What? Set a low goal. How does that make any sense for people who have big dreams and big ambitions? It doesn’t. It absolutely makes no sense, but if you listen you will hear all the goodness that can come out of it! Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Ok, so if you are like I was many years ago, you set really super cool goals that you wanted to accomplish, and started out with a bang. Then suddenly you fell off the deep end with no apparent rhyme or reason. The possible reason could be that you aren’t used to setting and attaining goals. I certainly wasn’t and there are lots of things that can go into it.
In my opinion, you must first develop good and healthy habits that can help you evolve into a new mindset. It requires an insane amount of discipline. There has to be a drive that just keeps moving. We aren’t always given these tools when we are kids. At a young age, we just morph into whatever is around us. If you are around people that lack in that area, you can see how we may fall short.
Set yourself a low goal to get the process going. Seriously, set one pretty freakin low and then give it your all to get it scratched off of your list. The endorphins will start kicking in as you accomplish it. The point is if you set a really high goal that you think you can’t attain you are more likely not to strive for it. You won’t get the confidence to know that you are competent.
It’s kind of like building puzzles. Do you remember back in the day when you would put puzzles together? You wouldn’t dare start out doing the 1000-piece puzzle. Forget that, you needed to start with the smaller ones. You started with a game plan on how to put it together. You would look at the box and go from there. The box was your plan. Then all of the sudden you said, “Damn, I finished it!”
Well if you were a kid at this time and you said, “Damn” you’d possibly get into trouble. I did! It was a bad word in my school. Who knew?!
Anyway, that small puzzle was the pre-workout for what was to come. The puzzle building (goal setting) of your life. Shortly after you were able to step it up a notch. It started giving you confidence on how to sort the pieces out in your own way. There was no right or wrong way either. It was whatever worked best for you.
Later on down the road, you had enough information about the whole puzzle-making thing, that you could start attacking the big ones. You don’t literally have to keep moving one notch at a time, once you have the foundations built you can get onto bigger ones. Bigger goals! But I believe that you should lay the groundwork for your whole goal-setting journey. Go set some goals!
Conclusion
Start by setting a low goal. Learn how the process goes for you. Pay attention to how you approach it. Are you learning? Are you retaining what you have learned? Take this information in to help you gauge how it’s going. Soon, as each small goal is met you will develop the confidence to achieve bigger goals. Then amp that goal-setting thing up and hit the GO pedal!
Question
What goal are you going to set right now? For real, what is it?
