I was exposed to goal setting in my early years of Secondary education. I would sit down before the end of the year and set goals.
However, I didn’t want to look at those goals twelve months later. I religiously fell short of the goals I had set. Frustration started setting in. “Am I day dreaming”, I thought to myself. “How come this stuff works in books but doesn’t work for me?” My mother taught me that every time one experiences pain, that person ought to search within themselves or outside themselves for solutions. I started refining the way I set goals over the years with a backdrop of lots of study on the subject and it got better.
This reminds me of an anecdote I heard about meeting our future selves. Isn’t that what goal setting is all about ?
Anyway let’s look at the anecdote.
“When I was fifteen years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say, ‘Who’s your hero?’
I said, ‘I don’t know, I gotta think about that, give me a couple of weeks.’
This person comes back two weeks later and says, ‘Who’s your hero?’
I replied, ‘You know what, I thought about it, you know who it is? It’s me in ten years.’
So I turn twenty-five. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, ‘So are you a hero?’
I replied, ‘No, no, no, not even close.’ ‘Why?’ she said.
‘Cause my hero is me at thirty-five,’ I said.
See, every day, every week, every month, every year of my life, my hero is always ten years away. I’m never going to meet my hero, I am never going to obtain that, and that’s totally fine because it gives me somebody to keep on chasing.”
As you can see. You will never meet your “hero” if you don’t get intentional. Who do you need to become to meet your future hero? Do you need to go back to school to acquire that skill? Do you need to pick the phone and call the CEO who promised you an opportunity? Do you need to set your targets a little bit higher? Do it now!
You have one life to live so be awesome 👏
