Alan W. Goff
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3 Goal Setting Flaws That Guarantee Failure
(Part 2)
‘Continued from Part 1
I'm 42 years old and if no one ever bothered to take the time and teach me how to tie my shoe when I was a little boy, I would still be wearing slip on shoes today. Just because I’m older now doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll one day “get it” on my own. Is it any wonder why people really don't know how to set a goal properly when nobody has really taken the time to teach us anything different than what we've come up with our own?
The first flaw in the way people set goals that guarantees failure is that they think in reverse and set a goal based on what they know they can do. They look at their current circumstances or their current results and allow those conditions to control what they choose for the goal. As an example, let's say a company is generating $1 million a year in gross revenue and based on what they know, meaning based on their current results and circumstances of generating a million dollars per year, they'll set a goal to do $1.1 million next year based on current sales. It’s something they know they can do because they’ve done it before.
I was working with a lady once who was involved in a direct selling company helping her achieve her goals for the year. Her ambition was to earn the use of a new company car. Upon my questioning, she admitted that she had already once achieved the level of sales required and had earned one of the highly sought after company cars, but had ‘lost it’ because of lagging sales quotas. I informed her that this was not a good goal for her as she had already accomplished the goal once before and therefore already knew how to achieve it again. In this case, she just needed to do what she already knew she needed to do. As far as proper goal setting was concerned, she needed a new and bigger goal.
Again, people set goals based on what they know they can do. The problem with going after a goal you know you can do is that it's not inspiring… It isn't challenging enough to keep you going.
There are two criteria for properly setting any goal. The goal should be big enough to excite you and scare you at the same time. It's really a call to action. If you're going to have to do some things that you've never done before or think in ways that you’ve never thought before or behave in ways that you’ve never behaved before, which is what's required to achieve big goals, you'd better have something that excites you. It's what keeps the motivation and you need that criteria otherwise you'll be derailed at the first obstacle. The goal should also be large enough to scare you so that it constantly pushes you to break new ground in your life and forcing you to grow onward and upward truly achieving new standards and new levels. It’s what keeps the fire in the belly burning.
‘Continued in Part 3
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