At least once a year  I go through this process and once you understand goals, which I hope you will by the end of this short article, you will do it quite often yourself. You have to understand the true reason “WHY” you set goals in ordered to understand their power.

First of all, it’s very exciting to accomplish a goal. To have achieved something you worked for and no one can ever take that away from you. As I tell my son after he wins a tennis tournament, you earned it and no one currently has a time machine so it’s yours for ever! So accomplishing goals is very exciting, it builds your confidence and is forever but that’s not the real reason you set goals.

Secondly, by working on your goals you do become “more” :

            More valuable, more wiser, more experienced, stronger, a better person

            But again – that’s not the real reason to set goals.

A third reason to set goals is that you need direction and control of your life. If you don’t set goals your life will be run by others, by circumstance and not by you.

Earl Nightingale has a great image so you can understand this concept of direction and control in your life - the difference between not having and having goals. He uses the image of a big ship. Bring up an image in your mind of a big ship, one like Christopher Columbus sailed – with a captain at the big wooden wheel and the crew is all working together to set the sails and harness the great power of the wind. Now that ship sets sail and the course is mapped out, they know where they are going and how long it will take and you know 9,999 times out of 10,000 that ship arrives at its destination.

Now imagine that same great ship only this time we put no crew on it, no captain at wheel, no goal, no destination – we just push it of the harbor into the ocean and just see what happens? What do you think will happen?

The ship will sink – there’s no one controlling it – circumstances will just toss the ship about. Your life is like that ship – you have to take control, set the course, instruct the crew or your life will be run by the wind, the sea of circumstance and other people. It’s easy to find many people who will jump on board YOUR ship and start sailing your life away – many jobs are like that.

This is the year you grab the wheel – you set the course and it starts with your goals. You need goals to control the direction and destination of your life. But back to the real reason for goal setting. Which is not even for the direction and control that they give you!

The real value, the real purpose of the goal setting is to… are you ready…

this is BIG…

this will change your life forever! 

The real reason to set goals is to INSPIRE yourself! That’s the key, goals should have you jumping out of bed in the morning, goals should have you excited, awake, active, energized, get you away from the TV, the ball game, the distractions and into YOUR life. The inspiration improves your health, your focus, your productivity. You could work for hours and hours with out fatigue.

You are not creating goals to create a bunch of deadlines – deadlines of disappointment as Jim Rohn calls them. That’s not what we are doing if for. It’s not about the accomplishment, it’s not about the added value of who we become. It’s not about the control over our future direction or destination.

We are setting goals to INSPIRE OURSELVES!  Once you get hooked - you want that inspiration that goals setting gives you. Take some time to write out a few goals for this year that will inspire you to get up early tomorrow morning and get going. If you find that your goals are not inspiring then you might have the wrong goals and you might need to set some different goals.

Now take control & make it a great day!

Blaine Oelkers

P.S. Next week we will cover HOW do we get these new goals accomplished.

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Blaine is a gibLink member specializing in self development.