Personal development
The purpose of goals
Ever since I was in my teens I’ve set goals and it
all began by accident (literally!). In the spring of 1980
I was involved in a road traffic accident and was hospitalised
for over three months with a serious leg injury.
It just so happened that I had a big growth spurt at the
same time. But as I grew longer I grew thinner because I was
taking in very little nutrition (have you ever tasted hospital
food?) and was just lying on a bed without being able to move
for twelve weeks. I became so thin that the others lads in
my hospital ward said that the doctors didn’t need to
X-ray me; they just had to hold me up to the window!
As I’m sure you can imagine this didn’t do a
lot for my confidence, so as soon as I left hospital I began
to get myself back to normal. I bought weights, barbells and
dumbbells and started to use them daily. At the same time
I started to write down, in a book, my training goals and
chart my progress. I found this incredibly inspirational.
I was always highly motivated to lift a bit more or squeeze
out one or two extra repetitions because I knew what I had
to beat. This enabled me to quickly get back into shape and
put on over 40 pounds in weight.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I started to
create goals in a wider sense. This came about because I was
bored in my job and wanted to do something different. Almost
in desperation I read a book on personal development, which
said you need to set goals in all areas of your life. So I
did this and one of the goals I set was to own my own business.
At first not a lot happened but a couple of years later, I
left that job and have been in business ever since.
I now have the pleasure of helping people to get their lives
working in the way they want. Some of this process involves
creating compelling goals because this is what gives us direction.
I find people become more focused, purposeful and inspired
by choosing the right goals. My belief is that if we just
amble along in life with no particular direction then we eventually
become stale.
Perhaps an even bigger purpose of having goals is for what
it makes of you in the process. By having goals you are choosing
to grow and become more. As summed up by motivational Guru
Zig Ziglar, “what you get by achieving your goals is
not as important as what you become by achieving your goals”
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