Life Hack: Are Goals Good For You?
I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to goal setting. I keep a list of life goals on the front page of my iPhone and in my journal. Every day I write down my daily goals in a special notebook. In my sales career, my income is even tied to where I’m at in relation to my new business goals.
In my life, goals are everywhere.
But I keep thinking now, are goals good for me? Sure, they keep me moving forward and focused on raising the bar, but more recently I’ve been falling short of my goals. And when I fall short I feel this terrible sense of discontent. This discontent forces me to work harder but it also puts me in a bad state of mind. I start seeing myself as a failure because I didn’t reach the goal I set for myself. It causes a terrible spiral effect.
What I’m wondering now, is if I eliminated these arbitrary goals from my life, will I be happier? Wouldn’t I be happy if I still worked hard but didn’t have to strive for these farfetched goals? Who’s to say that the goals I had set were achievable anyway?
One thing’s for sure. I’m going to rethink how goals will be a part of my life moving forward. I want to have a good relationship with goals, not one that makes me discontent and bitter. From now on, I will not let my goals dictate my life or allow them to become part of my identity.
After all, I am still me whether if I achieve my goals or not. The same goes for you.
Career Hack: Don’t Run From Your Failures
Last week I had an extremely difficult call with a prospect. I’m not sure if I was just off my game or she had no interest in the product I was selling. Most likely, it was some combination of both. One thing’s for sure… it sucked.
After one of these calls, it’s in my nature to want to forget it and move on. “Don’t dwell on it” I told myself. This was just one of many calls I’d conducted over the last year so there was bound to be at least one rotten one. But after talking about the call with my manager, he encouraged me to listen to the recording and see what went wrong.
The thought of listening to the call pained me. I had already been reliving excerpts from the call as I tossed and turned in my bed and now I would have to confront it in its entirety?
But in the end, I realized he was right. If I just run from this call then I risk the chance or repeating my mistakes. So I committed to listen.
Going into this potentially painful lesson, I was able to flip a switch in my brain that really helped ease me. I told myself “listen to this call and critique it as if it’s not your own. Pretend it’s somebody else.”
This simple switch helped me to disconnect my emotions from the call and listen to it in a more objective way. In the end, I was able to find a number of things I did poorly that led to the negative end result. Moving forward, I can now make improvements on my calls based on what I heard in this recording.
I was running from the call because I had failed. But, I have to believe that by learning from these failures I will grow the most.
Consider This: What is Success, Really?
When you think of a successful person, who comes to mind? Perhaps you picture Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey or Richard Branson. But what is success? Are fame and fortune the truest measures that make someone successful?
What about Robin Williams? Williams made millions of people laugh when he was on camera but struggled so much in his personal life that he took his own life in 2014.
Was he successful?
I would argue no. Williams is one of many famous people who on the surface exhibit every sign of success, yet struggle when it comes to mastering themselves. Therefore, we cannot gauge a person’s success in life by these external factors. Without understanding how to cope with oneself we cannot lead a successful life.
So don’t start by chasing fame or fortune because once you achieve them you may still face the same internal struggles you have today. Instead, start by mastering yourself (mind, body, emotions) and build out from there. Fame and fortune might still be in your future, but now you’ll be ready to face them.
Mastering yourself is the first step to a truly successful life.
Quote of the Week:
“In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.” – Derek Sivers
