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The Passionate Speaker
"Life's ups and downs provide windows of opportunity to determine your values and goals.
Think of using all obstacles as stepping stones to build the life you want."
- Marsha SinetarA Newsletter for Speakers By Michael Landrum April 14, 2003 — Number 52 Goal Oriented Recently, a friend called and asked what I thought about goals. I had to admit to a certain ambivalence about them. Make that an UN-certain ambivalence. Every business guru promotes goals as the essential ingredients for success. It's time to look a little closer and perhaps challenge that assumption. Here are some questions that occur to me on the subject of goals. Why do we so seldom achieve our goals? Too many goals fall into the same category as New Years Resolutions, and we all know the track record on those babies. Whenever a coach, seminar leader, an authority figure, my wife, says to me "what about your goals here?" I hunker down inside and brace myself for guilt. "Oh yes," I think, "goals. Those old, unkept promises." There's the problem. Too many goals are actually promises to other people. Have you noticed we rarely accomplish other people's goals. One of my goals from now on is to give up trying to meet the expectations of others. How can we set a successful goal? The words we use to define and express our goals are crucial. What's the operative verb? Zig Ziglar says "you have to be before you can do, and you have to do before you can have." Sounds like a plan. Start with "I want to be more disciplined." and then make that specific. What does 'more disciplined mean to you? Making more calls? Keeping track of prospects? Cleaning up your office? Notice that being is already associated with some doings. Then, once you've established discipline as a habit you can count on, you have accomplished that being goal. Now you can set a really important 'doing' goal. "I want to work smarter and double my income this year." Then the having is your reward – "Yay! Let's go shopping." "Should you choose a goal or discover it?" You choose a goal and discover a vision. Actually, the vision chooses you. At Coach U they teach that "a goal ends, a vision transcends." You can't go out and look for a vision, it must come to you. Visions can turn into passions, obsessions, and drives, or into fantasies that simply tease and tantalize. The difference is your willingness to take action – by setting goals. Martin Luther King, Jr. turned his dream into a powerful goal by proclaiming it from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. What's the difference between goals and visions? Goals are personal, visions are public. Visionaries speak in terms of humanity, or at least a broad segment of the population. A vision is a gift you carry that will benefit not just yourself, but others. Visions and goals can get along together and stimulate one another. How can you tell whether or not a goal is worth pursuing? Is it specific? Does it use an active verb? Beware of "if" and "should" - these little power thieves are an indication that the goal is not really yours, but dependant on other people or circumstances. Does the goal arise from or stimulate a vision? A goal connected to a vision will be attractive to others and draw energy from the environment. There are plenty of unworthy goals – in this age of Enron and WorldCom we seem infected by an epidemic of criminal goals. You'll want to ask yourself who benefits and who suffers by any goal you, as a person with integrity, might want to pursue. One problem with goals is that they steal the present. Goals are always future oriented, of course; there's a faint, cloying odor of hope about them. One can lock on to a goal overmuch, postponing life, love and joy until the ship comes in. The only time we live is here and now, and it does no good to abandon the sure and certain present for some future ifs and maybes. It's like trying to shoot a target using only one sight. A rifle has two sights, one out on the tip of the barrel and the other back, closer to your eye. The front sight is future and the back sight is now. If you want to hit anything, you must line them up when you aim. Always begin with now. It is possible to live a happy and fulfilled life without great goals. I think of some of the gurus and saints and holy men and women who find a tremendous satisfaction in the small daily joys of life. There's something to be said for contentment. In our hyper-kinetic American culture so many people rush madly down the success track like runaway locomotives. We are indoctrinated to feel guilty if we don't burn with ambition to achieve a great, towering goal. I think of Terry, the Marlon Brando character in "On the Waterfront" who is reluctantly drawn into a battle between two powerful goal-oriented forces – the greedy against the needy. At one point his girl, Eva Marie Saint, asks him "Don't you have any ambition, Terry?" He replies, "I always figured I'd live a little longer without it." A Thought to Ponder "When the client has been struggling with a goal (like weight loss or financial success) for a long time, at some point the focus has become the process of struggling, period. Weight loss has become a secondary issue. Only when you help the client change their relationship with struggle, can significant progress be made." -- Thomas Leonard, CEO of CoachVille ©2001-2003 Michael F. Landrum |
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