Is Your Goal Actually *Your* Goal?

I saw a post relating to goal achievement on facebook today, which was such a good point that it had my fingers itching to tie it in to another point, this time in the field of goal setting. It’s an important point when you sit down to start the process, so let’s get to it…

Goal setting and goal achievement are not the same thing. Everytime we achieve a goal, whether we realise it or not, we went through the goal setting process. That normally happens with ‘little’ goals, or everyday goals.

When it comes to the bigger goals though, the type where we think we need to apply a process, it’s too often thought that just setting the goal is enough to make it happen.

It’s not enough, not by a long way.

That’s only the start of the process, and for the goal to happen, it needs to be followed by lots of taking action – hard work in other words, which is not to everyone’s liking!

Before I cover the point I want to make, let me go over the post that prompted this article…

“Blood sweat and tears: creativity and perspiration may lead to innovation, but it’s not guaranteed”

That was written by Peter Cook, a friend of mine and a writer who takes lessons from the music world and applies them to business coaching. I find his ideas go very well with my area of passion, which is goal achievement and self improvement.

So, if there is hard work involved to get to a goal, but no guarantee of success, what’s the key element therefore has to be in your goal..?

It has to be *your* goal! It has to be something you genuinely want to achieve, and something you believe will happen.

If your goal is something your parents want, or your friends, or something you are aiming for just to impress a peer group, you are setting yourself up for a fall.

If it’s your goal, you’ll happily put in the work, and happily take on the risk of not succeeding – if it’s not your goal, you won’t.

That may sound simple, but it’s a vital point in the goal setting process. In fact you could do worse than to write this question in your goal setting checklist – Is this my goal or someone else’s?

If it’s someone else’s goal, then it’s probably a good idea, right at the beginning while you’re in the initial stages, to leave that goal to them, and set about drawing a plan to achieve your *own* goal!

By the way, if you want to read more of my ideas like this one, check out my book ‘Transform Your Life in 21 Days!’ which has been described as ‘motivational magic!’

You’ll also enjoy Peter Cook’s blog – lessons from music and business that you can apply to your own self improvement too!

Do leave a comment!

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2 Comments

  • Ola! Gordino,
    On a similar note,, I recently wrote an article called:
    Ignore Obstacles – Reach Your GoalsIt’s real that the world is filled with various

    obstacles.
    And these obstacles often make it hard to accomplish our goals.
    But what’s also good is that we suffer from
    cognitive biases that prevent us from taking
    action obviously because obstacles exist.
    That is-we place an inordinate amount of weight on the significance of
    obstacles, even if they aren’t very challenging.

    Kind Regards
    Renata Rimkute
    Thx.

    • Hi Renata,
      Thanks for coming to my blog – I have put the link to your article in your url above the comment, so people can click on that to read it. Hope to hear more from you, Cheers, Gordon