Occasionally I find it necessary to clean out drawers and files to make room for more stuff. Last week I did this in my office and ran across my goals list for 2002. I read them occasionally throughout the year just to keep myself focused but had not done so in a couple of months. To my complete astonishment, I have accomplished over 90 percent of them and still have almost a month left in the year. This is when I realized that it is time to set new ones. I also remembered how important it is to have goals and thought I would share some thoughts on this subject in this week’s column.
Someone told me once that that which you love grows. Love one child and neglect the other and see what happens. Love one plant and neglect the others and see what happens. Watch TV and neglect your marriage and see what happens. In other words progress is made in the direction of your focus and energy. If focus and energy are put on how lousy things are and how nothing ever goes right, guess what? Things become lousier and continue never to go right. In fact, things that were going well might even go wrong since negative focus and energy prove that nothing can go well. Setting goals is a way to draw energy toward designing the life of your dreams and making it become a reality. The hardest part about this whole idea is that you must get into the habit of doing it and following up on your own ideas for what will and what won’t work for you. I am convinced that making concrete goals and adjusting them occasionally works. I am living proof. Be a person who makes things happen rather than a person who wonders what happened. Follow some of these simple suggestions for goal setting and watch the life of your dreams unfold before your eyes.
Before anyone can move forward in the goal setting process, the personal house must first be cleaned. Only you can do this, and there are many techniques for doing it. The way I was taught to do this was at my church in Savannah where we as a congregation would have a bowl burning ceremony on the last Sunday before New Year’s Day. Everyone was given a sheet of paper on which we were to write unedited lists of things for which we had bad feelings like bad relationships we needed to mend, resentments, bad habits we wanted to release, and a whole host of things that needed to be cleaned up in our lives. We then tore the paper into shreds and, one by one, went to a large copper bowl in which a small fire burned and threw the torn paper in it, symbolically releasing all of the things in our lives which stood in the way of our forward movement. Of course there was still work to be done in these areas, but releasing them at least symbolically made room for positive thoughts and plans. Amazingly this simple act makes you feel better about the items on your list almost immediately.
The next step is to write down any area of your life in which you need to make improvement like physical body, for example, or finances. This part of the process can be very time consuming, but in order to make the whole project complete, every aspect of your life that contributes to your well-being must be considered. Don’t leave out the social aspect of your life. Do you want to develop more friendships? Maybe you want to go on a long-deserved vacation. Create your own ideal scene and let your imagination run wild. Everything is possible, so don’t hold back. You don’t have to reach all of these goals in one year. As the saying goes, if you reach for the moon and land on a star, either way you’re on higher ground.
After the areas of your life that need attention are identified, look at each one of them individually and decide just what it is you want to accomplish. Do you want to go to the gym 5 times a week? Do you want to start a book discussion group? Do you want to add to your personal net worth? Is there a cause out there for which you can begin a grass-roots movement? Do you want to be nicer to your brother? Whatever the area is, write down specific things you want changed about it no matter what it is. If there are material things you want, write them down. Be extravagant. Be selfish. It is OK in this exercise.
Once the areas are identified and specific things that you want are written down, make plans to get what you want. If you want to add to your personal net worth, how are you going to do it? Maybe getting more educated or better trained is what you need to do. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you will keep getting what you’re getting. Nothing changes before you decide to change it. If you want it badly enough, you will figure out what it takes to get it. If a better relationship with a sibling is what you want, perhaps there is some old baggage that needs to be cleared before this can happen. Will you need to write a letter or make a phone call to start the process? Bury the proverbial hatchet and move on. Do you want to be debt free? Figure out what you owe everybody and make lump payments to the smallest ones to begin the digging out process. You must start somewhere. As Nike says, just do it. Start somewhere.
There are a couple of different ways to chart your progress in the goal-setting game. Some people prefer to put away the list of goals and look at it only after a year has passed. Then they can be amazed at how much they have accomplished. Others tend to look at their goals more often and revise them as they reach certain ones. In our office, we as a staff make new goals weekly. I adjust my personal goals quarterly. There is a lot of information available on the power of goal setting and methods for doing it. Look on the internet or go to the bookstore for more meat on the subject.
As we near the end of 2002, this is a great time to hold your own bowl burning ceremony. It is never too late to change the path on which you are traveling, and our time on this earth really is very short in the scheme of things. Why not make it count? Figure out what it is you want, map the road to achieve it, and go for it. Treat your spirit and your body well.