"The first step to getting what you want out of life is this: Decide what you want."
- Ben Stein
Motivation Monday - Richard's Insight
This is all about goal-setting. Know what we want, set a goal, commit to acting to reach it and surely we will get there...most of the time!
There are other factors that come into play here and as this quote suggests setting the goal is just the first step. In reality, however, there may be a little more involved in the 'decide what you want' phrase than goals alone. For example, if we set a goal to land on the moon, or play a rock concert at Wembley Stadium, or discover a new species of plankton, then that alone may not work.
We also need to be in alignment...
By alignment, I mean our goals should be in line with our purpose and passion as a minimum. It would help if we had a leaning towards how we might achieve them in some way, such as a talent, skill or competence of some sort...but these things can often be learned or developed. Equally, there may be another way of achieving the same end even in cases where we do not have the apparent underlying skills - take Richard Branson for example, who is sponsoring a number of super-high altitude flights of various kinds but is not the pilot himself...he had facilitated it, or put a different way...make it happen!
So, in conclusion, yes deciding what we want involves goal-setting quite obviously, but it also involves understanding why we are here, what we believe in and are passionate about and then allowing a creativity to come in that moves us along this path in true alignment.
-Richard W J Brown