Setting oneself goals is easy.
Following up and reaching them is hard work.
That’s because setting goals well is difficult.
To set goals in a way that you can achieve them and feel challenged by them is hard work.
It requires to gain clarity about your objectives, how they align with the work you do and finding a path you’ll use to reach them. There needs to be enough clarity to be willing and able to put oneself in charge of reaching the goals. Which in turn also means to make the right choices, the ones allowing you to focus on the journey towards the goal.
And it means to define achievable goals, as big and audacious as they might be. It doesn’t serve you to set a goal which is physically not achievable and expect it to happen now. Setting the objective to change others requires to remain humble about the fact that you can’t do it without the other. Having a goal to be different tomorrow than you are now requires to analyze the type of change you seek. Is it a change you can influence through your actions, one based on a decision you can make or one which is outside of your influence?
The only way you can make change happen is by having the intention to do so and following up on that intention. It’s not only the doing. It’s aligning intention with action and reflecting on the results.
The results don’t change you as a person, they change what you have. May it be a new role, a different status, more or less income, a new responsibility, etc.
Language tends to create confusion here. Language invites us into shortcuts like “I am his sister”, “I am the new boss”, “I am hungry”, “I am lost”, “I am happy”, etc.
It’s a shortcut to identify ourselves with our position, relationship or our feelings and one misguiding us when setting our goals. It’s entertained by the hope to change how we feel about ourselves and the assumption that it can be changed by the way others perceive us.
You can’t change a feeling, it’s there and serving you at least as information. But you don’t need to stick to that feeling, you can decide what to do about it. And it’s not aiming for a different feeling.
