Distilled Wisdom on Happiness and Excellence

Benefits of applying this knowledge:

• Make your greatest wishes and dreams come true.

• Gain purpose, clarity and direction in your life.

• Wake up energized by your inner drive.

• Improve your life’s circumstances.

• Completing goals increases self-confidence.

• Focuses attention and reveals distractions.

• Increased persistence and determination.

 

General information:

• A goal is the end towards which your efforts should be directed. You will not hit your target if you don’t know what your target is.

• If you are happy with everything in your life as it is, that is quite remarkable and excellent! You don’t have to invent goals just for the sake of it. However, very few people are content with all aspects of their lives and most of us have a lot of areas in our lives we would like to improve and dreams we would like to realize.

• By setting goals you are defining a destination for your vessel and gripping the rudder to control your direction, rather than drifting aimlessly and being randomly tossed by the winds and waves of your life and risking to end up at a place you may not enjoy.

• Use Brainstorming to come up with a list of goals. Use the following question for your first goal-setting brainstorming-session:
‘What would I wish for in my life if anything would be possible?’

• Rather than being practical, let your mind run wild. Imagine you are a little kid wishing for Christmas-gifts. Give yourself permission to dream big.

• Do not worry for a second about how on earth you are going to accomplish what you wish for. That will be dealt with later. While brainstorming you can just imagine a genie will take care of it all for you.

• In real life there may not be a genie or fairy godmother granting your wishes, but you can be the wizard of your own life’s fairytale, and you can learn to have the power to make your wishes come true.

• When you have come up with a list of goals, use Prioritization to decide which of these goals is most important to you right now.

• You may work on a couple of goals at the same time, but better to keep them few and focused. What makes a laser so powerful is its focus; and so you should be focused rather than scattered, to achieve powerful results.

• After your first major goal-setting-session, setting the main-direction of your life, you can also do goal-setting for specific areas of your life such as:
  – Career & Finance
  – Health
  – Education & Skills
  – Relationships

Editing your written goals:

• The difference between a dream and a goal is the written word; So write your dreams/goals down or kiss them goodbye. Recording your goal (either by writing on paper or in a digital medium) is part of creating your road-map to success.

• You should summarize  the core of your goal in one short sentence, let’s call it a “catch phrase”.
However, it can also be beneficial to also write a lengthy and detailed description about what you wish to acquire . This is a good practice to clarify for your subconscious exactly what you strive for. So you can write both a short “catch phrase” as a headline and then, if you so desire, write a longer and more detailed description below it.

• Your goals should be positive. Rather than: “I want to avoid junk-food”, go for: “I choose to eat healthy and nutritious food”.

• Your goals should be inspiring. Rather than: “I want to loose my pot belly”, go for: “I choose to have a ripped six-pack stomach”.

“People are not lazy – they just lack potent and inspiring goals”
– Tony Robbins, paraphrased.

• Your goals should be specific. Rather than: “I want to escape this town”, go for: “I choose to move to Paris”.

• Your goals should be measurable. What gets measured tends to get managed. If you can not measure your progress, how would you know when you have arrived?
Rather than: “I want to run faster”, go for: “I choose to practice my running four times a week, until I can run 10 kilometers in x minutes”.

• Your goals should be within your control. They should not be dependent on the thoughts or actions of other people, or other external forces outside your locus of control.
You can’t force someone else or outer circumstances to adhere to your plan. You may still set a goal to train your dog, but just keep in mind that the outcome of the goal should be that you take the steps suitable for the training; rather than that the dog must behave as you wish.
Rather than: “I want to teach my dog to fetch things”, go for: “I choose do the actions that will increase the chances for my dog to fetch things.”

• A goal should preferably not contradict other goals. Becoming a pie-eating-champion does not rhyme well with a goal of becoming a body-building-champion.
Use prioritization to decide which goal should take precedence.

• Set a date for completion, but calling it a “deadline” is a bit too serious. Think of this more as a preferred target and don’t let yourself get beat down if you haven’t reached a certain goal at your desired time. Simply adjust and re-set the date, without feeling bad about it. You should be compelled to complete your goal as soon as possible without feeling the anxiety of a deadline.

• The suggested examples above are somewhat shortened. An example of a clearly written and edited goal would look more like this:
“I choose to reduce stress in life by practicing yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 19.00 and 20.00 and by meditating every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 18.00, for 30 minutes. This I will do until [DATE] and then I will review my progress and reconsider updating this goal.

“There is no guarantee of reaching a goal at a certain time, but there is a guarantee of never attaining goals that are never set.”
– David McNally

Other information:

• The two main-reasons people avoid setting goals are:
• Fear of the work and actions required to accomplish a goal.
• Fear of failing to accomplish a goal that is set.
Yes, you may not reach a goal you have set. But you are virtually guaranteed to not reach a goal which you haven’t even set.

• Mark in your calendar to review and revise your goals annually and monthly.

• Remind yourself of your most important goals daily.  If your written goal is a bit lengthy, invent a shorter “catch phrase” which you can easily say and picture in your mind.

• Reviewing your goals in the morning will focus your mind and subconscious during the day to be open for ideas, actions and resources which can aid you in reaching your goal.
Reviewing your goals in the evening will make you think of how well you did today and might even affect your subconscious to come up with ideas and resources while you sleep. In short: Reviewing your goals helps you stay on track.

• Be persistent and follow through. But don’t hang on to goals that no longer feels relevant to you. As you grow, change and develop so does your goals sometimes. Just be honest to yourself and don’t change your mind too frequently or you’ll end up with nothing completed.

• As with everything: Strive for balance. Don’t be overzealous; Make sure you still take time for your friends and to just kick back and be relax. Working on even the most inspiring of goals will eventually become tiresome unless you sometimes shift focus.

• The first step is to clarify what your goals are and have them clearly written down. The next step is to write down a plan on how to reach your goals (this will be discussed in a future article).

“Far away in the sunrise are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, belive in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
– Louisa May Alcott