|
Home::Goal Setting
DonÂ’t Pull Up The Seeds When YouÂ’ve Just Sown Them
Author : Eric Garner
Why is it that 95% of people who set themselves goals fail to reach them? In one word: impatience.
The most important and difficult stage of goal-building is the immediate stage after you set your goals. In the first stage, thereÂ’s a brief blip of euphoria. But this soon passes and then you hit the arid plateau of learning. ItÂ’s in this phase that most people lose their way and give up.
But this is the phase when you have to hang in there despite appearances. Otherwise, itÂ’s like digging up the seeds a week after sowing them. So, here, for those who need a roadmap through the arid plains of goal-building, is a 6-step guide to managing your impatience and keeping your plans on track.
1. Have Plenty of Motivation Reminders. One of the cruel tricks that life plays on us is to make goal-setting easy and goal-building hard. This is no more true than in the opening phases of working towards a new goal. When we choose a new goal that seems within our reach, we are full of excitement and anticipation. It’s like the start of a marathon when everyone cheers us over the start line. But the cheers soon become a distant memory when we move into the second phase, the hard slog. It’s in this phase that we need to have a ready supply of motivation reminders to keep us going. Here’s one I often use. It’s from Ray Kroc, founder of the global restaurant chain McDonald’s. Kroc was an amazing entrepreneur. He says that it is in the early stages of working towards a new goal that you learn the most: “When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.”
2. Be A Fly, Not A Bee. The chief problem with the early stages of goal-building is that you can never be sure of the right way forward, particularly if you are breaking new ground. You try something and it doesnÂ’t work. You try again and it doesnÂ’t work again. And again. And again. ThatÂ’s tough. But itÂ’s essential. Because youÂ’re learning. Karl Weick says that in this situation it is much better to be a fly than a bee. When you place a fly and a bee in an upturned jam jar, the bee will head straight for the light and repeatedly buzz against the bottom of the glass. The fly on the other hand will dive frantically around the jar exploring every corner until he finds a way out. ThatÂ’s the example to follow when you want to succeed: be a fly, not a bee.
3. Accept The Struggle. Those who are eager to succeed often treat the second phase of goal-building as an unnecessary waste of time. They would prefer to skip it and jump to the next phase of success. But this is to misunderstand the whole point of the second phase. It’s there to toughen you up. You may have heard the story of “The Man and the Butterfly” about the man who saw a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. To help it out, the man cut a bigger hole in the cocoon and pulled the butterfly through. However, instead of flying away, the butterfly was unable to fly. Its body was too swollen. What the man did not understand was that the butterfly’s struggle to emerge through the hole forces fluid from its body to its wings and thus makes them strong and ready to carry its weight. Like the butterfly, we need to struggle to succeed.
4. Be Objective. In stage two of goal-building, itÂ’s valuable to stand back and distance ourselves from whatÂ’s going on. We need to be tripeds not bipeds. Bipeds are people who see only themselves and others. Risk-taking is a do-or-die undertaking. Progress is either a triumph or disaster. Life is black and white, winning or losing. Tripeds, on the other hand, can distance themselves from their situation by finding a third position where they can observe things with objectivity. Life isnÂ’t either-or any more. It has depth, colour, and many angles.
5. Don’t Judge Yourself. Our win-lose culture puts great pressure on us to consider ourselves at any moment in life as either winners or losers. This means that failure is a bad thing and winning is everything. One of the most quoted expressions in our modern culture is: “Failure is not an option”. But this is to misunderstand the real nature of success. We need to fail in order to succeed. And we need to fail big-time in order to succeed big-time. Practically every successful entrepreneur, from Thomas Edison to Walt Disney, experienced failure many times over. But they didn’t judge themselves. They interpreted failure as “not succeeding yet” and saw it as just one more step on the road to success.
6. Manage Your Morale. Of course, it’s not always much fun to be stuck in the hard slog phase of goal-building. Nobody’s cheering any more. You have nothing to show for your efforts. And the dream still feels as far away as ever. That’s when you have to manage your morale. That means managing your stress, keeping things light, and working on the things you can’t see: your thinking patterns, your emotions, and your spirit. And, like the fluid in the butterfly, these may just be the things that will make you fly. “I can say: “I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won’t do it.” Or I could say: “Get used to being uncomfortable.” It is uncomfortable doing something risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable?” (Barbra Streisand)
We human beings are very similar to the plant world. We grow best when we work with Nature and time. DonÂ’t be in too much of a hurry to achieve your goals. If you hold on with faith, certainty, and determination, youÂ’ll get there in due course when the time is right.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
© Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com
For instant solutions to all your management training needs, visit www.managetrainlearn.com and download your FREE personal copies of our training software. And while you're there, make sure you try out our prize quiz, get your surprise bonus gift, and subscribe to our newsletter. Go and get the ManageTrainLearn experience now!
Spam emails More free articles Related articles
|
More related feeds |
City of Angels. - Kill
change is never easy enough,. but I'm not giving up. I'm growing and I'm sowing. seeds of life beyond this shell. I'm going to be free. breakout from this cell. I'm leaving, leaving this path behind. Don't need your sympathy. ...Don’t Pull Up The Seeds When You’ve Just Sown Them
Why is it that 95% of people who set themselves goals fail to reach them? In one word: impatience. The most important and difficult stage of goal-building is the immediate stage after you set your goals. In the first stage, ... » The Good Earth, 1 - A Ground For Your Painting Professional Arts ...
A fellow student once gave me an attractive alternative: Prime two panels at the same time, stick the wet faces together and immediately pull them apart. You’re left with a nicely random textured surface, which seems to have your ... Doug Smith's Toronto Raptors blog
The Raptors just don't believe in themselves and I think that comes from the coach, Blogger's note: Lawrence Frank is a genius because he gave the ball to a talent like Vince Carter on every single possession. I guarantee you Sam ... Old and grey, if theres any hair left!! - Seminyak, Indonesia ...
Just got my hair cut again... Aside from the ever encroaching grey I am now old enough to be able to see my scalp through the hair when it's wet!!! Oh the humanity!! I seriously don't know where to go from here... How does one pull when ... May someone here tell me what’s the best way to start gardening ...
However, be kind to yourself, don’t start with seeds. It’s just too easy for seedlings to die from over-watering or under-watering and birds LOVE them. Just because you put plants that someone else started in your own dirt doesn’t mean ... AmhPub - Too Slow for Catenaccio
Their evils seeds have been sown Cause they’re not of our own Well the famine is over Why don’t you go home? Okay…this part is just ugly. I suppose these guys are voting BNP in the next elections. Now Timmy don’t take it from me ... PART TWO - CHILD ABUSE > POOR RELATIONSHIPS > DEPRESSION ...
BECAUSE I SOW GOOD SEED! WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY THROUGH OUR BELIEFS AND ACTIONS. It calls for responsibility. I don't believe you've taken responsibility. START SOWING GOOD SEED, SO A TIDAL WAVE OF GOODNESS WILL COME BACK AT HARVEST ... Cinj's Chat Room: November Bloom Day
Now I just need to find a protective place for them so the cats won't eat them alive. I'm pretty confident that at least two of them will bloom but I don't know if some of them have enough energy stored up in them for some of the small ... Fall Flower Care | Gardening
so it’s very important to pull them up or suffocate them with mulch. Whatever happens, don’t let any weeds go to seed. After you’ve finished cleaning up and planting for next season, apply a layer of mulch to protect plants, ...
|
|
|
