There’s an old saying, “If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything!”. That’s why it’s important to know where you’re going in life. I’m sure you all know that Goals are just so important to achieving success in any endeavour. Now let me say, I’m not a great believer in the old fashioned Goal Setting techniques like SMART Goals. I find them to be counterproductive. And sometimes having a laser focus on what we’re doing can limit our potential as well.
I am however a big believer in FEEL Goals. Your aim should be on producing a feeling that you want to feel. But you do need to have a sense of direction otherwise, how do you know where you’re going, and how do you know if you’re on track?
Although I’m not personally religious in the traditional sense, one of my favourite quotes on Goal Setting comes from a biblical passage where Nehemiah was building a great wall. His enemies wanted to lure him away from his work so they could kill him. They sent him 4 seemingly innocuous invitations to meet up. Knowing their intentions, each time his response was the same. He replied, “I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down”.
I have used this many times as personal motivation to keep my focus on achieving that which will make me feel the way I want to feel. When it comes to Goal Setting, I always tell my coaching clients, the clearer you are in your direction, the easier it is to make decisions. When you know exactly what you want to achieve, the fewer the options you have. Every time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself the question, what if I did this and it worked? Would that get me closer to achieving something which would illicit the feeling that I’m trying to accomplish? If the answer is yes, then explore further. If the answer is no, then you instantly know that this is not going to get you to where you want to go so don’t do it, move on.
Let me give you an example…
Let’s say that you have a Goal of having a new home. As I said earlier, you don’t necessarily need to have such a laser focus that you know exactly what address your house is going to be, (unless of course a specific house is your Goal) and know every single detail inside and out. All you need to do is to imagine yourself being in the type of house you want. Imagine how it would FEEL to be walking around inside that house. That feeling is your Goal. What you therefore want to achieve is something that would make you FEEL exactly the same as how you felt when you imagined yourself walking around inside the house.
Now whenever you’re confronted with a choice, ask yourself the question, what if this works? Whatever the choice is, ask yourself, if I succeed in doing this, would it get me closer to being in a house which is going to give me the same feeling that I had when I visualised myself being in my Dream House. If the answer is no, then you can eliminate this as an option. If the answer is yes, then you can explore further.
I know myself from my own personal experience that sometimes the biggest obstacle to making decisions is that I just have too many choices to choose from. But when I’m clear in the feeling that I want to feel, I can easily slash the number of choices that I have to choose between. When I may have been confronted by 10 options, I easily identified that 7 of them would not take me in the direction that I wanted to go. When faced with choices that DO NOT take you closer to the feeling you want, they are merely distractions. For me, when I’m faced with distractions I say, you know what, I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down. This doesn’t serve me so I’m not going there.
Now instead of 10 different options, I only have 3 options to choose from. The decision making process is now a lot easier and I’m obviously far less likely to make the wrong choice or a bad decision.
Do you know exactly what you want to achieve? Have you stopped to really cultivate that FEELING of how you’ll feel when you achieve it? Once you have that feeling stamped on your mind, your decisions will get a lot easier.
Leave me a comment below to let me know what some of your Goals are, the feelings that you will feel when you achieve them and any distractions that you’ve had to overcome along the way.