- Setting Goals
- The alarm rings, you wake up. You turn off the alarm and
start your normal morning ritual of getting showered, dressed, consuming breakfast
etc...
- You drive of your drive and head into the traffic, while the radio news bulletins report bad news interspersed with music that you do not like
As soon as you arrive at work, you grab a coffee from the machine and read your emails; you barely notice that lunch has come and gone. On the way home you think about leaving the race behind in favour of setting up your own business and running it from home. Is this scenario familiar to you? Have you gone over and over
- it year after year? If your answer is 'yes', then it's time for a change.
- Setting goals using the SMART method
- SMART is an acronym for:-
- - Specific. The goal has to be as detailed as possible. This must answer the
- basic questions of Who, What, When, Where, Which and Why. The more
- specific the goal, the more the end result can be envisioned.
- - Measurable. When setting goals, they must be specific enough to be
- measurable. e.g. a body builder might decide have a goal to be able to
- bench press 200 pounds in 8 weeks time. Remember the old adage
- states that if “it can be measured, it can be attained”.
- - Attainable. You need to believe that you are capable of achieving the goals
- that you have set.
- - Realistic. Does it make logical sense? How much time money and effort
- will be required? Have you got/ can you obtain the necessary resources?
- Aim realistically high.
- - Time-bound. This is very important. A goal has to have a deadline,
- otherwise time will pass with without the realisation that adequate progress
- is not being made.
- Bear in mind that time is the true price that you must pay in order to realise your dreams, the earlier the dream can be achieved, the more time you have to enjoy it.
- The choices we make
- Have you ever tried to smile and think a negative thought? Usually the result is that one of the feelings will win out. Whether it is you will feel better because you smiled or that you will eventually feel bad and frown, this is an important fact in human psychology.
- Humans cannot really hold attention on more than one thought at a time. This is the key to mastering oneself in this life.
- Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who was imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II.
During his incarceration, he observed that his fellow prisoners had different ways of dealing with their terrible predicament. Some people lost the will to live, of these a number committed suicide, others went mad. Socially there were those who turned on their fellow inmates, while other went from tent to tent encouraging the other prisoners. Puzzling over this, he asked himself why some people in the face of overwhelming despair, were still able to master themselves enough to help others?
Frankl concluded that between stimuli and response, lays the personal choice of an individual to choose how they will react to any given situation. Realising the role of personal choice; he chose to live.
The key is to rise above the situation, evaluate the options and then make the right choices.
