Positioned for Launch
Last week everyone made New Years Resolutions, goals and objectives each of us wishes to fulfill in the coming year. So in honor of that over the next few weeks I will be posting about how to go about accomplishing ones goals. Everyone knows that by March the vast majority of Americans will have quit their new found goals. Hopefully with some luck and good advice we can avoid this same fate and avoid the pitfalls of chasing down a dream.
My first advice is to make sure you start off on the right foot. It's about positioning, setting yourself up to succeed rather than fail. This seems like such an obvious move, yet so many of us simply make goals without thinking about them. We declare “I want to lose 25 pounds this year!” yet rarely do we make any preparation to do so. The goals you make will not simply happen. We have to prepare ourselves, endeavoring to know what's ahead and plans need to be set to handle any set backs. In other words we have to position ourselves for success.
I have a heater in my apartment separate from the noisy, ineffective built-in unit. For the most part I was happy with it, I had it set in the middle of the apartment's main area and it seemed to heat the area nicely. The trouble was that we have had a really mild winter here, so when a recent cold snap moved through the area I found that my little heater could barely do its job. That was when I looked up the instructions online (I got it used). They recommended placing the heater near the draftiest window in the room. So I placed my heater near the sliding doors leading to the balcony, which has enough draft to move the plastic blinds hanging in front of them. Lo and behold my little heater made the apartment so hot that I had to turn it down, twice! That's because it was finally placed in a position where it could do some good. When my heater was in the middle of the room it would heat a column of air and that was about it. The fringes of the room would be noticeably cooler than the air in the middle, you could tell when you were near the heater because it would suddenly grow hotter. Now with the draft, which is heated as it moves past the heater, the warmth fills the house as it is carried by this imperceptible wind.
Position is everything when starting out a goal. It is how we arm ourselves to succeed. NASA doesn't just launch a rocket willy-nilly. Everything has to be as close to perfect as possible before they let the rocket leave. We don't need to wait for things to be perfect, but we can affect change in our own lives to make sure that when we do launch, it is successful.
The first thing you should do is really sit down and ask questions that define what it is exactly you want to achieve. “I want to stop watching so much TV,” is to vague to hold anyone accountable to. Instead set parameters. How much TV is to much? How much is too little? Is there a time frame that you feel you need to watch (the news, your favorite program)? When you've answered your questions you might have a resolution like this “I want to only watch TV during dinner, no more than two hours a night.” Now that is something you can hold yourself accountable to!
Next, one needs is to prepare for the task at hand, just as a runner would stretch out muscles before a run. Those who want to achieve their goals should prepare in advance for the chore at hand. Those of you looking to diet, need to throw out your stores of junk food. Those of you looking to ween their gaming or internet habits need to make it harder to plop down and enjoy them. Put the consoles in a different room from the TV, or disconnect your home internet so that you have to go to a Starbucks to browse. Either way don't make it easy to fail.
I hope this advise helps, like I said positioning oneself to succeed rather than to fail is the key to achieving your goals. Don't just wish for your dreams to come true this year. Make they come true by defining exactly what they are, and enabling yourself to succeed.
~Sayonara
