It is very important to set goals. Having a target helps you take action, focus on important things and prevents time and effort spent on unnecessary things. Many people underestimate the significance of setting goals.
When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
One of the most important thing in goal setting is to make sure you differentiate between end goals and mean goals. When setting goals, make sure you set end goals and not mean goals. End goals are the things that you ultimately want to achieve. Mean goals are used as a means to achieve the end goal.
Let’s take the common I-want-to-get-rich goal as an example. This is not an end goal but a means goal. This is because what you want is not money, but the things that money can bring you. Things like security, freedom, happiness, experience etc. You don’t actually want more numbers in your bank account. You want what you think money is able to give you.
It’s sad to say that unfortunately many people end up mistaking mean goals as end goals. They end up solely focusing on accumulating more wealth, so much so that even though they eventually have a lot of money, they still end up unsatisfied.
Here is a common story. A young man starts his career in a large corporation with hopes and dreams of making it big someday. He hopes that by earning big money he will have happiness, freedom and security. So he spends the next 20 years working hard to become CEO. He finally achieves it but in the process of getting there, he had to sacrifice his happiness, freedom and time. And even after he becomes CEO he is still as busy and stressed as ever.
So although he finally achieved his goal, he found out that it did not give him what he wanted.
For someone to set a goal, give their all, sacrifice and finally achieve it - then finding out later that it did not give them what they had wanted is a very sad thing to happen.
Take your time when setting goals. Don’t be anxious to get it over with. If you get it wrong, all your time and effort will eventually go down the drain. Think it through thoroughly first because you want to get it right the first time.
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