What is a Goal

What is a Goal?  Do you know? Are you willing to: Work – Spend Time – Acquire the Skill?

We have all kinds of goals we think, but do we? Well no, we don’t. What we have are events we would like to happen.


Have you ever said: “Oh, that sounds good, I could do that.” Or: “If only I was (fill in the blank) then I’d be (happy, rich, in charge). This is wishful thinking and not goals. What I’m talking about here are personal goals and not goals you boss gives you. Business goals have penalties attached to them as motivators. The only penalty with personal goals is that you just won’t achieve them.


Look at the goals you want to achieve, are you willing to do work and spend time to achieve them? If you are not, if you are too busy with other things and this goal is always at the bottom of your to do list, it is not a goal. Save yourself time and effort and discard the goal.


That’s not quite fair; life has a million ways to derail reaching our goals. There is always something to get in the way; kids, work, weather, car, home repairs, illness, the list is endless. There is always a reason why. My brother, who is goal driven and very successful, has a wonderful saying “It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it”.


Your job is to reach your goal in spite of the everyday distractions. My goal driven brother is an excellent example of how to reach your goals. He is always reaching for another goal and every spare moment he has is spent in reaching that goal. When he comes to dinner parties, he comes with a book he is researching. When he is not a part of the conversation he slips away and dives into the book, maybe he will have 10 minutes or ½ and hour but he is that much closer to reaching his goal. He also carries a notebook or PDA to jot down thoughts during these spare moments.



How to identify a “real” goal

Goals have identifiers that make them goals.

1. You are willing to put in work to reach the goal.

2. The goal is something you are willing to acquire the skills to achieve the goal.

3. The goal is on the top of your to do list so you will spend time working toward it.

If your goal fits all three criteria, you have a real goal, go for it.