Surprisingly enough, setting goals may actually hinder your chances of life-long success! Let me begin by saying that goal setting is wickedly effective.
If you decide you want to drive your car from your house to the city, that’s a goal.
We all set and achieve hundreds of these kinds of goals every day.
These are the big goals that require significant focus, and, if achieved, can have a monumental impact on your life, but if slightly missed, they can have a devastating effect.
Setting a goal is a powerful tool, and like any powerful tool it must be used properly.
The mileposts of belt attainment have a magical way of breaking the goals into manageable steps.
Almost all martial arts students begin with the same goal in mind… to achieve a black belt.
As long as we are striving toward our goal, we have an invisible sustaining force.
The moment we achieve our goal we have a natural tendency to let-up.
Clearly the problem is not in having the ability to achieve a desired outcome, or goal, but rather the problem lies in an ill-conceived goal.
The person who sets a goal to lose thirty pounds, and then loses it, has reached his goal.
Now what? What happens next? Where do you go from there? Rather than setting a limiting, and potentially dangerous goal, such as losing thirty pounds, suppose the same person decided to set a goal of achieving and living a healthy lifestyle.
If one’s goal is to achieve a level of health, then rapid weight loss no longer fits into the equation.
Slow, steady, sensible, and “Sustainable” weight loss becomes the goal.
In fact the word goal in this instance is actually the wrong word.
Setting a goal such as cleaning the garage or painting the house are perfectly fine because they’re an end in themselves.
Setting goals around things that we would like to incorporate into our lifestyle can be both limiting and dangerous.
Intending to live your life a certain way is infinitely more powerful and lasting than setting a goal.
You see, there really is no goal when it comes to a lifestyle because it’s so much more than that.
For this simple reason why not change a life-time goal from a goal to an intention? Goals represent a finish line, but intention represents continuous achievement and a lifetime of mastery.
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