I have talked a lot about the importance of having a vision and a goal in my earlier posts. And I was asked to elaborate on the subject of how to know what goals to set for yourself. How to decide?
Let me share my thoughts on this with you.
We can reach a goal, but first we must have a vision to work towards. That is easy to understand and pretty logical. But, how do we decide what that vision is? How do we define our goals for the future? How do we choose the correct goals for us?
The more technical explanation would be that you should make a list of your goals. This list should consist of things you would like to achieve in the short term, medium term and long term. That is the easy part. Now for the hard part. The goals should be realistic and awarding to who you really are.
You might think that you can simply sit down and make a list of goals that you like and then check them off the list one by one when you reach them? I can tell you from personal experience that it would probably not work out too well. I don’t recommend trying to brainstorm like that, or reaching for something that you think might be a good goal because of the obvious profits. You can’t just sit down and decide that “oh I think becoming a doctor is a good goal for me” if you don’t have that spark in your heart needed for it. That is not how it works I’m afraid. What I am trying to say is that it’s not possible to successfully reach a goal that is not in line with who you really are.
Would putting “becoming a billionaire” on the list be a realistic goal if you know in your heart that you hate to do hard work? Probably not. Maybe something like “make a decent living doing as little as possible” would be a better goal for such a person. And maybe it would bring more happiness to work little and have a lot of free time to such a person rather then being a busy business person living a stressful life. Maybe it turns out that focusing on having as much free time as possible doing as little as possible one day makes him or her a billionaire without even aiming for it, because that was what that person really wanted to do so the success came by itself.
Might “go to the gym” be a realistic goal for you if you are heavily overweight and never went to the gym in your life? Most likely not. It would probably be more realistic to set “find the motivation to go to the gym” as a short term goal. Because that is what is needed rather then torturing yourself with something that feels meaningless. Maybe by finding the right motivation the actual going to the gym becomes a natural thing, now that you know what you are aiming for and why.
What is so important to understand is that we can only be truly successful if we do something that we burn for in our hearts. It is not plausible that we will have great success with something that we don’t find stimulating to do, and specially when it is hard and gruesome. Trying to be successful doing something that you hate to do is torture. And it will usually end with you giving up. Setting unrealistic goals that you give up on is just a terrible de motivator.
So how can we find out what it is we really would like to do? How do we find out who we are and what we burn for?
I think it is possible to summarize it in one word. One word that contains everything you need to be able to learn more about yourself and what your preferences are. One word that will help you set your goals.
That word is… (silence please) … play!
Play around! Find out how things work! Read books! Watch documentaries! Study! Try new things! Crash and burn! Try something else! Even when you fail you make progress because you are slowly sorting life in sections of things I like to do and things I don’t like to do. With other words, get EXPERIENCE! Like the late Steve Jobs quoted someone else saying: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. Oh, and he also said “Keep Looking, Don’t Settle”. So just keep on playing and sooner or later you find something you love to do that you just can’t help becoming the best of and most valuable in. Something that you can do even if it doesn’t generate an obvious short term profit because you just can’t stop. Something that you can do even when times are hard and gruesome because it’s stimulating for you.
It’s your childish curiosity that will help you decide what your goals should be. So let it flow! When you play around and try new things, when you read books and watch documentaries, when you do sports and move around in society, travel, study, whatever you play with, that is when you find what interests you and what you would like to know more about and finally… work with.
If you want to make a decent living doing as little as possible, then study others that already did it! Read their autobiographies. Inform yourself. Read articles about how to make as much money as fast as possible doing as little as possible. Maybe you could become a trader from home, a writer, a hand model, I don’t know! Only you knows! And you only know if you try…
Not all goals must come easy. If something seems hard but you must do it, you don’t have a choice, your life depends on it, your work depends on it, whatever, you can also spark your own interest by informing yourself. Not all goals must be something we loved from the start. We can also learn to love something by learning more about it. By becoming the expert on it, it will be much easier.
If you need to go to the gym and you find it hard to get going, start by reading every single book you can find about training, diets and going to the gym. Read Arnold Schwarzenegger books. Watch Youtube videos. Become an expert on it, and I’m sure you will find it more and more interesting! Who knows, you might even wanna try it all some day in the future 😉
Why is it so important that you love what you work with and find it childishly interesting? Because it is when the hard times kick in and things are moving slowly that you can only stand continuing doing your hard work if you love it like a child. It is only when you are prepared to work with something without any obvious profit, 18 hours a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year because you think it is stimulating and fun that you will be able to have true success with it. All companies and organizations success go in cycles where they sometimes are in the green and sometimes in the red. You need to be able to work through the red without going under! All relationships are sometimes happy and sometimes sad. Make sure you can do it with a smile even when it’s sad because you love it!
Just like the seasons of the year, these cycles are inevitable. So you need to make sure you can survive through them. You need to make sure that you can work through the winters, because after winter comes spring. That is why it is imperative that you love what you do.
So knowing how to set your goals is knowing what you love to do.
Knowing what you love to do is to try new things all the time.
To play around and to find out.
So start playing around. Be childish, be crazy, be a fool. Read. Inform yourself! Try, try, try! Then while you are playing around and trying new things your goals will automagically present themselves to you by being the obvious option for what you should do in the future.
Most likely you are simply not going to be able to stop once you find that thing that’s right for you. 🙂