Making new years resolutions
Excellent thought from
David St. Lawrence:
The wording of goals is quite important
When you think of a goal as a tool for focusing your intention, you will understand why the wording of a goal might be so important.
If your goal is stated as an objective to be reached, what happens then? You will discover, as I have, that striving to achieve a goal is an adventure of the highest order and extremely absorbing. Reaching a goal on the other hand is a short-lived pleasure and it has little staying power.
If your goal is to achieve an ability, on the other hand, it's like you have given yourself another tool to improve your life. There is adventure while you are achieving the goal and there is continual satisfaction as you exercise your new ability.
This is not idle conjecturing. I have been working with misworded goals for some time. How do I know? Because reaching the goal provided little or no satisfaction!
There is a goal that I have been working on for many years with little lasting success. It is the goal of achieving and maintaining an orderly workspace.
I think I discovered today why I cannot seem to accomplish this task which is easily achieved by so many others. I am using the wrong wording for the goal.
If I stop and think about it carefully, I do not WANT a totally neat workspace or desktop!
What I want is a workspace that will let me efficiently handle a wide range of activities at high and low volumes without loss of control.
Now THAT is a goal that stirs my imagination!
I read this a few hours ago and my mind still keeps coming back to it. I collect clutter (static cling) and have time and again, tried to get rid of it but it keeps coming back and my impression was that the clutter was impeding my efficiency. But, thinking about it from another perspective, I am already reasonably efficient.
David's statement illuminates what I am trying to achieve and defines where I was going wrong. A change is needed, not an elimination.
Making Ripples is a blog that I read daily for very good reason...
Posted by DaveH at January 7, 2007 8:42 PM