How to Set Simple, Direct, and Exciting Goals

A year from now you may wish you had started today. ­– Karen Lamb

I have been thinking through complex goal setting teachings and considering how to make goal setting simple to understand and follow through. An idea came to my mind consistent with the “S.M.A.R.T” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time bound) principle. In this we have four quadrants with labels:

	UNREALISTIC	REALISTIC
POORLY DEFINED	Quadrant A	Quadrant B
CLEARLY DEFINED	Quadrant C	Quadrant D

Quadrant A: Poorly defined and Unrealistic

Quadrant B: Poorly defined but Realistic

Quadrant C: Clearly defined but Unrealistic

Quadrant D: Clearly defined and Realistic

Of all these you only want to find your goals in Quadrant D. It is the only quadrant that provides your mind with the impetus to pursue and achieve your goals, not only because it believes it can, but also because it clearly understands what needs to be done.

Here is an example of all the quadrants with an akara seller that had just attended a seminar on goal setting and wants to get right into it. This is how her goals may look like and the quadrants they will fall into:

·  I will be a millionaire: this is a Quadrant A goal. It is poorly defined and unrealistic putting into view her present profession. She will not achieve this goal. This type of goal isn’t beyond wishing and has the least hope of coming to pass.

·  I will become a millionaire in ten years’ time: this is a Quadrant B goal. Everybody knows that you can start wherever you may be and become a millionaire in a decade but what she failed to do it tell us how this will happen in a decade. It is poorly defined so she will abandon it,

·    I will expand my business and make sufficient profits to become a millionaire this year: this is a Quadrant C goal. Clearly defined but unrealistic. Although the picture of how it may be achieved is clear, the profits from her present profession will take her decades of unfailing savings to hit N1,000,000.00. This goal will not happen.

·     I will become a millionaire in ten years by first expanding my business, saving a percentage of my profits and investing in wholesale and distribution of grains: this is a Quadrant D goal. With planning, focus and discipline she stands a good chance of earning her first million before the decade runs out.

           {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

Examine each goal you have and sincerely allocate its right quadrant. Having done this, is it still a goal or merely something you wish you could achieve? 

Paradox and Contradictions

I have seen servants riding horseback like princes – and princes walking like servants!

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned. - Solomon (The King of Israel)

If. I like that word. In it lies all possibility. Imagination begins with the proper usage of that word. For example: “What if a building can bend?” With such questioning possibilities flood your mind.

So permit me, if you may, to use “if” to build a scenario for success:

MY THOUGHT-LINE: If I were the engineer behind the decision of who succeeds and who does not (as though there were some engineer behind it), I will ensure that good people succeed and bad people fail.

MY CASE-IN-POINT: Imagine the bliss that would saturate our world if only bad people failed in whatever they did!

EXPECTED RESULT: I would make good people succeed, put a broad smile on their faces and tickle their fancy once and again. For, why should the good fail?

But then again the problem with “If” is the word, “Not”. It so happens that I am not that imaginary engineer and so the last question can come just right, and oppositely, back at me: “Why should the good NOT fail?

With the paradox and contradiction of the good failing, many times woefully, I search possible answers to it.

POSSIBILITY #1: The good don’t read. Readers expand their minds. They think with a wider perspective and with considerable clarity than people that do not read. Readers set themselves up for success.

POSSIBILITY #2: The good are afraid to act. You can believe all you want that success is your birthright. If you do not act in line with your dreams you will remain in the realm of mediocrity. You must take the deep plunge; you must take a leap of faith!

POSSIBILITY #3: The good has not determined exactly what they want to be. Many people wander around in life without a clearly defined destination. Do you remember the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Now is a good time to answer it.

POSSIBILITY #4: The good is not focused. Focused living is the crux of successful living. If you will succeed in anything you must focus on it. Many good people are simply not focused enough to make any noticeable impact.

At the end of the day we may just find out that there is not contradiction in the failure of the good.

No You Can't!

Others may but I can't because of destiny. - Joseph Onilede

The world watched just a few years ago as President Barack Obama (then Democratic Party presidential candidate), of the United States of America, popularized the phrase, “Yes we can”. With it he led a vast majority of the people of the United States of America to self-belief in their personal capacity. Just saying those words brings along with it loads of motivation. More recently, in the just concluded British elections, the same cliche was brought into use.

For our lives though, the reality of what those words are capable of are more far-fetched than what merely uttering them can bring. Rather than saying “Yes I can”, I would rather we said “No I can’t”!

The word “Yes” is effective in bringing about great changes to anything or place but for you to effectively harness the power embedded in one “Yes”, you must be able to know how to say the opposite, “No”. When the power in a “No” is harnessed, the unlimited power in a “Yes” can be unlocked.

You must say, “No I can’t procrastinate another hour if I would see my dreams become reality.” Procrastination steals the future today. As we postpone what we should do for a later hour we short circuit how much we can accomplish in life.

You must say, “No I can’t conform to the crowd anymore.” The crowd is always wrong. Conformity to it will make us lose our uniqueness and hence remain stagnated to the spot the crowd is at.

You must say, “No I can’t go another week without reading a book.” It is true that readers lead all the time. If you will unlock your leadership potential you must read your way to it.

You must say, “No I can’t be one of my nation’s destroyers.” Your birth in your nation was not a mistake. There are some people that do not care about this and prove it by their destructive actions. Decide you will not be one of them.

There are obviously several things we must say “No we can’t” to. Only when we learn to say a firm “NO!” to all these vices we speak so much of but act little to change, will we begin to give ourselves the audacity to say “Yes we can”

Prepare and Win or Prepare to Lose

And when it was being built, the house was built of stone made ready beforehand. (1Kings 6:7).

It is easy, very easy indeed, to applaud excellent work in any given field. Sometimes we are tempted to think that the excellent work is an act of extraordinary genius that cannot be replicated but all too often that is far from the truth. Excellence is often a result of hours, days, months, sometimes, years of preparation. While the preparation is going on it is scarcely celebrated, if at all noticed, by people but the brief moment of success is resounded by many. King Solomon once advised, “Prepare your work outside, and make it fit for yourself in the field; and afterwards build your house” (Proverbs 24:27). 

Preparation is not easy but makes your work easy. It cuts-out all the excesses, makes your work less cumbersome, and certainly, it is cheaper on the long run than when you are not prepared.

Many think they have no opportunities but they do have daily opportunities, which come disguised in the cloaks of:

-          - Talents and gifts.

-          - People.

-          - Problems and difficult circumstances.

The average folk has loads of the above daily. This means opportunities come but how prepared are we to meet them?

Let’s say, for example, that you are a gardener who loves everything about grapes – its taste, its look, its feel – and would want to have some fresh home-made wine. You would only be able to achieve this today if you planted your grapes two years earlier. Without that preparation I’d suggest you buy a bottle of wine in the nearest kiosk. Nonetheless if you would make yours in two years then you should rise and plant today!

Preparation is difficult – indeed painful sometimes – but it is inevitable if you would have predictable success in the days ahead.