The importance of setting goals

 Ever since i was a child I’ve heard of this thing called ‘a goal’. Time and again I was told I must have a goal in life, i was told to set my goals and work towards achieveing them and time and again I rebelled and never ever set myself any goals. I don’t think I really understood what goals were and so I just drifted along aimlessly, doing what eveyone does and not really thinking about it. So it is no wonder that my life is the in state that it is currently in. I keep wondering where and how and why this happened or that did not happen. Of late I just had this empty feeling of having nothing to look forward to, and I wondered why that happened. The gradual realization dawned upon me-that I had no goals to achieve and so I had nothing to focus on, nothing to look forward to.

Why is it that most of us have this terrible anathema of setting goals? Why do we find it scary? I think it is the fact that we do not have confidence that we will be able to achieve them, that we shy away from defining them.  And that is the root cause of most people getting depressed, stressed, frustrated at the lack of success etc. We don’t know what we want from life, or we never really take time to think about what we really want. On the other hand we are scared that we might just achieve what we desire and then we would not know what to if that happened, because we are so used to thinking we cannot have this or cannot really afford that and so we settle for a mediocre life, by defining no goals.

There is also a common notion that goals must be serious and one needs to really work hard and have no fun in the process of achieveing them. That the end result of having achieved a goal should be tangible, like maybe a goal of buying that dream house.  That is a fallacy that we ourselves have created.  Goals can be more abstact, fun and easy to achieve too. You could start out by setting a fun goal like I must laugh out loud atleast 5 times today. There is no tangible end result to this goal. This means I need to look for something funny in my day to day life or then simply learn to look at the humor in things that do not go the way I want or read some jokes or quite simply just laugh out loud for no reason at all. Whoever said I must have a reason to laugh? And I find when I do laugh out loud, my tensions seem to dissolve and I feel so much better and gradually I start to find more things to laugh about means my day is a lot lighter and happier than it used to be before I set my goal of laughing aloud each day!

Another fun goal can be to smile atleast five people today. I mean, be the first to start the smile, not wait for the other person to smile first. Sounds simple. But let me assure you it is not easy for many of us to reach out to others by smiling at them first! There are some who find it easy and some who don’t. Some who would hate the thought of even making eye contact that one needs to have to start a smile.

So, we can make it a habit to set ourselves simple tasks that we call goals, and then as we suceed in accomplishing those simple tasks, we get used to the idea of succeeding in what we have set out to do and we can then steadily progress towards the more materialistic goals in life such as buying that dream house or dream dress or that car or making those millions. Setting goals quite simply means defining what you want in life, defining your vision and defining your future. The best part is that goals can be revisited and changed to suit our wants and desires.

Why wait and wonder what the future is going to bring you, when you can create it instead?