What exactly is a goal?
Merriam-Webster Online describes a goal as a, “1 a : the terminal point of a race… 2 : the end toward which effort is directed”. Dictionary.com defines a goal as “1. the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.” A goal can be anything. As small as going to the grocery store and picking up some fresh vegetables for dinner, or even as big as landing on the moon. We can even call a goal when the other team has scored on an opposing team in a sporting match. Ironic, that scoring that “goal” was the principle goal of which that team was striving towards in order to actualize their even larger goal which is to win. But we aren’t talking specifically about that kind of goal.
A goal can come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. Just like people. And everyone certainly has goals and everyone certainly is working towards achieving goals. Whether or not you are working towards goals of your own or goals that belongs to somebody else remains to be defined. Brian Tracy says it best, “If you do not have goals for yourself, you are doomed forever to work to achieve the goals of someone else.”
All successful people have one thing in common. They have a goal. And it seems to me that if you want to be successful a goal would be the best place to start. Jim Rohn states, “Goals represent a challenge in it’s most positive form“. And challenging yourself in this way, by setting and achieving your own goals, is a reward in itself. The actual progression of completing and striving to achieve your goals; the subsequent journey that evolves in the pursuit of your dreams will change you forever and reward you for the rest of your life.
Now you may be thinking to yourself, hey, this sounds all very true, but I do not have any goals. Where do I start? Well, all goals start and end with you. Take out a piece of paper and start writing on that piece of paper everything you want, everywhere you want to go, people you’d like to meet, how much money you’d like to make, things you’d like to accomplish. You could even set aside a couple of pieces of paper and at the top of each paper, label each one a different category, so the goals you are writing are even more clearly defined. Career, Financial, Family, Personal & Professional Development, Health, Achievements, for example. The only limit here is your own mind. So make sure you are relaxed, do not over think anything and just write it down. And certainly do not be afraid to write down something you like but may not yet believe within yourself that you could attain it or actualize it. Go ahead, write everything down. Remember, only big dreams have the true power to move the soul and inspire the mind to act.
After a while of writing you’ll realize there is a lot more that you want than you may have initially thought when you begun this exercise and that all along you have been keeping those goals away from the surface of your mind. And this is good. When we write down our goals, we bring them to the forefront of our consciousness. We make them more “real” and in becoming more “real”, more tangible, we are actually contributing to the development and achievement of those goals.
Furthermore, take your goals now and “break it down” even further. As you go through each one of your goals, order them by priority and importance. This act of “breaking it down” is an essential tool that will help you achieve your goals. If I were to say to you, go and run a 30k marathon, most people would say, “Are you crazy? I can’t do that!” But if you were to take that goal, and break it down into all the separate components and pieces and things you’d need to do to complete that goal, the training required, the nutrition, recovery, etc. and go at it one by one, you’ll soon find that your “insurmountable” goal or objective is really much easier to achieve than you first thought.
Now that your goals are organized in order of priority and importance, take a look at your goals and see how many of your goals are achievable now, within the foreseeable future, and within the distant future. If you have many goals which are all achievable within the future, you are not focusing enough on what you could be achieving now. And conversely, if you have many goals which are achievable now, but do not have many that can be achieved within the future, you are not thinking enough about what could be done down the road.
Taking the time to really look within yourself and think about who you are, what you’re doing, and why will pay you back enormous rewards for the rest of your life. When you know yourself and what you want out of life, then it’s up to you to go and get it. The majority of us who read this, live in the richest countries in the entire world and we are free and have to ability to become and achieve anything we want. The opportunities for us are virtually endless. And if you aren’t going to go out and do it, you can damn well be sure that somebody else will.
The next step, as Earl Nightingale put it, is to simply live successfully one day at a time. Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and years turn into a lifetime. Doing the best you can do, day in and day out working towards your goals, living and being successful one day at a time will equate into a lifetime of success.
