/? 280510" Long Term Goal Setting
"You never finish anything!", she would say. The words still echo in my head until this day, an unforgiving reminder of all my mistakes and missteps along a path to success that's been anything but a straight and narrow road. Twisting and turning, dipping and diving, it sometimes looks like an endless maze, complete with cracks, potholes & the traffic-causing construction crews that never seem to fail to schedule road repairs at the times you're in a rush to get where you're going.
And, in a way, that is my biggest problem: I'm always in a rush. My mother's words, as frustrating as they may have been at the time, were right- I wasn't finishing what I started. Partly due to impatience, and partly because I have quite possibly the worst case of Attention Deficit Disorder I've ever come across. My mind knows it's going to lose interest soon so it looks for the quickest path to success and if it doesn't find it, chalks it up as another dead-end street on the mental road map that is my mind.
And while rushing nor ADD may be your problem, I find we all share a common one: Our path. /? 280510" Long Term Goal Setting
It's not that the goals we create for ourselves are unrealistic. It's that the path to them is. We set goals as a one step, go from "here" to "there" plan of action, and start off with all engines revving. We're working hard, moving towards what we want & things are going great. And then we make a mistake.
Unfortunately we're human, and mistakes will happen. Suddenly we're like a guy sitting alone on a raft in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight for miles around us in every direction. How far did we come? How far do we have to go?
How do we even know? It's easy. We apply the staircase technique and learn to use micro and mini goals to accomplish our long term ones. Picture your goal as a staircase. When you look at a staircase, your brain automatically knows it has to individually climb up each of those steps. You wouldn't try to jump up every stair in one leap, would you?
Some goals may require 5 steps, whereas some may require 50. Becoming a famous actor is probably going to require more steps than losing 30 pounds (unless, of course, your last name is Spielberg). But hardly any goals are going to require just ONE step, or else they probably aren't even worth recognizing as worthwhile ones in the first place. /? 280510" Long Term Goal Setting
