entrepreneur
Using Goals to Start Over
At some point during your life, you may be put in a situation where you need to start over. Whatever the reason you find yourself in, setting goals for your new way of life is going to help you tremendously. It could mean the difference between making it work and stagnating. Pursuing the right goals can give you a boost in confidence that change is positive. This is crucial when contemplating starting over.
When starting over, you want to explore as many avenues as possible to see what may work for you. Take advantage of any training that may help you discover what direction you want to take. Setting up solid goals is going to help reduce your risk of becoming discouraged. This is a common affliction with people who are starting over. Writing down your goals and referring to them will ease your mind by showing you there is something to strive for.
While it is a scary proposition to start over, it can also be a time for encouragement. You can think of it as a fresh new outlook on your life and with that comes exciting new experiences that may have been missing from what you were doing before. Think back to when you first started out in your previous situation. Your memories are probably filled with looking forward to going to work each day as you were learning something new. This can happen again for you.
Ensure That Your Aim Is True
Whatever you want to achieve in life or business, you need to have a clear vision of where you are heading. Without this, how on earth are you going to know if you are on the right track or straying from your path?
Setting clear, distinct goals is like looking down the barrel of a rifle and can ensure that you are ALWAYS aiming in the right direction and keep you on track.
Having a clearly defined path also give you “stickability” because when you encounter obstacles (and you will) it will help you to remain focused on where you need to go.
Without this level of clarity, you are much more likely to give up when the going gets tough and that is doing you a disservice because you deserve the rewards that your goals will give you.
The power of goals shouldn’t be underestimated and they should be set and re-evaluated often (especially your short term goals). Use goals to give you momentum, and more importantly, to maintain it, especially when you are going through the major challenges you are going to face.
Stay strong, be resilient and you will succeed; you are just being tested to see whether you really want it and you do, dont you?
Now, sit down right now and set some goals, and take some immediate action; let’s go get ’em!
How to Change Your Mindset & Turn Lions Into Kittens
It is not just our bodies that are a result of evolution. Our minds and psychology have also been shaped by the world that we evolved in and that is where many of our most unusual behaviors come from.
When we were evolving, we were in far more dangerous scenarios than we are now and we couldn’t afford to take risks. Only the psychological traits that made us most likely to survive were passed on and that means that they’re the only ones that matter. This is why we are risk averse by nature.
The Danger of Ambiguity
Imagine that you were in the wild, looking at the silhouette of some kind of animal sitting on the horizon. You don’t know if that silhouette is of a lion or a kitten… what do you do?
The best solution for survival is to assume the worst. Assume it’s a lion and either freeze or run. The people who take chances will most likely get eaten and thus not pass on their personality traits!
But the problem is that we don’t see lions any more. This is not the biggest threat to your life right now. Instead, the biggest stressors are things like debt, illness, relationship problems and career issues. These are the threats we face in modern life and that we now must overcome if we’re going to be successful in life.
It’s All About Perspective
But here’s the thing: it’s actually all about perspective and mindset when it comes to our reaction to threats. If we think it’s a kitten, then we will be able to remain cool, calm and happy even if it is a metaphorical lion. In other words, it pays for us to reassess our situations and to take control of our anxiety and our stress. When we do that, we remove the chronic anxiety that makes us perform and feel worse.
How do you turn your situations into kittens? Simple: you assess exactly why you’re afraid and whether or not there is a good reason to be. Remember: it’s all just perspective. Change your mindset and you change the reality!
Have a Vision, Not a Goal!
If you want to accomplish as much as you possibly can, the most important thing to get right is the vision or goal you have to begin with. This is essentially the same as setting your trajectory and without a trajectory, you don’t stand much chance of getting to your destination. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to correctly write goals and this can end up preventing them from achieving the success they so desire.
And actually, if you’re starting off with writing a goal then you’re starting out with the wrong intent to begin with. And this is because ‘goals’ aren’t really as useful as visions or visualizations – and that is what we’re going to explore here.
The Difference Between a Goal and a Vision
So what’s the difference between a goal and a vision? Basically, a goal is something that you write down and that is very concrete and simple with a pre-determined endpoint. A goal may for example be to ‘lose 10lbs in two months’. That’s a goal but it’s also not as effective as a vision designed to the same end.
This same ambition posed as a vision rather than a goal would instead be more the idea of being in shape. You might visualize yourself looking ripped and feeling healthy. You might imagine yourself going for jogs on the beach with your top off in summer and feeling great about yourself. That’s your vision.
A vision can also be an image of yourself standing in an office block and looking out over the world, knowing that you’re in a position of great importance and power.
This is a much more abstract concept that nevertheless helps you to get a picture of what you want and what the emotion behind that goal is. It is the motivation behind the goal
Why Visions Are More Effective Than Goals Alone
Why are visions more successful than goals? For one, goals are not nearly flexible enough. If you have a goal, then this gives you one thing you’re trying accomplish and only one idea of how to get there. If it doesn’t go to plan then you have the freedom to change the steps you’re going to take to get there, or to bend them to fit your current lifestyle, plans and free time.
Another reason visions work better is because they have more emotional content. When you visualize something, the same regions fire in your brain as though it was actually happening. This in turn means that you can actually trigger the emotion as though it were happening. And it’s this emotion we can use to motivate ourselves to go through with plans!