Obstacles in Setting Goals

If you have failed or are failing in achieving your goal, it is time for some self-examination. Ask yourself the following questions.

- If my goal is truly important, why doesn’t it already exist?
- What have I chosen to do with my life and time that has taken me in other directions?
- Does any part of me fear actually having the goal?
- If the goal is truly important, will I stop doing everything else in my life that is not aligned with it?
- If not, what will I keep doing?
- Can those activities peacefully and compatibly co-exist?

It’s all in the mind
Most of the obstacles are in our thinking or are deeply set in our emotional selves.

We all have our reasons, no matter what they are. Be honest about the situation and unafraid to carefully examine it. We must take the time to look for what has stopped us already. Otherwise, we are most likely to stay stopped-or at least significantly slowed.

It can be a good move to re-write your goal. Rewrite it in such a way as to include all of the things you have learned. By this time, you should have a compelling picture of a goal that is worthwhile and aligned with your heart, and you will have identified the issues within yourself that you most need to manage in order to accomplish your goal.

Energy and Inspiration

Charisma is not energy and inspiration. We are talking about the ability to be open and authentic enough for people around the leader to personally feel and be impacted by that leader’s passion.

This is the sense that the leader has a direction and the energy to pursue it, and he or she is genuinely enjoying the pursuit.

It is the feeling of confidence in the intention of the leader. It is the recognition that the leader is indeed charting the course and is living toward it.

Through this, people around that leader will also be inspired to take creative action toward the goal of the future. We call this core area “inspirational presence.”

Inspirational presence

Inspirational presence resides in the center and is the place of learning and integration of all other parts.

We are referring to the life practice of leaders.

While many people believe that leaders are born with inherent abilities to engage others, environment and mental patterns shape those abilities throughout life.

The practice of leadership begins and ends with presence. This is how we engage others, but it is also how we engage our own deeper self and understand what and who we are as humans.

Gaian Newsletter Volume 5.6

June 23, 2008

Make your Move

When I was about 14, I started running on a school track team. I ran the mile and 880′s, never particularly well, but I enjoyed it enough to keep me running for a few decades after that. Our events were a lot like hanging out with friends on the weekends. You would spend the day at the track, most of the time watching your teammates in their various events or sitting in the stands talking about really important things.

We had a team mate who’s last name was Boone. He was small for his age, and ran the mile. He finished last every single race. At that point in adolescent development, there were huge differences between the competitors. He looked like he was years younger than the people he was racing, sometimes a foot and a half shorter. He was at a huge disadvantage. If you don’t know, 4 laps on the track around a standard American football field is one mile. One race, the front runners actually passed him up, they were on their fourth lap and he was on his third. The next race was setting up on the track when he finished.

As a teammate, we always cheered him on. We would stand up in the stands and call out to him “Make your move, Boone! Make your move!” He always did. Every last lap, every finish, even when he was running through the people waiting to start the next race, he straightened up, lengthened his stride, and sprinted in for the finish. Every single time. No matter how far behind, he still ran a race.

Three years later, he was still running the mile at track meets. However, a miraculous thing had happened. He had grown. Now over six feet tall, long legs, very athletic, and with a marvelous habit of racing. The major difference now was that he was winning. It always stuck with me, that years before he developed the physical ability to run that distance at winning speeds, he developed the mental ability and discipline to give his best against any odds. I always admired that, and the lesson stays with me. Thanks Boone.

This ability to assume a shape, a form, or an activity, even before you can be proficient at it, is called modeling. We create many models throughout our lives, and it is a primary way we learn as children and adolescents. However, once we reach adulthood, many people stop doing it. It is usually because our egos will not allow us to pose as something we are not, or we are afraid of being incompetent. This is a major reason that people stay the same, rather than growing in new directions.

In order to learn a new activity, or be a new way, we simply must start doing it. I once asked a friend, bilingual in English and Spanish, for the best way to learn Spanish. His reply was marvelous. “Jeff, if you want to learn to speak Spanish, I think you should speak Spanish.” That seems like a Catch- 22, but it stands to reason. You cannot learn to do something unless you do it. You must step into the shape that you want to exhibit, and just do it. Learn how to be that way while you develop competence.

To do this, take these steps.

Identify what you want to be like

Pick out a role model or two who exhibit the attributes you wish to adopt

Understand the things that they do to create these attributes and what you do to prevent yourself from them

Begin to adapt your life to include these key behaviors and associated thought processes.

See yourself as following the process every single time you begin the behaviors. Think yourself through the learning process. Feel what it is like to embody these behaviors. Enjoy the journey, and cheer yourself on.

Most of all, stick with it. Be kind to yourself through any learning process and have fun with it.

Create Your Own Success

It’s quite simple. What you expect to happen often does. If you anticipate failure, it happens. If you are positive and expect success your chances of being successful improve and improve immensely.

Intention is defined as “an anticipated outcome that guides your planned actions.”

Many people don’t realize how much this plays out on a daily basis. For instance, how often have you seen a person (maybe yourself) walk into a situation expecting a negative outcome? Result? A negative outcome.

The law of attraction

This states that whatever we think about, believe, and focus our energy on is what we create for our lives-and it is important in our daily practice of life to know how to use this law.

We get to be a leader when we add the power of our own dynamic presence, when we see the highest possible anticipated outcome and use ourselves in the moment to create that outcome.

This is when we transform a passive wish into a clear intention.

It is really a question of consciousness and choice. As a leader, it is a requirement that we get very clear about the anticipated outcomes that we are carrying around.

Team is #1

The snowball effect is truly seen when a vision and action plan are pursued by a team.

The transformational leader truly looks at how the team’s attention and energy is focused. Teams can accomplish great things, but teams also can wander somewhat aimlessly-or worse, can flounder without accomplishing much at all.

To lead a team environment, the leader must think and act with true collaboration. This involves actively building trust and creating emotional safety for communications.

In addition to having a clear-cut mission and sense of purpose, teams must have clear, timely, and relevant information and must work together to make decisions and act on the results.

Leadership with your team

As a leader you will enjoy greater success with the support of your team. To move into this sphere of leadership, you must deeply appreciate the contributions of others and sincerely focus your attention on the success of groups of people.

The other outcome of using teams is the deepening of a shared vision. By getting a larger number of people immersed in a vision, you can work with the meta-consciousness of an organization.

Getting multiple perspectives and energy focused on a desire will tremendously accelerate the accomplishment.

Tips on Setting Goals

There are certain steps which successful people have taken and been shown to work.

The first thing we have to do is to get clear about what it is that we want. Many of us are unaccustomed to being able to say what it is that we want, let alone when, how, and how much of it we plan to get.

We are all asking for exactly what we are getting and most times do not realize it. Part of the asking process is clarifying the things to which we are saying yes and ensuring that we are saying no to the things that do not fit.

The beauty of goal setting is that it provides an opportunity to clarify our vision in active and direct means. Our goal should fulfill some part of our desired state and allow us to live more directly in alignment with our vision.

How big can you make your goals?

It is often worthwhile to expand things to levels that you feel may be just short of impossible, and then think about how they might actually be achievable if certain conditions also existed. Think about making the biggest impact, the most positive result in the world. Goals should be the most worthy of spending your precious time and energy to accomplish.

High Goals must be Good Goals?

Perhaps you should ask why you would set low goals. Because the higher your goals the more likely you are to attain something truly worthwhile.

When we think about accomplishing a goal, we have to focus on the way that we get there. As a conscious leader, we realize that our desired state is not only “out there” in the future; it also is “right here” as we are living this moment.

Not only do we want to accomplish goals that leave the world a better place, but we also want to live in such a way as to feel rewarded and fulfilled as we get there.

High goals do not mean bad health

In the dot-com days of Silicon Valley, there were a huge number of people who lived a frenetic, project-driven lifestyle. It was the norm to sleep on their desks or in their cars because the days were so long that they didn’t have time to go home.

While you can say that they had big ambitions and lofty aspirations, their performance goals were not always particularly high. They had goals that required them to work long, hard, sometimes grueling hours.

Setting Goals

We can all set goals but the best type is high goals.

Transformational leaders have high expectations. They set lofty goals for themselves and push to be different. Though not necessarily drivers in style, they are always looking to a higher level of performance. Moreover, they challenge the status quo, both in themselves and in others.

This is a direct outgrowth of vision. Once the leader sees a new possibility, the next realization is that current types of activities will not achieve that possibility, and new thoughts and actions must prevail.

Transformational leaders and their goals

When we imagine the future, we only get clear about a very small fraction of what it will actually be like. Consequently, it can happen that people start trying to create a new future by constantly doing what they have always done.

A transformational leader supports people in aligning themselves with an indefinite picture of the future (although becoming more definite every day), in which they essentially rethink everything they are doing.

The best way to find disconnects is to put a real stretch on the system through active goal setting. Push those goals higher and aspire to reach them every day.

Why Does Change Not Happen?

What happens if your action to realize your vision stalls? Why has it stalled?
There may be several reasons.

Structure-there is inherent structure that prevents a person from taking steps toward his or her vision. If there are no openings, we must create them, usually by removing structure that blocks the vision.

Skill-occasionally, the person lacks required skills to take the first steps. Interestingly, this is one of the least frequent situations and the easiest to resolve.

Opportunity-this is a very common reason for people not to take first steps toward a vision; they just don’t have an opportunity. This is the case when their current state is vastly different from the vision. In these instances, the first steps are much more basic and are simply to create opportunities to live out the vision.

Physical environment-in these situations, there may be a vast number of behavioral anchors tied to physical environment. For this, think of an alcoholic bartender whose vision is to be sober.

Risk-sometimes the vision state or the steps required to get there are just too scary or the literal risk is just too high.

Reward-here is also the possibility that while the vision state carries its own reward, the interim states seem to have little or no reward.

Personal Change

With your vision, in any move towards action there will be personal change.

It is common for people to feel that they can only practice the change after they have accomplished it. A great example of this is when adults learn new languages.

To be successful, people need to learn by rote. The popular adage “Fake it ’til you make it” really applies here. We take on what we can learn about the vision state and adopt that right away, and we anchor our ability to use that over and over.

Tips to make that personal change

There are many ways that we can accomplish this. One major success strategy is to model others who have taken the same journey. If we want to be a writer, we look at how other successful writers have led their lives.

We see how they have spent their time and the activities that they found important; then we see if we can build our own life to follow suit.

The key is to stay positive. This allows the actions to come from a place of integrity and keeps you in the activity long enough for your system to adapt to the change.