Your friends come back from a trip to Brazil and you decide you’ll go there next year; you see a beautiful kitchen in a magazine and you think that’s what you’d like your kitchen to look; you have different ideas what to do with your life, but somehow nothing ever changes. It’s because you don’t make plans or set goals, you just dream about something big and wonderful for a moment and then forget all about it or let it hide in the back of your mind until the next time it pops up out front. You can keep doing that and complain nothing ever comes of your plans, if you can even call them that, or you can learn to set your goals properly and take pleasure in making things happen.
Having an idea what you’d like to do is the first step towards something new, but if you only keep thinking about it, nothing will happen. Write down what your idea is and put it in a visible place, record yourself with your webcam and keep it on your computer or even phone. Stating your goal and letting people know about it put you in a position of action. You don’t have to post a free press release or buy out a billboard space to let everybody know what you plan on doing, it’s enough that you keep your close ones in the loop so they can check up on your progress and keep reminding you to take action.
What you need to do is formulate your goal right. If you write you want to be happy, that is not a goal even if it’s carved in stone. A properly stated goal is specific and clear. The more details you include, the better the chances of it happening. Instead of writing you want to be happy, write out all the things that would make you happy. If it’s a job, write down what field it should be in, what position, what salary and location; if you can only be happy if you have your own house, specify the building writing out all the details from color to bathroom fixtures. It’s to make you visualize precisely what it is you’re after.
To be able to have a specific goal, you need to make sure it’s something possible. If you’re a diabetic and your goal is to become an ice cream taster, no matter how detailed you are it has no chance of happening unless you want to harm yourself. You need to make sure that not only your goal is real, but also that it’s safe and good. In other words, it cannot hurt anybody, be illegal or harmful to the environment. It should literally and figuratively be ecological, so that when you finally make it happen, you don’t feel any regret but only happiness.
Writing down or recording your goal makes it more real, but you have to put a timeline on it as well, otherwise you may end up just postponing it, moving the deadline from year to year and never getting to the finish line. Write down that by a specific date you’ll be doing something specific, maybe by December of 2012 you’ll be living in Hawaii, or better yet, write it as if it’s happening for sure, tell yourself that it’s December of 2012 and you are, not will be, living in Hawaii. That is a message to yourself, a goal to reach and a definite possibility, all you have to do is put things in motion and make it happen.
About the Author:
Marta Słoma is a passionate writer working for a computer repair Miami company.