Art of Setting Goals

After finishing off XMas celebrations and boxing week shopping, many people focus on another important part of the season: the ritual known as new year resolutions. Each year many of us tell ourselves that this year is going to be different: we will lose weight, exercise more, or quit smoking start doing this or quit doing that. Interesting enough by June 92% of those who had NY resolutions quit on following up on them. When a new year comes, we repeat the ritual setting the same goals as last year only to find out that by June we give up on following up. Eventually, ppl become wiser and stop making resolutions.

How come that we do not follow up on our goals? Today I would like to suggest that the issue is not that we are lacking will power to follow up on our resolutions. I would like to talk about the art of setting goals.

On average, resolutions fall into the 4 key categories:
1. wallet
2. waistline
3. acquiring knew skills
4. family
People strive for that perfect relationship, the perfect house, the beautiful body, the approval of others, all in an attempt to be happy.
The issue is that when we are consumed by our goals, we focus on the future rather than being present to what is around us. Life seems like a sacrifice. We become stressed as we work hard towards our goals. Life doesn’t flow effortlessly and we feel guilty for not keeping up with our promises to ourselves. And to make matters worse, because we are so focused on our future goals, we often miss “hidden” opportunities that would bring us even greater success and happiness.
Instead, why not set goals that can lead to happiness right now and right here?
I recently read an interview with Stephen Shapiro, a consultant who interviewed150 extraordinary people to learn how they lived fulfilling, happy lives. He discovered that the most creative, passionate, and successful people were NOT goal-oriented. Instead, they had several things in common:
- they had a compass, not a map. In other words, they knew the direction they wanted to take their life. - they enjoy the jorney more than the goal. XXXXthey learned how to love what they were doing and they fully immerse themselves in this activity
- they were listening for the new opportunities to knock on their doors.
Many years ago I read book called “the Flow”. The book was a scientific research on happiness. The author spent several years trying to learn what makes people feel happy. He concluded that people experience happiness when they find themselves in a state called the Flow. The Flow is the mental state when people become fully absorbed in their activity, they lose sense of time, their degree of concentration on the activity is extremely high and the activity itself is challenging and yet doable. Many athletes experience this state when achieving their personal bests. My son experiences this state when playing videogames – his concentration level is so high can cant tell how long he has been playing – minutes of hours.
What does this mean?
Being happy has nothing to do with wallet or waistline. In fact, the goal of having a better car or a bigger house is often an expectation set upon us by the society; it’s not a personal goal. Even losing 10 pounds by September 2008 is not a recipe for happy life neither today nor tomorrow.
So, if you give up on your NY resolutions don’t be hard on yourself.
Instead, have another look on your goals. Remember, that meeting society expectations of having more material things rarely correlated with happiness.
Instead, we need to focus on 2 activities:
- Understand the direction we want our life to take.
- Set small goals for today which will shape the life in the right direction. Focus on achieving a small goal, immerse in the activity of achieving the goal, there is a big change will experience the Flow state and therefore feel happier.
Happy New Year everyone and again good luck with your new year resolutions.