Why Setting Goals & Taking The First Step Isn't Enough

You already know how to set goals.

You write down your goals on paper.

You print them out on small cards and carry them with you in your wallet.

You paste posters of your goals on the walls of your office.

You make an emotional and mental commitment to achieve your goals.

You make it clear to your subconscious mind that you are serious about achieving the objectives you had committed to black and white form.

Then you sit back, put your feet up, brew some coffee and feel good about your accomplishment in setting your goals.

You begin to visualize what it would be like to finally have that new level of income, that promotion or even a new more freedom-allowing career.

Your friends, colleagues and superiors come over and feel overwhelmed by the sheer breadth and magnitude of your goal statements committed to paper. They see you as a visionary, a bold adventurer in this jungle of life with many conquests to make and treasures to attain.

When your superior sees the picture of the yacht pasted on the wall of your cubicle, the dream yacht that you’re aiming to buy, he beams proudly in the knowledge that he has a motivated employee.

Your good friends praise you for your boldness, audacity and vision.

Your less than evolved colleagues sneer at your naivety and your touchy feely dreaminess. But you are unmoved by their lack of faith and vision.

You know, deep in the fibre of your being, that you will have all that you have set on paper. All you have to do is believe and it will come to you.

You close your eyes, roll your eyeballs upward, take a deep breath, smiling…

Stop.

What is wrong with that picture?

If we take it at surface level, there seems to be nothing wrong. In fact, it is a positive example of a person knowing the importance of setting goals and then going about setting them.

But is that snippet of action enough for him to actually achieve his goals?

Of course not.

That’s not enough.

The goal setter then has to take the first step towards achieving his goal.

But still, that’s not enough.

Actually, there is something the goal setter needs to do BEFORE taking the first step -he has to deliberately take the BEST first step possible. Start off on the wrong foot, with the wrong mindset, the wrong attitude or - God forbid - the wrong goal, and he is doomed to failure.

He has to know for sure what the best possible first step would be to attain his goal. There must not be any atom of doubt in his mind.

If he takes on the attitude of ‘going with the flow’ and seeing what best can be done whatever comes up as he goes along, then he must be prepared to take an extremely long time to reach his goal.

It takes evolution billions of years to form any particular living creature, while the reproduction of a creature takes mere months.

One involves the process of natural selection, while the other natural replication.

Hence, if we are to study nature and apply its working principles to our lives, we will find it much easier to follow a working model, an already working system that has been proven to yield a particular result, to attain success as compared to starting from scratch and shooting in the dark through trial and error.

So, which type of goal setter are you?

What are your goals and what are the working models that other successful people have used to achieve theirs which are similar to yours?

Ask yourself the above 2 questions, and you are on your way to a faster, more efficient path to the realisation of your goals.