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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