Where are you going? What are your goals?
Who are you?
How deeply have you thought about this? Who do you think you are? Why do you do the things that you do? To some extent, we all adhere to the stereotypes we’ve given ourselves, so for the time being, forget the past. Who are you now and who will you be in the future? Write down all the fundamental aspects of your character you already have. Then write down some aspects that you would like to have. Be honest, but be bold and adventurous with this!
Brainstorm:
Start with a blank page and have some fun juggling around a few new ideas. Use this time to go off-script and consider some weird and wacky ideas as well as the relatively obvious and conventional ideas about how to live your life.
For example, think about your career. Is your job enjoyable? Or is it dull? Should you look for a new job doing a similar role, or should you change direction and start a completely new career? Or maybe move to a different location?
When choosing suitable careers, people tend to focus solely on their work or study experience to date. To broaden your horizons, make a list of all your strengths, then write down lots of job options that fit with those strengths. The more you can think of, the better. What exactly is your dream job? And why aren’t you doing it?
Ask similar questions about everything else in your life:
Your relationships
Your hobbies
Your leisure time
Your diet
Your exercise regime
Where you live
Where you go on vacation
Everything is up for grabs, so try not to discount anything at this stage – just dream a little and follow your heart. Ask yourself: what do I really want in life? And why do I want these things?
The more ideas, the better:
At the Stanford Graduate School of Education, Professor Dan Schwartz observed that people who have many ideas for problem solving are more likely to discover creative solutions than people who come up with only one or two. So keep those ideas coming. And coming. And coming!
Review your life so far and assess your happiness at different times. What does this tell you? What guidance would you give yourself? Adopt the attitude of a novice and start asking the type of questions a complete beginner would ask. Do some research on the internet or make a few phone calls. Your thinking needs to be flexible but focused, so keep drilling down with ‘Why?’, ‘What?’ and ‘How?’ questions. What is success for you? How will this make you happy? These questions are worth spending some time on – they are the signposts on your road of discovery. This is your life, so move it closer to what you want it to be.
You need to know so much about what you desire that whenever you’re going toward it, you know it and feel it with every sinew in your body.
See your goals and experience them in your mind and heart. Play movies of you doing what you’d love to do. Are these movies realistic? If the answer is yes, step inside the movies and enjoy being in various stages of the story. Visualise yourself living out a scene that excites you and puts a huge smile on your face. Let the feelings flow and enjoy it. Do this regularly.
Aim to be a good person:
Take the time to add in a few behavioural goals that support your values and philosophy. By this I mean goals related to traits such as kindness, humility, compassion and generosity – whatever appears on your list of desirable values.
What kind of person are you and what kind of person do you want be? Are you kind to other people? Are you kind to other creatures and the planet? Are you kind to yourself? Do you easily get hot under the collar or are you patient and composed? Are you a generous person? Are you a grateful person? While it’s great to own lots of nice things and to have a few notable accomplishments under your belt, your happiness will also depend heavily on these character traits and how you communicate with yourself at the deepest level.
List your goals:
Having spent a few days coming up with some ideas, write them all down. Only three per cent of people write down their goals and these people achieve five to ten times as much as the other 97 per cent.
Now you have a list of possible goals. Some goals will be easy and some difficult; some will be short and sweet, and some will be years in the making. It’s time to analyse the list and decide which are viable and achievable, and which have the highest priority.
Before we go through this process, however, I’d like to get you up to date with the latest research on goal-setting and how our goals relate to our overall happiness.
Goal-setting 101:
We must be a little careful with some of our goals. Sometimes the pleasure derived from goal achievement can be short-lived. We might think a new house or new car will make us happy, but these goals often lead to a small spike in our level of happiness. Once we acquire the new house or the new car, there’s every chance that we’ll soon be looking for the next new house or car that’s bigger, better or faster. And on and on the cycle repeats, so that we’re never really satisfied with what we have.
Try not to set goals that are entirely based on impressing other people – the only person you need to impress is yourself. Instead, think about goals that will leave you feeling truly fulfilled within. For example, your goals do not have to be about money, possessions or your reputation. Some of the happiest people on the planet have nothing.
Pleasure is a desirable state that we associate with the pursuit of happiness. For sustainable happiness, however, we need something else. As we’ve discovered in previous chapters, a truly fulfilling life depends on combining pleasure with meaning. This is the secret to attaining true happiness. Taking drugs might be an extremely pleasurable experience in that moment, but it can’t produce true happiness because there is no meaning, and we need meaning to make it fulfilling.
We must therefore search for activities and experiences that elicit enjoyable emotions but are also meaningful to us on a deeper level. Only when our goals satisfy these principles will they truly yield long term happiness.
Consider an accountant who feels fulfilled in his career and happy because he is interested in the field. Strangely enough, he might have a more meaningful, pleasurable and fulfilling life than a teacher who joined the profession because of pressure from his parents. A 2013 study found that 85 per cent of millennials want a career with a purpose and one that benefits the world, not just themselves.
It’s also important to enjoy the journey. Think back to when you’ve pursued and completed a goal, but you were left feeling unfulfilled. These types of goals aren’t in accordance with your true desires, so drop them. Goals that you dread aren’t worth chasing either. For example, there’s no point in spending hundreds of hours learning a new language or learning to play a new instrument if the very process of that learning gives you zero pleasure.
What goals in your past have led to an enjoyable and fulfilling outcome? Now look into the future – what goals do you think will create similar positive outcomes going forward? Recall your most notable life events, both good and bad. This will help you understand what brings joy to your life. Also make a note of those ‘flow’ moments when you became entirely engrossed in an activity and time just flew by.
Another clue is your energy levels. Some activities sap your energy, but others can raise your energy levels. For example, if you feel tired and bored sitting in a health and safety meeting but feel energised after a sales meeting with a potential customer, this might be a useful indicator. Also keep in mind that a goal shouldn’t force you to compromise on the things that really matter to you, such as special relationships and activities that you love.
Planning for success:
You should now have a long list of possibilities. Unless your list is very short and specific, I doubt you’ll be able to do or achieve everything on that list, and if you set too many goals and try to do too many things at once, you may get demotivated, which is obviously counterproductive. Your motivation levels need to remain high so that you can circumnavigate the roadblocks and setbacks that will surely arise as you execute your plan. So evaluate the options and narrow them down to a list of goals that one person can achieve in one lifetime.
Feel free to have big, ambitious goals, but make sure they’re realistic. Overconfident planning, sometimes referred to as ‘planning fallacy’, is one of the main threats to goal attainment. Planning fallacy was a phrase first coined by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They discovered that people very often miscalculate how long it takes to get things done. So if we begin goals with excessive expectations, this will lead to more frustration and impatience, which will eventually lead to simply giving up.
Here’s a couple of simple and reliable ways to avoid this planning fallacy:
Reduce the number of goals on your list by 50%, or reduce each goal by 50%, or both. This will reduce the probability of giving up due to taking on too many things at once.
Break up a large goal into smaller milestones. This makes it easier to achieve because you stay motivated as you regularly complete each small step. The pleasure you get from earning a reward is related to the dopamine your brain releases when you anticipate that reward, so just the thought of checking off a meaningful goal is treated as a reward in your brain. It’s therefore more motivating to set small and frequent mini goals, that create regular dopamine rewards, than it is to just aim for a single large and distant goal.
Motivation is key to achieving goals, so incorporate it in your planning. Here are a few ideas:
Mix your personal goal with an external obligation to benefit others. If your choice of charity will benefit as a result of your project’s success, you might work harder to ensure it comes together.
Share your goal with a few other people. No one wishes to be seen to fail, so the more people who know what you’re doing, the more committed you’ll feel. This technique is not for everyone, as the external pressure might cause an extra layer of stress, which some people might find demotivating. That said, it’s generally useful to have people around you who support your goals. It’s also very useful to connect with and spend time with people who have similar goals to yours.
Commit publicly. On the website Stickk.com, you can introduce a layer of peer pressure to your goals by signing a commitment contract. After signing up on the website, users state their goal with a specific deadline and have the option to stake money on their success. If they achieve their goal, they get their money back, but if they fail, the money goes to the person or organisation they selected at the outset. Sharing your goals with the world in this way will push you harder to commit to them.
Remember… Once you decide a goal is a priority, give it tremendous emotional intensity and focus. Then, hopefully, any idea or resource that supports its attainment will eventually become clear. Review your list of major goals every week and check your full list of goals every month. Add new goals to both lists as they crop up and remove any goals that become redundant. Use new goals to establish new routines and new opportunities. Use them to Unleash the Magnificent You!
