Goal setting: why doesn't it work for me!?

Goal Setting, a subject so widely taught in seminars, programs, sports and even schools, has been very much studied and tested everywhere. Why is goal setting so important? And how exactly does it work? Why do some people get more out of goal setting than others?

I do not know about people in general, but as a person i've always wanted something every day in mylife. Not that i'm never satisfied with anything, its just that once i achieved something, there'll be another challenge that call for more of me, and it really makes me want it. Goal setting has been a really powerful tool not just for me but also for many poeple whom i know.
Our mind is a very powerful powerful tool as my dear friend and mentor Brent Williams once told me. He taught me that the mind has a function called the recticular activating system (RAS), and this system acts like an awareness machine. It keeps track of what is important and filters out all other things that are not. What happened was at the Empower U program one or two years back i wrote down a list of one hundred things i wanted to get done and i just looked at the list a moment ago and guess what? i only got three of those goals not fufilled! That is 97% improvement in what i wanted two years ago. (now i have another list)

Goal setting not only raises awareness of what one wants and needs to know or get done about something, it also motivates how people live each day. I meann i'll wake up more energetic each day when i know what i want and i know that there's something i could do to work towards achieving it. However there's one thing that made me want to post this subject on antiphons. Even though many people have do goal setting, few people succeed. So this post is to address the question of goal setting and why it doesn't work for me?!

There three reasons why goal setting doesn't work for some people and these three reasons form the three foundations of goal setting. And they are: Awareness, Feasibilitty and Weight. Awareness as we talked about earlier plays a very important role, to fulfill this one has to not just think about it but write it down. Writing it down is you telling your brain that it is important. One very good idea is that of having a dream book or a goal setting book, write everything down you want inside it and make it detailed, paste pictures and illustrations of the things you want or would like to achieve. Take it out as often as you can and look at it, add more things to it and it'll really raise your awareness and motivate you to do whatever you need to to get it.

Feasibility is the logical scaling of the thing that you want and when you want it. Very importantly the goal you set must be with a deadline. With that you've got to ask yourself can i actually do it from now to that time? Can i complete everything that needs to be done in that amount of time? Its good to dream big but at the same time you have to be on the ground to how and when you'll get it.

Lastly, Weight. Weight is what i view as the most important thing you got to have if you really want your goal setting to work. Weight can be how much importance you put in what you wrote down. People write down many many things in thier life, and what distincts those who have what trhey wrote down in the end is how much weight they put into the goal. Weight is how badly you want something and how much you need it in your life. Don't go: oh if this was in my life i would be happier. Put weight on your goals. I remember three years back when i was attending a the Superteen camp, Dr Ernest Wong, also my good friend and mentor brought up a young man on the stage. And there and then he told everyone that this young man was going to be in the olympics in 2008 for the wushu section. Even though 2008 is not yet here, the last of what i heard of that guy was he was already a champion in shan shou Singapore. Not everyone would prefer to tell everyone what they dream of having but that is an example of puttingf lots of weight on what one wants.

The next time you set a goal, think about the three things: awareness, feasibility and weight.

Generations... Value creation.

If you have noticed the title of this discussion, generations, has always been that of value creation. Why did i put value creation when i don't even talk about it? Actually i have been talking about it. Value creation is the creation of norms, beliefs and qualities. In this case the norms of generational power and how and why norms of one generation is different from another.

There might be a thousand and one reasons why each generation is different from the next but one distinct reason (which has already been spoken about) is seniority or the law of i was here first. Its just natural for one generation to differentiate themselves from their seniors; funny as it seems it will and must happen. This is something called identity; however that is another story for another day.

I think this process of value creation through the coming and going to generations has big impact in many societies but it is slowly losing its significance because anyone today can learn to be faster than someone who is the fastest and the possibilities are all opening up very rapidly.

In closing, if value creation is so impactful what kind of values are you creating now? And are they desirable? How can you create the value that you want or need to have?

Generations - value creation... (continued...)

Living in a world which information flows so rapidly and massively it must have dawned upon you that you might just be more informed about anything in the world right now than anyone who was born 4 decades before you- probably your parents. But there is a fundamental paradox between you thinking that way and whoever who is older than you thinking that they are the ones who know more. This can be summarized in one sentence: The "universal law of" i was here first. Now if you're a parent reading this do not get offended, i'm trying as hard as i can to be objective about this.

Let's put things into perspective first, we are not talking about who knows more, and we are not talking about who should be in position and we are definitely not talking about naive thinking of a teenager who hasn't seen the world. What we are going to talk about is the idea of generational power. Generational power in some sense is the kind of power you get when you are older or you've "been there first". Everyone of us would eventually come to own it, unless you really lock ourself out of the world.

On one hand one might say that this does not confirm the person's credibility or expertise about the proposed knowledge and on the other hand one might say that since he/she was here before i was he might have some knowledge of what is going on/happen. This is important because knowledge IS power. What i'm trying to ask is... is this kind of power good? In what way? and can it be bad? In what ways do we conform to this and in which places do we not?

What do you think?

(to be concluded....)