Creating, Setting and Achieving Goals… It’s All About Choices!

To achieve anything in life, it is all about making the right choices to do so, isn’t it?

It is true; we can only succeed at any given opportunity if we make the right choices. This reality became crystal clear to me recently when talking with my father on Thanksgiving Day about a brother of mine who leads a very challenging life, to say the least. My father constantly “flip flops” on his position regarding my brother from one day to the next. One day he’ll say he’s going to have him arrested for trespassing, the next day, he feels sorry for him and wants to help him. It’s a classic scenario, to some degree, that affects many families throughout our culture. There’s always that one “bad apple” that creates all the drama and infuses so much tension into the holiday season.

As my father and I were sitting on the back porch just relaxing after a “Grade A+” Thanksgiving meal, he talked more about his frustrations and his guilt regarding the things that had or had not been done in the past to ensure a better path for my older brother. I’ve heard so many of these tired self-analyses with no change in behavior that I tend to drift off when he starts talking about it all. But then my father said something that grabbed my attention. He said, “You know, your brother is very smart – he’s probably the smartest of all of you kids”. Now, aside from the fact that the delivery of the message wasn’t the greatest, I understood what he was saying. And, in fact, I actually agreed because it’s true.

My brother was, to my memory, very smart. He was one of those guys who could strip down an engine and put it back together and it would run better. He could fix any given troubled spot in the house – the plumbing, the electrical, you name it. He was very quick witted too, always had something funny to say that would really bring about the warm, loving, and funny side of his personality.

But the trouble was his lack of making good choices in life. Instead of making the right choices, he chose to always live life on the edge. Whether it was getting in trouble with the law, the numerous car accidents while driving intoxicated, or borrowing money or cars or tools, he chose the easy way out every day. He would never pay the money back; he would crash the car; he would lose or break the tools. It was one bad decision after the next for the past 40+ years. It has been like watching a very long B-rated movie with a bad ending. In the end, he’s just pitiful, with no one to blame but himself, but always looking for another scapegoat to explain why he made these bad choices. So many years lived and nothing to show for it but a rap sheet a mile long.

So, this comment from my father about how “smart” my brother was… well it jolted me as you can well imagine. And my response to him was, “Dad, how old is Barack Obama? The response was correctly, “47”. The next question I asked was how old my brother was. Again, the answer was, “47”. So I said, “Dad, I agree this brother is probably smarter than all of us “kids”, but it really isn’t about being smart is it? It really isn’t about being the smartest kid in the class - ever! It’s about making the right choices in life! He’s the same age as our next President of the United States, but far from leading a productive or successful life!”

Whatever our political leanings, the story of Mr. Obama’s life in contrast to my own brother’s, illustrates the power of choices in one’s life.

Let’s look at Barak’s life and some of the significant events that shaped his life (many of them very challenging events):

1961 - Barack was born in Hawaii. His mother of English, Irish and German decent; his father was Luo, which is an ethnic group from Kenya.
1963 - His father left his mother and returned to Kenya when Barack was just two years old.
1964 - His mother re-married a man from Indonesia.
1967 - The family moved to Indonesia to live and Barack stayed there until he was ten years old.
1971 – Barack was sent back to Hawaii to live with his Grandparents.
1972 - His mother returned to Hawaii.
1977 – His mother left to go back to Indonesia.
1979 - Barack graduated from high school in Hawaii.
1982 – His Kenyan father died in Kenya in a car accident.
1994 – His mother returned to Hawaii once again.
1995 – His mother died of cancer.
2008 – Barak Obama was elected 44th President of the United States.

Looking at his life, we see a man who has had plenty of challenges which he could have used to “excuse” any series of bad decisions in his life. Instead, he chose hard work and determination.

He chose success. The only way to achieve real success in life is by making the right choices, and that will make all the difference.

Choose your success today.

GoaL-Link.com

When Creating Goals - Stay Positive!

Happy Holidays from GoaL-Link.com! And, as we prepare our tables for thanks this season, don’t forget to log into your GoaL-Link.com account and update your Gratitude Journal with everything you are thankful for this Thanksgiving. It’s a great way to set your mind on a positive path for the holidays.

Speaking of setting our minds on a positive path...when creating your goals, always stay positive in your language. This means, we should always look for the positive side of the goal and state the goal as such.For example, let’s say we have a Personal goal to get in shape. Our culture these days is very diet focused. And there are lots of “weight loss” programs out there. But, what we in the “positive thinking” industry have learned is that when we want to “lose” something, our minds are trained to try to find it!

So instead of stating your goal like this: “To lose 15lbs.”, we should spin this to the positive. So our goal will look like this “To reach my healthy weight of xxxlbs.” or like this, “To increase my health and fitness so I feel 10 years younger!”Also, remember to upload a good picture to coincide with your goals.

There is a huge advantage in having pictures represent your goals —especially a weight related goal. I have a great picture of some anonymous guy who’s in great shape and it just so happens that he has the physique that I’m striving for! So I put his picture to one of my health related goals.

Keep up the great goal setting work and remember, feel free to e-mail with any questions about your goal setting efforts or if you need some help remembering your account login information. We can always be reached at Coach@GoaL-Link.com

Visit your goals today at www.GoaL-Link.com

The Center of the Universe?

My daughter received a wonderful pop-up book about space for her 7th birthday recently. It has many fun fold-out maps and things that pop up when you open every page, all in bold, beautiful colors. It’s really well done and makes learning fun. It was the perfect gift for my daughter who often feels she’s the center of everyone’s universe and also happens to love space!
After my daughter was in bed last night, I sat down to rest from the day’s busy activities and picked up this new book to give it another look.

I never got past the first page. There, the enormity of space is put into perspective in 3D and it really got me thinking. The 2-page spread begins with a picture of Earth and where it fits into our solar system. Earth is actually quite small when you see how it compares with the other planets in our solar system. Remember this from second grade? Next, on the same page, the book illustrates where our solar system sits within our galaxy – the Milky Way.
Wow. Our solar system is only one of billions in our galaxy.

To give you a bit more perspective, the nearest star to the Sun is more than 25 trillion miles away – that’s 25,000,000,000,000. Our entire solar system appears as only a speck within the Milky Way. And our galaxy is one of about 30 galaxies in a family of galaxies called the “Local Group”. This entire group of galaxies takes up only a tiny corner of the overall universe.
Okay, are you beginning to have a brain meltdown? If so, I can understand why. This is all truly mind boggling. Although I had learned about the vastness of space many times before, somehow through this depiction in this children’s book, it struck me all over again. I was left with a feeling of overwhelming insignificance.

And then the questions: Why ARE we here? How did we come to be? Does this universe exist by chance, or by design? Either way, what does it mean for my life? Does my life hold any significance at all? And then I thought about all the things that just one person can achieve in this world during their “brief” lifetime. Many, many individual people just like you and I have done extraordinary things over the centuries. They’ve discovered places and developed theories; they’ve built amazing structures, traveled to the moon, developed new and better ways of doing things. Think of the advancements in health, science, technology, and mathematics. Individual people can do so many things with their lives which can have a significant impact on the lives of millions of people. So maybe we’re not so insignificant. Maybe we can choose to be significant.

I call this choice “living life on purpose”. To purposely affect the significance of your life, I propose that you must have a plan for your life. You must attempt to think beyond the tasks of everyday living and begin to see your life as a fixed amount of time during which you will do . . . WHAT? What will you do with your life? What mark will you leave on this world?
To achieve something greater than ourselves, we must have GOALS and a positive mindset that says “I can”.

We must plan for those goals by setting a course of action to achieve them. We must plan daily, weekly, monthly steps – the actions – that will lead us to achieving our goals.
In the end, we may have a lot to learn from a 7 year old. Imagine if we each believed we were Supremely Significant. What if we believed that each of our lives was critical to some universal web? What if we each believed the universe revolved around us? Would we intentionally plan to do more with our lives? Would you?

I have a coffee mug that says it this way, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”
Once you answer that question, go and do it. Make your life significant and plan to do something. By choosing to FOCUS on our goals, we can get there, one step at a time. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” And your step could make all the difference for you, for your family and quite possibly, for mankind. So leap out with a positive mindset and the self-centeredness of a 7 year old, and “know” that you cannot fail.

The Universe is waiting for you.