If you don’t know where you’re going …
Friday, December 18th, 2009… any road will get you there. This is a quotation often attributed to Lewis Carroll - mistakenly. But it sounds good.
Goal Setting
The actual text of Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire cat, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
This brought to mind, for me, how I deal (or don’t deal) with goal setting. We’ve talked about this before I know, but it’s an issue that comes up again and again for people. I’ve likened it to heading off in the direction of your destination, but without a map and just hoping that eventually you’ll end up where you want to go.
Listen, I have a very poor sense of direction and when I set off somewhere -even WITH a map - I often end up somewhere else! I dread to think where I’d be without one.
But when it comes to life goals, I’m in a dilemma. If I’m trying to live “in the now” how can I have long term goals? And - if I have goals, then how can I be living in the now?
As a mother I’ve become used to reacting to everyone elses’ needs, all day, everyday. That’s normal. You have to be able to respond to whatever situation crops up, often involving picking someone up unexpectedly, cleaning cuts and worse, and searching the household for something that can be used (always at the last minute) for a class project that you only find out about on the morning it has to be submitted!
So how can I turn this around? How can I set and achieve my own goals?
Well I’m proud to tell you I’ve started. As always, I’ve had to get to grips with goal setting in a small way first, before I can replicate it elsewhere. For me the key was firstly to acknowledge my previous successes. I had difficulty with that, I felt awkward and unworthy praising myself for things I expected to succeed at anyway. Perfectionist tendencies! But I’ve been working on that for more than a year now and I’ve made real progress.
The most useful change in my pattern was to start acknowledge my past successes, and beginning to feel proud of myself. Then I began to be able to look forward to setting new targets for myself, and praising myself for those successes. I suppose, up until that, there was no psychological “reward” for my achievements, so there was no joy in setting up new goals and targets.
This is an ongoing process, so - if I think about Alice (above) - I can see how I was always going somewhere, but without any direction there was a lot of energy spent getting places I wasn’t sure I wanted to go!