Setting The Course For The Impossible

It’s time to soar in 2011
By: Roshawn Watson
Happy 2011! The beginning of the year is always a great time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Such introspection can be very beneficial, especially with respect to goal-setting. Goals are powerful tools that allow you to get the most out of your life. They harness the same power as the laser beam: focused energy! Dr. Steven Covey called goal-setting “the common denominator of successful individuals and organizations.”
Not Having Goals
Without clear goals, you merely have pipe dreams! While pipe dreams may give you the warm and fuzzy feeling, they lack the substance to create meaningful and sustainable change within your life. Moreover, without goals, you also don’t even know who belongs in your life. Your goals should define every relationship! For example, I have no interest in pursuing counsel from someone unqualified to give it. Constantly evaluate your circle of influence. Qualify those who have access to you. This isn’t to be calculating as much as to make sure that those who surround you share values and passions congruent with the direction of your life. Disengage from toxic and unfulfilled relationships.  
Go where you are celebrated instead of where you are tolerated!
On New Year’s Day, my wife and I discussed our goals for the year in the six major areas: financial, fitness, spiritual, mental, career, and relationships. Being mindful that over-emphasis in any one area can create a deficit in another, we aimed for some semblance of balance. Most of our goals were not very surprising to us at all, as we discuss and work towards our goals continuously. While this is good, our familiarity with our goals also disturbed me somewhat because one of the last things I want is to become complacent. In fact, one of the benefits of goal-setting is to unlock your passion for your dreams: to develop a plan to bring your vision into reality. The concern is that if your goals no longer excite you, then you run the risk of pursuing them with a half-hearted effort or giving up on them altogether. My friends, if you have been goal-setting for any length of time, complacency may threaten your passions. Don’t let the mechanics of goal-setting or the cares of life rob you of the life you deserve! If your priorities change, that’s fine. Discover what interests you now, and stir yourself up for your future!
Boundaries
What about goals that you are afraid to set out of fear of failure? Remember, many of the boundaries we face are internal. We have greater influence over our destinies than we give ourselves credit for. I want to encourage you to take a fresh look at what you want to accomplish, and remember to STRETCH yourself. Take a pen, and treat it as a magic wand. BELIEVE that everything that you write will come true. What would you accomplish if you knew you couldn’t fail? Don’t dismiss this as some trivial exercise. As hokey as it sounds, I did this a year ago while at a conference, and literally every thing that I wrote came true. In three cases, the goals were things that I had been working on for years, yet it came to fruition once I began to release faith and aggressively towards them. In more than one case, I exceeded expectations. Perhaps one of the greatest moments was after I had finished a BIG goal, one very high-level boss commented that I knocked it “out of the part” and someone else mentioned “I want you to know in the 5 years, that was your best you have ever done.” Some of the circumstances surrounding these events still amaze and confound me! I will simply say that writing those items down created such a focal point in our lives that to the abandonment of everything else, we knew they had to be done. We had great respect for those goals, and “what you respect, you attract!”  (Law of Attraction) I mention this example not to brag (on the contrary, I’m rather private) but to offer anecdotal support for why it is important to stretch yourself.  As I look back over 2010, I am filled with such gratitude for what we were blessed to accomplish and for the people who helped us.
An Over-rated Virtue
Shouldn’t goals have a basis in practicality? Perhaps, but keep in mind that practicality can be over-rated! We often allow practicality to keep us contained. Also, note that as you endeavor to expand your context, your reality will change. For instance, accurate times for the one-mile run started to be recorded in 1850, yet it wasn’t until a century later, that the major breakthrough occurred. For many years, it was believed that no man could break the four minute mile barrier without causing significant damage to the runner’s health. It was on May 6 1954 that Roger Bannister achieved the first recorded four minute mile. His victory stunned the world. Importantly, by the end of 1957, 16 runners had logged sub-4-minute miles. I maintain that Bannister didn’t just break a speed barrier: he broke a mental barrier! How else can you explain 16 runners achieving in just three years what no others accomplished in the previous century. In short, as the context changed (now a post four-minute mile world), so did reality. Moreover, just think about the implications of Groupon generating $2 billion in revenues in just 2 years! There’s nothing really proprietary about Groupon either, other than its name, yet look at what they have accomplished! Now, that this mental barrier is broken, the sky is the limit.
Additionally, I’m biased. I fail to understand what is so attractive about being normal and practical anyway. Normal is broke, busted, and disgusted. Normal is paycheck to paycheck. Normal is retiring at 65 and barely able to write a $5,000 check out of fear running out. Just yesterday, I met someone who was just waiting until she reaches 65, so she can “move on” with life and stop working “so hard.” Without Social Insecurity, what would many do? I challenge you to move beyond what’s normal and practical for your socioeconomic status, gender, race, age, class, disabilities, or anything else that keeps you in the bondage of yesterday.

Don’t check with reality before you check with your heart! 

When did you decide that it was okay to give up on your dream? Somewhere deep inside you know you were meant to dominate!  It’s not time for a dose of reality. You’ve had that already and are none the better for it. It’s time to get radical, to pursue something that makes your heart flutter, to announce a goal that creates energy to all that hear it!
It requires no faith to stay in the practical. It’s not practical to think that Facebook would become the go-to destination, despite all the other social networks that existed before it, yet it happened anyway! I hope this message resonates with your faith on a very visceral level. In 2011, remember, that possibilities for you are determined by your capacity to believe.

Expand your beliefs to expand your life today!

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Copyright 2012, Roshawn Watson, Pharm.D., Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

23 comments

  2. Excellent post. We really do need to give ourselves the chance to see what we can do and not worry about the fallout. I have always been a firm believer in following your heart. I will be including this post in my Friday picks.
    My recent post 7 Ways to Improve Your Diet

  3. What an inspiring post. In addition to fear, sometimes people just don't take the time to think about where they want their lives to go. They just let life happen.

    Is it that hard to sit at a coffee shop one day with a piece of paper and spend a few minutes writing down.
    1. What you want out of life.
    2. What your willing to sacrifice to get there…if it's not much, then where can you go with what you're willing to give up short term.

    If you don't want to give up time every week to go to night school, then maybe you spend 1 day a month learning in a different way, from a library or blog or trial and error. Life doesn't have to stop to achieve your goals, you just have to be willing to put in a little something to get something else in return.
    My recent post New Years Goals for Anyone

  8. Making a game out of it certainly maintains the fun, which is important. To get to a destination but to completely hate how you got there doesn't give you nearly the same satisfaction as having an all-around enjoyable experience. Of course, winning is winning, but if you can make the process less painful, what's the disincentive?
    My recent post Setting The Course For The Impossible

  9. Kevin,
    I think the risk of complacency is great for anyone because it is human nature. We understandably love our "comfort zones." It is easier for young people (and the young at heart) to be optimistic in my opinion. The sad thing is as we "see how the world works," we sometimes give way to pessimism/ cynicism.

    I hope we maintain our positive outlooks (snap out of our funks), as that may be required to have lasting success anyway.
    My recent post Setting The Course For The Impossible

  10. Very well written Shawn. Goals help us achieve. The more they're worked on, the fresher and foremost in our mind they remain. And they force us to ask the question, how bad do you want it?

  14. Hey Shawn,

    I really enjoyed this post. It got the brain engaged, and in a few cases
    you spelled out a few thoughts I have had but hadn't really seen in the
    blogoshphere:

    – "Go where you are celebrated instead of where you are tolerated!"
    – "…remember to STRETCH yourself"
    – "…what you respect, you attract!"
    – "you are determined by your capacity to believe"

    All very true, in my view, and in a way they're actually practical
    statements – even if practicality wasn't the object of your post.

    Anyway, good stuff here, and I hope it gets well read.

    Best,
    Ray
    My recent post 5 Rules for Achieving Debt-Free Living

  15. Thanks so much. I am really PUMPED for this year! I'm preparing myself and everyone around for the amazing. I am encouraging everyone to leaving behind all baggage and negative influence, hence that's why the tone is so motivational. It's always great to get feedback to know whether you have it the mark (or not), so I'm profoundly appreciative to you.

    Cheers,

    Shawn
    My recent post Setting The Course For The Impossible

  16. Writing your long term goals down is absolutely necessary. Studies have shown that goals that were written down are achieved at a much higher rate than ones that are just talked about. I completely agree with having stretch goals. It will help us push ourselves and even if it takes a long time, we'll get there eventually.
    My recent post Investment Fundamental 8 – Real Estate

  18. Goals are super important — if you don't have anything to aim for, what are you actually accomplishing? And goals should be challenging… easy goals are pointless.

  19. Hi Shawn, Would it be too lazy to say, I agree with Squirrelers? This was wonderful article with great food for thought. I completely agree that there is power in writing things down. (My only problem is keeping track of where I left the paper:) ).

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