A Little Goal Setting Exercise that Can Change Your Life
“One reason why people don’t achieve their goals is because they don’t know what part of them choose the goal.” ~ John Kehoe
Let me tell you a little story…
“A man took a ladder, put it next to a wall and started climbing. He climbed as fast as he could. His legs were constantly slipping, a few times he almost fell. Yet he kept on climbing… When his physical exhaustion started to take over, his hand finally reached the top of the wall. Regaining his strength, he made the last effort to push himself up and sit down. But as he looked around, his smile faded and a paralyzing thought crept in to his soul, “It is the wrong wall!”
Similar, we often choose to pursue a goal that we think we want and spend weeks, months, and even years accomplishing it. But after the initial excitement wears off, we are left feeling strangely empty, tired and disoriented, because we realize that our accomplishments have not made us any happier.
It is hard to explain why we spend so much time in learning all the goal setting how-to’s, planning, visualizing, making sure that we have all the right tools to secure our success, but completely forget to check if our goal is aligned with our value, passions, character, desired lifestyle and life purpose.
I see people, climbing the wrong wall all the time: a lawyer, who dreams to be a writer; a student who slacks off in college, because he is not interested in studying economy or business; a housewife, who does not feel appreciated for her efforts and dreams about having more independence; a top manager, who is going through a divorce, because his personal life shattered while he was making his career. All these people made the same mistake at some point – they chose a goal that they thought they SHOULD WANT instead of taking time to reflect on what is it that they TRULY WANT.
If you want more in life than just leading a comfortable lifestyle, if you are unsure what goal to pursue, if you are tired of other people telling you what you should and should not want, if you cannot seem to stick to your goal for more than two weeks, it is time to figure out the goals that are right for you!
