard for children and a dog to play in, and so forth. Every goal has a payoff that is immediately obvious. However, you have to dig deeper. What is the deeper driving motivation for your chosen target? If you want more money – why do you really want more money? The immediate reason might seem pretty clear – “I want more money so I can buy more things” or “I want more money so I can have greater security”. These are perfectly valid reasons in and of themselves. But – what happens if you dig a little deeper? From the examples above – why do you want to buy more things? Or what are the reasons that you need to feel more secure? As you dig into these reasons, you create more and more emotional hooks that can maintain your energy and drive as you move towards your goal. The more hooks you have, the more you can see how your goal relates to your life in multiple areas. The power of WIIFM aligns your purpose and galvanizes you, keeping your focus clear – even when you hit obstacles towards your greater goal. In addition to the emotional hooks that you generate by asking yourself what is in it for you to achieve this goal, I would advise bringing in the tool of visualization. In the process of determining emotional hooks and visualizing your desired end result, you might find that you redefine or change your goal – that what you initially wanted is not, in truth, your real goal. Project yourself into the future in your imagination on a regular basis in order to “test drive” your desires. By visualizing your desired end result, you maintain your focus and help to keep your enthusiasm at a peak level. When visualizing, I have found it best to use as many senses as I can – visual, kinesthetic and auditory. In other words see it, feel it and hear it. The deeper levels of your mind do not differentiate between strongly imagined experiences and those that are experienced in the outer world. The most commonly used example of this is when you imagine biting into a lemon. If you close your eyes, visualize a lemon, imagining what it looks like, feels like and smells like, and then imagine biting into it you will more likely than not find mouth filling with saliva – your brain has reacted as though you have bitten into a lemon in actuality. Similarly, when you visualize your goals you are, in a sense, “pre-programming” yourself to live your goal. When visualizing, you will find it advantageous to not see yourself from the outside, watching yourself living the end result. Instead, live the goal inwardly from the first-person perspective. What would it feel like? Look like? What would you see? What would you hear? As the New Thought author Neville Goddard would advise – don’t think of the end result, think from the end result. Some people think that visualizing the end results can help to bring these results about. The Law of Attraction and other schools of thought subscribe to this (as do I). Whether or not you believe in such ideas, you do mobilize immense forces in your own mind to achieve your goal. Your mind contains more resources than you are consciously aware of, and visualizing the end result and living from the end stirs the creative faculties of your deeper mind to come up with creative solutions to obstacles you might encounter. I would recommend reading Psych-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, where he discusses in depth the “goal seeking mechanism” of the subconscious mind. I have found that meditating on my goal first thing in the morning and as I fall asleep at night gives me the drive and focus to carry through on the actions that bring me to success. When I start my day focusing on my goal, it aligns my actions and thoughts throughout the day towards what I want to achieve. I believe that falling asleep at night while carrying my goal into the dream state allows my subconscious to begin generating new and novel approaches to my goals that I can become aware of during the following day. Action With a clearly defined overall objective, subdivided into smaller and measurable sub-goals, coupled with emotional alignments and hooks – those things that grab and hold you with positive emotions to your aim, that help keep your focus and excitement at a high level - you are ready for concrete action. Action is really where the “rubber hits the road”. Without action, you are merely giving yourself over to wishful thinking and, in the process, dis-empowering yourself. Look at your sub-goals and take the first one. Say that you have determined that your initial sub-goal will take a week to accomplish. That’s fine. What will you do today? What is at least one concrete step you can take today towards that goal? Whether large or small, take that action. Take an action that is measurable, that is concrete. For instance, if you were thinking of a new car then your concrete action might be to go to a dealership and test drive several vehicles. One of the traps that I often fall into is to make my action “reading and researching” my goal. This is, more often than not, deflection. Yes, research is necessary and good. Learning about your goal is useful and good. However – without the concrete work and actions, you will build a reserve of knowledge that will not get you any closer to living your dream. So – if you feel the need to start reading a book or article about what you want to accomplish, do it. But make sure you also do something concrete. Looking to get a degree? Make inquiries to local colleges and order their course catalogs. Want to learn how to paint or draw? Stop at an art store and pick up a sketch pad and pencils. The point is to do something that furthers you in your pursuit, something physical. It would be better if the action you take is a little outside of your comfort zone – you’ll grow stronger in the process. You will find it increasingly easy to take risks, figure out creative ways to overcome obstacles, and your sense of what you can accomplish will expand. With action, I have to mention consistency. Daily action, even small steps, is preferable to doing something large every couple of weeks. You will find that it is easier to maintain your enthusiasm with daily accomplishments. You will also discover that you make more progress in less time. Finally, keep a journal of the actions that you take. You will clearly see your progress and find out what has, and has not, worked for you in the pursuit of your goals. I cannot emphasize enough the power of journaling your goals, what your emotional investments are in your goals, and the actions you are taking. rnSummary I believe that life is about being goal oriented, achieving those goals, and continually growing and expanding our experiences. With a well defined goal and an understanding of our emotions relative to that goal, we stoke an inner fire that creates more passion in our lives – and, without passion, what is life?rnWith action, we build our power in the world – emotionally, mentally and physically. Our sense of who we are becomes increasingly defined as we fulfill one aspiration after another and, in the process, we discover our purpose in life. “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethern