Picture those moments when you have been directly questioned about your life goals. You have a plan, you have a vivid idea in mind of where you are setting out to be, you are confident in your plan, and you are ready to proceed with determination.
But are there things you have forgotten? Are there parts of your plan, structural parts, that first need work, so that if, or when, you come into such lines of questioning, you can confidently withstand them and feel just as determined with the success of your idea afterward? There may be some reasons that we feel the pressure when confronted by questions of our life plans.
Define your goals
Studies show that most people, when thinking about their goals or life plans, can only withstand a number of seconds of questioning before they trail off into evasiveness, silence, or mumbling self doubt. What this indicates is that there has not been a strong plan, or a strategy put in place to achieve their goals.
Studies also show that most times it is the question “How will you fund this idea?” or “Where will you find the money for this venture?” that unravels the confidence in the person’s idea. This is the point where, upon further thought, the realisation dawns that there needs to be a powerful strategic breakdown for the plan in order to achieve the goals. The problem here is that many people mistake goals for strategies, when they are not the same thing. In order to achieve our goals we first need to define them.
Support your goals
We then need to find ways to support those goals. This is called strategy. Without this in place we cannot clearly understand the progress of our goals, or tweak them as is necessary on the journey to achieving them. When you differentiate between goal and strategy, you begin to understand that strategy is a form of problem solving. The problem being that we are trying to work out how to reach the goal.
Unfortunately, some people think that they have defined a good strategy, when really they are listing tactics and ideas for how the proposed goal will be met. However if these tactics are not strongly proactive in achievement, they are merely activities, and not strategies at all.
A strategy needs to be a direct, firm plan of attack that can be carried out and tested along the way to ensure its success. Strategy is action. Further goals can then be added to the plan of attack to ensure that progress is made.
Succeed with your goals
Many people are also privy to social proof bias. This is when we enlist an idea, or continue down a certain route with an idea, because this is what other people think or do. We are contoured by the actions of others and how we think we should proceed, and so we might now know exactly what it is we want to achieve because we have automatically linked our ideas to those of others.
Instead we should evaluate the plan based on our own ideas and desires. We should approach our goals with our own values in mind, and use a strategic system whilst using our own ideas to get the desired result we truly want. Use the ‘5 whys’ and continue to ask yourself why you want this, why this is your life plan, why you thought of it, why you will continue to endeavor with it, why you will succeed at it, personally and for your own good reasons.
Strip back the idea until you have found the root cause, the reason you wish to create both goal and strategy, and formulate your ideas surrounding this interrogation. Should you then be asked about your life goals, nobody will be able to shake your progress or fundamental idea.
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