The Goal-Setting Technique

Yesterday I attended another Swedbank Business Network event, where the speaker was business trainer Pāvels Hafizovs. One of those seminars that makes you stop and think - so I am sharing it with you to give the little thought-gnawing worm something to chew on.

For a large part of their lives, people work towards other people's goals - formulated by someone else, stated, written down, taught, drilled in. Rarely does anyone stop to think about their own goals. Because what we actually need is not the achievement of goals as such, but the feelings that arise at the moment of achievement or on the way to the goal.

The feeling of happiness is an internal reference - it is either present in daily life or it isn't. The path to this feeling in everyday life is long and hard, because at its core you must fight with yourself. Success, by contrast, is an external reference - easier to achieve, but it does not always lead to the feeling of happiness. Whereas the feeling of happiness always leads to success. Decide for yourself, then, what you are really going to work on!

If I change nothing, nothing will change either. But am I satisfied with the current state of affairs? And then a series of inhibiting and obstructing factors kick in that prevent us from seeking and later reaching the desired goal: fear, the super-goal (all or nothing), dreams not linked to action, the people around us (those close to us), limiting beliefs, and the conflict between conscious and unconscious goals.

What are we afraid of?

1. Making mistakes.
Society holds the perverse belief that making mistakes is something bad. But in reality, only the person who does nothing makes no mistakes - in other words, they stagnate or parasitise at someone else's expense.

2. Looking foolish in others' eyes.
From school days onwards, many people develop a fear or defensive reaction - which usually manifests as aggression - towards awkward situations or being mocked in them.

3. Losing time and resources.
This manifests as stopping at the first rung achieved and fighting to prevent anyone else from trying to climb onto that rung. Yet in reality, the majority simply step over and walk past - following the latest trends, growing, investing resources, risking falling back.

4. Damaging your self-confidence.
"But what will others think and say?" These are fears of what has not yet happened - of imagination, of fantasy. But will it even be like that?

5. Changing or changing something.
Keep in mind: certainty is the most uncertain thing in the world - don't cling to it, don't settle into your comfort zone for too long.

6. Fears that come from childhood.
Various imprintings formed during upbringing - for example: I won't be accepted, I'll be pushed away, I won't be loved, if I'm not good enough, obedient, compliant.

The frame that limits us: if something doesn't work out for me first time, immediately concluding that it's not for me and not trying again. The other extreme is getting stuck in a loop - focusing so intensely on one problem that you can't see other opportunities around you. That image of the cat which has been circulating on Facebook for a while and collecting hundreds of Likes is a good example of this insight.
  
To fight fear, Pāvels recommends asking yourself two questions: 1. What did I do well? 2. What could I have done better?

Limiting beliefs

1. Hopelessness - "That is not possible (in general, for anyone, ever)".
2. Helplessness - "That is possible, but not for me".
3. Worthlessness - "I don't deserve it (not even worth trying)".

These are stored in the subconscious and are very difficult to fight against. But the moment these limiting beliefs are brought out into the open and spoken aloud, they diminish. It sounds like a course of psychotherapy - but in a way, it is an acceptance of oneself and the situation.

True goals are outside our comfort zone

Goal formulation

In the second part of the seminar we actually worked on paper with our own goals and their formulation, step by step. First, Pāvels asked us to take a sheet of paper and draw a symbol in the centre representing the concept of "goal". Then, arranged clockwise around it, nine drawings - each person associating them with the following concepts: 1) Relationships; 2) Health; 3) Money; 4) Work/Business; 5) Knowledge/Skills; 6) Possessions; 7) People/Connections; 8) Events; 9) Spirit/Soul.

Then the work on our own goals began:
Step 1 - write down the most significant recent achievements in each of the 9 life areas mentioned.
Step 2 - write down 1–3 desired goals for the future in each of the 9 life areas mentioned.
Step 3 - answer the question about each desired goal: what do I need it for? (Here goals from across the 9 areas may merge into three, or even one - or all 9 may remain separate.)
Step 4 - find and draw any new goals that emerged.
Step 5 - for each goal, create two scales from 0 to 10 and mark on them: 1) how important is this to me? 2) how much do I want it? Goals closest to the 10-point mark are your "energisers" - and those are worth working on.

When formulating a goal, the following questions must be taken into account and answered:
1. Formulate positively - motivation TOWARDS, not AWAY FROM. For example, not "I don't want to be poor", but "I want to be wealthy".
2. Is this truly your goal?
3. What could you or the people close to you lose if this goal is achieved?
4. Which?
5. Where? When? With whom?
6. The first step

Achieving a goal is a great thing, but the most interesting part happens on the way to the goal

I also liked the activity offered: each person present could write their goal on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope with their postal address, and the Swedbank representatives promised to send this envelope in the post after some time - about six months - so that you could check whether the goal had been achieved, or to remind yourself that you had veered off course. Well, we'll see!