Make Reality Your Friend When Setting Goals

Topic of the week: Goal(s)
Let’s try a little rambling and see where this takes us, shall we?

---

Pre-set Goals

From the very beginning of life, before you are ready to set goals for yourself, someone else is at the helm ready to set goals for you. From walking, to talking, to learning to wipe your own butt and you are expected to reach these goals because let's face it… crapping in a diaper when you're a healthy, able-bodied adult is frowned upon.

When you start school it’s another whirlwind of goals and taking the steps necessary to reach them. Homework, projects and graduations… all goals to educate and supposedly prepare you for the difficult and unpredictable game of life.

Life really gets fun when you get out of the stage of the expected pre-set goals and you begin setting your own goals for whatever path it is you choose to take. Hopefully you are prepared to face the obstacles that are sure to get in your way of accomplishing those goals. Or maybe you're one of the lucky ones and obstacles don’t plague your life and reaching your goals are fairly easy but if your only goal is to wake up every day then it's safe to say that there will be only one day that you won't reach that goal.

---

Unreachable Goals

I’ve known people who set unreachable goals for themselves (like ruling the world) and in questioning why one would do this, I've come to the conclusion that this can be a product of big egos and narcissistic personalities. Imagine starting a business, making appointments that you can’t keep, completing jobs but not following through on collecting money, treating employees like shit which means always having new, young, and inexperienced people … and you leave these employees to their own devices thinking they can figure it out which in turn forces you to go behind them and clean their mess; double the work, double the time, double the cost.

You don’t see the obvious downward spiral you are in and continue to take on bigger jobs trying to get that big pay day that never comes. You don’t realize things are bad until you have burned every bridge and now you're drowning and grasping for straws.

As much as I would like to think that anyone can do anything they put their mind to, that is just not how things work. Reality can be your friend and the sooner you realize that you are not cut out for certain things, the sooner you can restructure your goals to match things you are capable of.

---

No Goals

Not everyone is goal oriented. We do have some that set no goals and expect things to just happen. I've tried to help someone recently who is like this. I've mentioned her before… she’s a hoarder and recently she made a move from her boyfriend’s place in Texas (who recently passed away) and decided to bring home three trucks and three trailers, filled to the brim with stuff. Keep in mind she’s a hoarder and her place is already filled to the brim with stuff.

She sits in her chair, day after day, maybe she'll get something done… maybe she won’t. She doesn't try to set small goals for herself to get things accomplished but yet she wants to get her place cleaned up. She sulks, she goes shopping for more stuff, and she complains that she’s not getting things done. Then she gets down on herself and falls into depression because she’s not getting things done but then she's too depressed to even try to get something done.

She has just recently set a goal for herself which may be a step in the right direction. She wants to get her whole place cleaned up by November. This November. Yeah… maybe not a step in the right direction. Going from setting no goals to setting an unreachable goal I believe can be counterproductive and before we know it we’ll be back to square one.

---

My Goals

I, on the other hand, have a bad habit of setting reachable goals for myself… just way too many of them. That hasn't changed and probably never will and I'm ok with that. I set unrealistic and unnecessary time constraints on myself and if I don’t get things done then I just push my deadline back a few days.

I know myself well enough to know that I will get everything done eventually. There are things that I do that have ‘set in stone’ deadlines and those are the things that take precedence over my own personal goals. This seems to work well for me, and at times when I'm juggling all these balls and most of them fall to the floor, I shake my head and pick them up and try again.

---

I think it’s important to set goals for yourself and even more important to set goals that are realistic. Know your limits; trust me… you have them.