If you have a goal and it’s not chunked down into small bites, it’s not linked to your highest values, it’s not balanced, and it is not really something that you show evidence in your life that you’re committed to it – you’ve got a fantasy. And that’s self-defeating. Anytime you set a goal that’s not really, you’re not committed to, and you procrastinate, hesitate, frustrate, and don’t get past the resistance there, you’re going to beat yourself up. And then the weeks are going to go by, and you’re going to go the goals not happening.
Really Committed
And it’s wise, I reassess some of the goals that I’ve had over the years, and there have been many goals that I’ve set out for that I’ve achieved, and I’ve been committed to. And then their others that I find down the line. Some are down within six months to a year. I go, ‘You know, I have no evidence of it happening. Am I really committed to that? Is it really, really important to me? And at the time, it seemed to be, but I do not see any evidence.’So I’ll do one of two things.
I’ll reassess it and look at it and put it into kind of a storage bin and come back to it and take a look at it a year from now, or six months from now, and do I still have an interest in that, or is that just a temporary whim? And I find out that probably a percentage of those, I don’t know, maybe 10% of the goals that I’ve set over the years have been things that I thought were important to me, and then six months to a year later, I have no evidence in a year later, still no evidence. So there’s no evidence, you might as well just let it go or put it in a storage bin and take a peek at it periodically and stick to the ones that are really committed. It’s wiser to have fewer goals that are committed than a whole bunch of stuff that overwhelming.
Making Progress
I learned many, many years ago from Walter Haley and also from Louise Hay and many others that if you’re going to set a goal, set fewer goals that are truly meaningful, that are in small bites, caused by the inch it’s a cinch, and stick to the ones and make sure you’re making progress on them and focus on them. And if it’s not really, really important to you and you’re not focusing on it, then let them go. Don’t sit there and hold onto something and create a goal overrun. A goal overrun is when you’re overwhelmed by a whole bunch of goals that accumulate. In my early twenties, I had this daily journal, JackBoland’s day journal mastermind, my Master Mind journal, and I would write down things. And I looked back over about a year of doing it and kept inventory on it, and I found out that probably 80% of them were coming true in some form or fashion, but a good 20%, 10 for sure, 20% sometimes were things that I kept rolling over and rolling over and rolling over. And I thought, okay, well, these are obviously not as crucial to my life as I thought.
Adding Goals
So I got a choice here. I can delegate to somebody else and get it done. I don’t have to do it. I can get things done that I want my life without having me to do it by delegating, and boy, that led me to a lot of things that I go, okay, I want it done. Is it vital? Is it important for me to do it? If it’s not high on my values, could I find somebody with a high set of values that will get it done and pay them to do it and get it done? And I’m getting it done without me having to do everything. That was a breaker that added another 10% of my goals into action by surrounding myself with people that could do some of the things I want to be done, but it didn’t have to be done by me. It wasn’t the highest priority, but it was important to do. And that opened up somethings and transformed some fantasies that were going to get done without delegation into it. And then I chunk them down into smaller bites and put more reasonable timeframes on some.
And I found out that I got a lot done when I broke it down into baby steps. And I just took a 10 minute a day or20 minute day project, and I started working on a little bit every day. I found it gets done. But the key was to make sure it was really, truly objective, and I thought through. And I had to think of the obstacles. If I stopped and go, what are the obstacles? Cause a lot of people are into positive thinking, but you know my feelings about it, I think it’s an incomplete model. I think it’s misleading people. If you go out there and only look at all the positives and only think of the positives, and don’t think of some of the downsides and don’t prepare for what’s happening, you’re not prepared, and you’re not really doing foresight. What makes us different from the animals is meaning planning foresight, following inspirations, pursuing something that regardless of pain or pleasure, and the animals don’t do that. They’re only going to fight and tackle challenges if they think there’s more advantage than disadvantage.
Final Words
So they’re driven by a pleasure-seeking and avoiding some pain. So the thing that makes us unique isis this pre-planning, foresight, anticipating it, meditating on the evils, you might say, the downsides in advance. I was involved in the movie, The Secret, as you know, many years ago, and it’s passing now, it’s around 13, almost 14 years ago. Interestingly, there were people there who thought, ‘Oh, I only want to focus on the positive,’ but I find that they’re unprepared.
