The Emotion Machine

Re-visiting Your Goals And Aspirations

We all have certain aspirations in life. Some of us tell our friends and family about them, some of us write them down, while others just feel comfortable enough keeping these dreams tucked inside their heads. Whatever we do – they are there. However, the more we address them, and the more we think and contemplate about how to achieve them, the greater chance we have to successfully follow through on these plans.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Abraham Lincoln

Making a list

It has been exactly one month now since I wrote about goal-setting in my article, “Create A Progressive Timeline To Better Envision Your Goals.” In this post I emphasized the importance of writing down our goals, making ourselves more conscious of these aspirations, and getting ourselves in the mindset to achieve them.

I also promised my readers that I would write a follow-up article touching on ways you can improve your timeline to make it more effective in helping you meet these goals. Even if you haven’t read my initial article, you probably already understand the gist of what it means to create a goal timeline; therefore, you shouldn’t have much of a problem following the content of this post.

I personally like to write a list of goals at the beginning of every new year and then I will update it every few months. It serves as a great reminder of the “bigger picture,” and what I value most out of life. It is also a great way to stay focused. Once you have something like this to refer back to, you will find this post even more useful in improving your vision for the future.

Re-visiting

Whether you have written them down or not, you probably have a decent recollection of the types of things you have wished to accomplish throughout your lifetime. Depending on what stage of life you are in some goals may be fast-approaching, while others are more in the distance.

When you re-visit your goals there are several things you might notice:

1. Some of your goals may have already been accomplished.

One of the best feelings in the world is to finally accomplish one of your long-term goals. You probably have some experience with this, depending on how good of a planner you are. When I refer back to the list I made last month (and especially to the goals that I listed to complete “Within the month,”) I can already begin to sense some form of accomplishment. I had a hard time imagining that I would one day graduate from college, but that day has finally come, and thus starts a new chapter of my life. If I can follow through on one long-term goal then this gives me the drive to pursue others.

2. You may have changed your mind on certain goals.

You may glance through the list and notice you are not as enthusiastic about some of these plans as you were when you first made them. As long as you have genuinely lost interest, and you are not just fishing for reasons to quit, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with changing some of your aspirations. As I mentioned in the other article, nothing you write down has to be set in stone, we change over time.

3. You may want to add new goals to your list.

Just like the point made above, we are bound to develop new interests overtime. If we want to continue growing then we should act on these interests and see what difference we can make. Maybe you have noticed yourself becoming more and more interested in learning how to cook extravagant recipes? Maybe you have always wanted to have your own garden? Maybe you have always wanted to write a short story? Add these to your list. Don’t be too disparaged about making too many goals. You can always pursue them one at a time and you have plenty of time left here on Earth…don’t plan on checking out until you are lying on your deathbed.

4. Some goals are becoming less and less likely to achieve.

Perhaps there are some goals you are really interested but you simply don’t have the resources or power to do them anymore. Maybe you’re getting too old to continue those dreams of becoming a baseball player for the New York Yankees, or you don’t have the reputation to become a local politician. If you can acknowledge which goals are becoming more and more unrealistic then you can begin to filter them from the list. Yeah, it sucks and it can temporarily hurt your drive, but it is better than wasting resources on things that you stand little chance of accomplishing. Better to know your limitations then to act irrationally and set yourself up for more hurt later on.

5. Some goals you are on your way towards completing.

Hopefully you are still pursuing the goals that you find worth working towards. If you have the will and persistence, then there is nothing stopping you from getting what needs to get done in order to make that next leap in your life. All that is required is that you keep up with your plans and continue to add in the details as you move closer and closer to the finish line. Even when your main goal stays the same, the path towards achieving it will continue to transform as you follow it. You must set out to constantly update your “mental map” in the face of new information and new experiences. This describes an element of persistence that is often overlooked.

How often should I re-evaluate my goals?

You want to be consistent but not excessive. At least once every 1 or 2 months should be a healthy refresher. Doing things like this can really be a great exercise, because it allows you to step back and keep your mind concentrated on the things you really wish to make out of life, instead of letting yourself get lost in the hectic tides of a busy work schedule. When I reflect back on my goals, I like to think of it as a kind of meditation. It is a way to further prepare myself for the things I am going to set out and do.

Good planning means adding details

Like Abraham Lincoln says in the quote above, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” But what does it mean to properly set a goal? Although making lists like the ones we just discussed can be useful, good planning requires that we add details to our goals. So, you want to be a doctor? That’s great! But what steps do you have to take to get there? For starters, you will probably need to maintain a high GPA all throughout college if you want to get into medical school. But that is just the surface, as you plan further you will need to continuously fill in more and more details.

Where are the best places to get the details?

Depending on your goals there are a variety of ways to seek guidance. The internet has proven to be one of the most valuable resources within our recent history. If you are unsure about anything, you can go to forums to ask questions, search something on Google, find a blog of someone who is a professional, find a video of someone doing it on Youtube, or read about the subject on Wikipedia.

You can also talk to friends, family, coworkers, or fellow students who may have experience with what you want to accomplish. Maybe your uncle’s best friend used to own his own music studio, and you want to learn more about recording so you can release your own album. Or maybe your goal is to get your grades up, but you are having difficulty scoring well on your calculus tests so you find a friend who can tutor you. Ask around, a lot of answers may be right in front of you.

Another thing I like to do when learning more is to go to my local library. As long as you live in the area you should be able to get a library card and take out books, CDs, and even DVDs for free. This is a great way to find informational gems that you would otherwise not get on the internet or through friends. In many ways, the library is what sets you apart from the pack. I am always in the middle of a book in order to keep my mind sharp.

There are all ways you can become more familiar with your goals and how to get there. I encourage you to take an active process in educating yourself, as it is the foundation of what it means to become a good and successful planner.

Visualization and “seeing all the way through”

Sometimes people make a mistake and say, “I just didn’t see it all the way through.”

Neurolinguistic Programming, a set of interpersonal and intrapersonal communication strategies developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, takes this phrase literally.

NLP assumes that when individuals make decisions regarding the future that they have a particular vision or mental map in their heads about how these events will transpire. Some of these maps are more effective than others. It is our job as free thinking and self-motivating individuals to reflect back on these maps and update them in order to best serve our goals and values.

Creating a virtual reality, or what I like to thing of as a “mental playground,” allows us to utilize resources in our minds to better prepare ourselves for the future. NLP is hardly the first school to teach the benefits of visualization. In fact, this sort of practice can probably be traced all the way back to the meditations done by Buddhist monks when they visualize symbols of metta (loving-kindess) in order to help deal with interpersonal conflicts.

On top of this, visualizations is finally getting some recognition by science as a legitimate technique to change our attitude and behavior. It has been used in Sports Psychology for decades now, and as reported by one psychiatrist and brain researcher at the Huffington Post,

“Although visualization was regarded as “new age hype” for many years, research has shown that there is a strong scientific basis for how and why visualization works. It is now a well-known fact that we stimulate the same brain regions when we visualize an action and when we actually perform that same action. For example, when you visualize lifting your right hand, it stimulates the same part of the brain that is activated when you actually lift your right hand. This shared area of brain activation when we imagine an action and perform it has been demonstrated extensively in the scientific literature. A striking example of how visualization increases brain activation is seen in stroke.

When a person has a stroke due to a blood clot in a brain artery, blood cannot reach the tissue that the artery once fed with oxygen and nutrients, and that tissue dies. This tissue death then spreads to the surrounding area that does not receive the blood any more. However, if a person with this stroke imagines moving the affected arm or leg, brain blood flow to the affected area increases and the surrounding brain tissue is saved. Imagining moving a limb, even after it has been paralyzed after a stroke, increases brain blood flow enough to diminish the amount of tissue death. This is a very clear indicator of the power of visualization. “

I think it is safe to say that visualization can be great method for improving learning and goal-setting. It allows us to consciously prepare an idea, even though we haven’t practiced it in the real world.

By using our mind’s eye we can prepare ourselves for possible events in the future. It is also sometimes used in NLP as an “ecology check.” This means we can imagine ourselves doing certain acts and check to see if they are congruent with our original intentions. One strategy for getting into medical school might be to “cheat off others on tests,” but a proper visualization would entail the possibility of getting caught, in which the risks severely outweigh the benefits.

Visualization is most effective when we take into account these different ranges of possibilities, and how different decisions can lead to different sets of outcomes. This is a big part of what it means to “see things all the way through.”

However, with all this being said, visualizing yourself achieving your goals does have its limitations. To start, there is always a level of uncertainty about the future. There are things that could happen that we might never predict or imagine; for this reason, all of our mental maps are imperfect. We can only plan for the future in the best way we can given the information we have.

Another limitation of visualizing is that it doesn’t get you anywhere in-and-of-itself. Unlike some claims made by books like “The Secret,” the act of visualizing is only one step towards achieving your goals. Sitting in your room imagining things all day won’t ever get you what you want. Visualization is a form of planning, not a form of doing – please don’t get the two confused.

Wrapping it up

I think I have left you here with more than enough information to get you started on improving your goals. All of these techniques here I have applied to my own life with success. Of course, none of these are magic pills – they take work – but if you do put in the time and effort they can sometimes seem magical. Good luck with achieving your goals, keep your mind focused, and I will be sure to come back to this topic again to expand more on these methods.

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