The purpose of this article is to prevent you from blindly chasing unrealistic dreams, and inform you how to divert your energy to those goals which are meaningful and purposeful to your life and happiness. I dislike using the word deluded, however there is no better word to describe people who, after perhaps years of chasing their goals, never come close to achieving what they wanted.

 

Goal setting is intrinsically linked with a desire to improve one’s self and overall happiness. The amount of time spent on achieving goals, means that you will want to be sure of why you are working. Your happiness has to be the driving factor, and the deal breaker behind which goals you work towards, and which ones you toss.

 

Why do some goals fail?

To set a goal and follow it through requires the existence of four factors:

 

1. An understanding of why achieving the goal will benefit you
2. Envisioning yourself as successful
3. Knowing how to approach your goal
4. Commitment

 

When these four factors interplay, it is unlikely you will fail to achieve what you desire. Because it is impossible to be exceptional at everything, your inventory of desirable goals must be pared down. Already I have had to put aside my personal goals of handwriting improvement and shorthand, simply because I don’t make enough time for myself to work towards them.

 

If any of these factor are absent your goals will not be realised. If number one and two on the above list are both absent, then you can still achieve the goal however you won’t ever exercise it’s use in real life. For example, many a piano teacher has taught a committed student all the correct scales and arpeggios, however, without factors one and two inherent within the student, he will not understand how the piano will add happiness to his life. Once the teacher moves on, the absence of desire leads to the goal failing. The student didn’t want it enough.

 

Goals are not always concrete but ongoing. Musical goals and aims involving self growth are less defined than academic ones, the true musician plays for the love of it. The academic is studying for the piece of paper that represents his or her proficiency at the subject. For “rolling” goals, an understanding of how the process will benefit you and make you happy, is of the utmost importance. An academic can rest assured that eventually something will come of having a qualification, so the short term boredom is outweighed by the potential for a better job and more choice in life. Skill and hobby based goals must base their foundations on the enjoyment that the process brings.

 

The upshot of it is, you have to want something to achieve it. Not only must you like the idea of it, to aspire is not enough. You have to want it, become almost abscessed with the vision of what you would like to be.

 

This is a selection of what some people have done by my age. All of these people had the vision that is so essential to achieve and be successful.

 

• Paleontologist Richard Leakey launched his first expedition in search of human fossils

• Paul Johnson obtained his personal training certification and six months later won an Alaskan arm wrestling competition

• American school girl Amy Chapman enrolled in German Gymnasium (much higher level than U.S. high school), majoring in Economics, after only 11 months of learning the language

• Gore Vidal, who never bothered with college, completed his first novel

 

Probably you and me could both have achieved any one of those goals by now if we had wanted them enough. These individuals had the special spark inside that made them want to achieve their vision no matter what. Every individual made huge personal sacrifices, but they understood how in the long run, they would be happy as these goals meant everything to them.

 

Unless you think about your goals every day they are not worth pursuing. People define themselves by what they know and what they have achieved. I define myself by my academic knowledge and musical ability; so the goals I set for myself reflect that.

 

Ditching your unrealistic goals

Identifying a personal goal as stagnant is not always easy. Use these three steps to identify one.

 

1. “Do I understand why achieving this goal will bring me happiness?”
2. “How exactly have I contributed towards my goal in the last week/month?”
3. (If the answer to No.1 is unclear) “Do I actively enjoy the process?”

 

If the answer to all these questions is in the infirmative, do the honourable thing and cross the goal out of your list. However much you feel that you physically need it to better yourself or to please other people.

 

Since starting Spanish and blogging, I have had to postpone shorthand and handwriting improvement, my ICT A-level and the saxophone. I asked the three questions to myself and never found a positive answer. Striking them off my list was easy. Those four activities represent ongoing goals that were desirable for me. Certainly I wanted to be able to improve handwriting, gain a new qualification and continue the saxophone, but it was not clear to me how being proficient in those skills would make me happy.

 

Be aware of the difference between goals that represent an aspiration, and those which will increase your happiness. The former goals are the ones that need to be gotton rid of, spending time on unrealistic goals is a complete waste of your precious hours, hours with which you could be walking down the road to happiness.

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