Five Goal-setting Concepts

1. Spend some quiet time thinking about goals.

A goal properly set is halfway reached. ~ Abraham Lincoln

If goals focus your life then choosing your goals carefully, and properly is an essential step toward a successful future as an artist. Remember that it is impossible to achieve a goal you don’t have. That sounds like an obvious, self-evident aphorism, but more often than not, people tend to live their lives without any clearly thought out, definite goals. It is the absence of goals that result in dull lives of mind-numbing routine. We sometimes call this zombie–like lifestyle as being a “rat race.” We've all heard the joke, "if you win a rat race you’re still just a rat." There is no aspect of creative living more important than the setting of your goals.

When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. ~Seneca

The truth is, the reason most people don’t get much done is because they have no goals.

Your goals work like a road map for your life. The map is a good analogy for goal setting. If you have a map you know where you are heading. You can be surprised by the topography. There could be hills and streams that force you to move away from your goal, but these moves are not going to change the overall direction of your life. You may have to take a detour, but if you have a map every detour is just a tiny little problem that has little effect on your journey through life. With a map you continue to head toward your goal. If circumstances compel you to pause, or, for a time, if you are forced to move in another direction, it is not going to be a move that changes the eventual outcome of your journey.

But if you have no goal, then you need no map because you are going nowhere and when you get there you’ll be nowhere.

2. Commit yourself fully to your goals.

In one of my favorite films, GATTACA, there is a character who has genetic flaws that cause his family, and society to believe he is limited in the scope of what he can do by his DNA. The character refuses to accept these perceived limitations. In one scene the flawed boy swims a great distance in the sea in an endurance race with his genetically perfect brother. Half way through this race the perfect brother gives up. He pauses and asks, “How are you doing this Vincent? How are you doing any of this?” Vincent’s answer is very telling. The reason he could go farther than his perfect brother is because he, the inferior brother, didn’t save anything for the trip back.

The point Vincent makes is telling. If we save something back we are limiting ourselves, and it is likely that we will save back too much. There's no telling what you can do when you get inspired by your goals. There's no telling what you can do when you believe in your goals. There's no telling what will happen when you act upon your goals. If we risk little we can only make petite gains. Vincent’s goal was to get where he was going and he was willing to commit ALL of his energy, ALL of his time, ALL of his efforts, and EVERY resource he possessed to achieve his goals. You don’t know how far you go, until you go as far as you can. Hold nothing back.

He was right, of course. If that car died at the lake and never moved another inch ever again, we were not going to just live at the lake the rest of our lives. We would, eventually, get back. It is a silly analogy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

3. Dream Big

Any man who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved has already defined his own limitations. ~Cavett Robert

Set your goals high. Challenge yourself. Our potential is rarely reanalyzed, because we limit ourselves by having puny dreams. Dream big and don’t worry about how the dream will be realized. The earth is round. We can only see so far before the distance drops out of our sight. But when we go as far as we can see, we can always see a little farther. Big dreams are like that. You may not see how you will get there, but go as far as you can, and you can always go a little farther.

4. Big Dreams should be broken up into small parts.

It is all to easy to consider the big picture and give up because the dream appears to be too big to be completed.

I am not suggesting that you expect your Big Dream to be realized quickly and easily. Know that big dreams come true only with big efforts on the part of the dreamer. We still use the small step approach and divide our Big Goal into dozens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of smaller goal. But working on small parts of our big dream is not the same thing as having low expectation of ourselves. Dividing a big project into small steps is just a smart strategy. There is an old saying that goes something like this: the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and then a second set, and so on, is a trite, but true statement.

My mother use to tell me: “Little by little gets lots and lots done.”

5. Do not allow the past to dictate the future.

. . . this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind and straining forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call. . . ~Philippians 3:13,14

Saint Paul had at one time been a great persecutor of Christians, but he did not allow his past prevent him from reaching. And this was not a casual reach for his goal, he was straining toward the goal.

We too must be willing to strain toward our goals.