Tag Archives: idea

Goals

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Goals are an extremely important factor to pay attention to when trying to push forward and keep yourself moving in a positive direction.

The most important thing that you can do for yourself as you align your mind with action is to write down effective goals, I (and many others) call this a personal mission statement.

Hopefully you will know the difference between an effective goal and a passive no-good goal by the end of reading this.

The idea of setting goals, at least for me, is a bit daunting. It seems like a giant vertical mountain in front of me, and I cannot find the first place to put my foot to start. This is when I take to brainstorming.

I once watched a movie where they discussed how to overcome writers block, and the trick was to start from where somebody else has already gone. They used the trick of copying out the first paragraph of a book, and then you shall soon have ideas of your own and continue from there.

So the same thing kind of applies here; take a notepad and start writing your general goals like happiness, money and riches, health, etc. Once you get these down on the paper, draw a giant line, and go through each general goal one by one and list off ways that you can attempt to achieve those things. The idea with getting more specific is that you will slowly be working your way into more effective goals, rather than crappy general rules of life goals that give you no direction or specific tasks to perform.

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So now you have somewhat more specific ways of accomplishing these goals. Things like getting a raise for more money, or spending more time with friends or family to find happiness, or get a significant other to find love.

These goals are still too vague and not specific, you need to focus!

Start a new piece of paper now and get specific. What tasks do you have to do to get a raise? Think in terms of concrete things that you can get done in a week or so. Something like clean my desk is a good goal because it’s a concrete thing you can do and knock off the list, but something like show initiative at work is not as effective because it still doesn’t tell you what exactly to focus your attention on.

If you’re trying to show initiative at work something like ‘solve the problem of never having proper office supplies when you need them’ or ‘initiate a company recycling program’ would be really good things that you could focus your energy towards and really get down to root of the issue, really be able to focus properly.

goals2So now tell me, do we understand the difference between bland goals and effective goals? The idea is to create a goal that has the wow effect, that will keep you awake at night thinking “OH, I know exactly how to tackle that tomorrow!”

When you get annoyed at a goal or frustrated with the seemingly impossibility of a certain goal, you know you’ve got yourself a worthless goal. Cross it off your list, cut it out, and break that goal down into an effective goal you can see the light with. If you’re setting goals for yourself that doesn’t get you fired up, then your goals are wrong.

Get excited, it does take a bit of time to work your way down to the exact specific effective goal, but in the end, it’s so much more effective that its absolutely worth all the effort you will put into refining  your path in life. Good luck!

Effort & Attention

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Effort is something that a lot of people tend to take for granted.

Let me start by defining what I mean by effort: effort is the amount of personal interest, thought, and attention that a person puts into a movement, idea, plan, and/or activity.

Basically what it is, is your commitment. Often times you will hear somebody say: “Everything happens wrong for me,” or you will see carelessness, or slacking. These are all by-products of little effort. When you train yourself to put forth an effort with every ounce of energy in your body, you will find that every activity is performed right, efficiently, effectively, and with the expected results you had when you began the activity in the first place.

You always hear of somebody pulling a muscle lifting a box, or shoveling the snow, but what you don’t hear is how they were attempting to do the effort. Have you ever had this happen to you? I know I have run into situations where I have reached around something to grab an item, but because I was lazy, I didn’t want to get out of my chair to put forth a proper effort to get that item, so I end up straining to reach that item, and tweak my shoulder or my back leaving me with a slight strain for a week.

This is a by-products of lack of effort. Sure you did actually get it, but the effort you put into it was a small portion of what you have inside of you.

Aside from getting hurt, you can also hurt other people. Think of the last time you had a conversation with somebody and only gave them 1/2 of your attention. They can always feel that you are giving them that lack of attention, which is lack of effort, and you hurt their feelings.
Some people, if they receive that kind of attention for long enough, will eventually stop giving you their effort and attention and move onto somebody or something that gives them full effort.
I also find with myself that I feel better after I have done something with all my heart; giving a 100% effort. I feel like I couldn’t have done any better because I couldn’t have put any more effort into the thing that I was doing. Its one of those kind of things that you can be just doing whatever your doing and catch yourself taking short-cuts and forgetting things because you are not really giving it your full attention.
Sometimes, I know I have parked my car at home and suddenly realized I cannot remember the last 10 minutes I just did driving. Have you ever done this? This is because I’m either in a zone, or I’mfocused on something else taking away from my driving.
Repetitive habits like this can easily bypassed with very little effort which can in turn, turn into something extremely hazardous for not only yourself but the people around you.
So next time that you are cleaning your car, or washing your dishes, chatting with friends or even driving home after work, make sure that you give it your full effort and just wait and see the kind of rewards you can get out of giving it your 100% effort.
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