Ready, set, goals

Turning your dreams into destiny

By: Tom Gegax

It’s pretty darn hard to get from here to there without a road map. Laying out your goals bridges the gap between who you are today and the person you sketched out in your mission statement. Yet when I ask people all over the country whether they write up their goals each year, barely one in 10 say they have. But that 10% gushes over how spelling out their goals transformed their lives.

Why the disconnect? Lots of reasons. Chronically impatient people think goal setting is a waste of time. They wonder why they should spend hours writing down what they want to do when they could be out there actually doing it. Others are wary of introspection, a prerequisite to pinpointing what they want from life.

Some folks actually fear success because living the dream might cause them to sacrifice their suffering. Personal demons trap certain folks into thinking they don’t deserve happiness and financial security. Then there’s fear of failure, an acute malady for fragile egos that just can’t take the blow of another disappointment. Any of this sound familiar?

Herding your goals into one place — a digital file, a legal pad, a planner — is deeply satisfying, clarifying, and deceptively powerful. In his 1951 book, “The Scottish Himalayan Expedition,” W. H. Murray explained: “There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

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Related Topics: Business insight, Gegax, Tom Gegax

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