Set The Right Goal

文 : 萧理查德

2 months ago, I saw an interesting video.

The content was so thought-provoking that the words said in the video keep on flashing in my mind.

People who like hiking normally treat reaching the mountain top as their goal and climbing as the means towards the goal.

It is a commonly acceptable way of thinking and there is nothing wrong with it ― without the mountain, there is nothing to climb.

Now, try getting out from the norm and relook at the situation.

When we choose to go hiking, more often than not, it is not what is at the top of the mountain that interest us, but the entire hiking experience is what we really want.

If that's the case, should the mountain top be the goal or hiking is actually the real goal?

If it is not this mountain, we can still choose another mountain to hike; whereas, without the desire to hike, even if we were being placed with the mountain right in front of us, we won't want to hike it.

In life, we set goals and work hard towards achieving them.

Some or maybe most of these goals, like graduate from a reputable university, get a job in Fortune 500 company, get promotion, buy a house, get married and have a family, were set according to what most people in the society would want to achieve.

Then, we start to adopt the means that people around us would perceived as the "right" means towards these goals.

Everything seems to be "automated" and we just need to get onto the conveyor belt.

I am not against the idea of setting goals similar to others.

So long as these are what you want, by all means pursue them.

What I am asking everyone to do is take a moment to rethink what should be the real goal and what is actually just the means.

Let's take the earlier example to study.

When we treat the mountain top as our goals and hiking as the means, when we did not achieve the mountain top, literally we have failed.

When we set a goal, we should stay focus and not be easily diverted by other distractions or temptations.

In other word, we need to conquer this mountain top before moving on to the next mountain.

When we hike, not only we get to exercise our body, we also get to experience the adventure of exploring the track.

Even if we didn't reach the mountain top for whatsoever reason, did we actually fail to achieve our goal?

I doubt so.

The most is we did not explored the entire track till the mountain top, we still get to exercise our body and experience the adventure.

We can choose to climb any mountain that we like so long as we stay focus on hiking.

Therefore, setting the right goal and knowing what are the means actually free us from being bound to a narrower possibility.

Our mind will be free and we will know what should we be staying focus on.

A simple paradigm shift unleashing a new world of possibilities.

For example, some people think that success in career is determined by the position they sit in the company and to achieve this goal, they need to learn new skills and competencies.

Such thinking is quite common.

However, when we change our mindset to treat learning and self improvement as our goal in career, we actually liberate ourselves.

If we set career advancement as the goal, we are bound by failure (promotion is never guaranteed when we improve ourselves).

Learning and self improvement are the goal in our career.

So long as we continue to improve our skills and knowledge, we have accomplished something good for ourselves.

When we get better professionally, even if we don't get promotion now, new opportunity will come to us.

We will no longer be bound by the narrow possibility we once set for ourselves.

Besides identifying the right goal, we also need to know the real "cause-effect" and have the right mindset.

Many years back, I read an article which talks about a study done at workplace.

The study started with a hypothesis that "if workers are productive, they are likely to be successful and thus, they will be happy".

After conducted large scale studies, the researchers found that the hypothesis was totally wrong.

Instead, the real situation was "when the workers are happy, they are much more productive and thus, they are likely to achieve success".

Some workers may think "if you pay me more money, I will stay and work harder for the company".

Others may think "because I choose to stay in the company, I will work hard and eventually my hard work will help me make more money".

Which group of workers will likely to be appreciated by the company and create more value to the company?

Which is the winning mindset?

How our mind perceived things is so essential and critical to our success.

Our mindset will govern our actions.

There is nothing more important than to get our mindset right in the first place.

Even though it may seem to be a small twist in the sequence of things, it is in fact a 180-degree change of perceptive which will eventually bring us a totally different outcome.

Take some time to look at how you set goals and how you perceived their relationship to be.

Start with a right mindset and you have won half the battle.