Wow. This new year seems to be just flying by. I'm sure you feel the same.
On the tails of my last post, I've continued to think about goals and how they can help us become better people and reach our dreams. During these thoughts, it occurred to me that making goals is meaningless if you don't know what you want to accomplish in the first place. Goals may detail steps towards a better self, but they generally say very little about the broader dreams we have.
Consider personal fitness. Using the pattern for making goals I laid down in my previous post, a personal fitness goal might take the following form:
"Within the next 4 months, I will lose 10 lbs by not drinking soda and walking to work."
Read the goal again and consider this: What does a well-stated goal like the above actually say about the person who made it? It tells us that they want to lose 10 lbs, but it says little about what broader personal fitness dreams they have for themselves. A person wouldn't even make a goal to lose 10 pounds without first having the notion that their present weight is incongruent with their ideal self.
I believe that many people carry with them a mental image of their ideal self. This mental image may include information about how they want to look and act, what sort of wealth they would like, and so on. These mental images are a representation of the dreams we have for ourselves , and they are much larger and more complex than what can be encapsulated in a goal.
I don't want to overly emphasize body image, but as an example of what I'm talking about, picture your ideal physical self in your mind right now. If you're like many people, the image that you have of yourself isn't the way you look at present. I like to picture myself as a lean 200 lb man with thick arms, broad shoulders and great posture. I'm not that man. Not yet. But I do believe I could become him with enough work.
Does this mean that I should make a goal that says: "I would like to be a lean 200 lb man with thick arms, broad shoulders and great posture."?
Absolutely not!
As I argued in my previous post, a goal that lacks specificity and doesn't detail the "how" is a goal that won't take you very far. Goals need to be specific and they need to include some information about how they can be accomplished. In my opinion, they also need to be achievable in a time frame short enough to allow for regular reevaluation.
Therefore, my desire to be a lean 200 lbs is not a goal at all. It's much bigger than a goal; It's a dream I have for myself. We all have such dreams and I think it's important to know what they are before we start setting goals.
Dream Formation
Forming a dream can take time. Life is a journey with innumerable possibilities, and the distant horizon can be difficult to see at times. To further complicate our dreams, we change as time passes and desire different things over the years.
Dream formation starts when you permit yourself to think far beyond your present situation. A dream can feel larger than yourself and you needn't know all the steps required to achieve it. To form your dreams, start by asking yourself questions like: What do you most want to do? Where do you most want to go? What type of life would make you feel the most free?
Once you have a good picture in your mind about what you would like, find a way to cement your desire. Write your dream down for future reference. Create a 'dream board' full of pictures of the things you would like to achieve. Take steps that will help you keep your dream at the front of your mind.
Think of your dreams often, and use them to feed your goal-setting activities. Each goal you make should represent a step towards one of your dreams. This is why goals are so powerful; they represent specific, achievable steps towards what we truly desire.
Most importantly, never stop dreaming. Dreaming of what you want most can be a very invigorating experience. I've certainly found this to be the case in my own life. Dream big, and then use goal-setting to achieve all that you desire.
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