Get a goal

"A person without a goal is a monkey."

I used to her this saying frequently when I did not know anything about goal, even its literal meaning. That time, I thought it is all lie, because I was not monkey! But when I grew up gradually, I began to realize seriousness and truth contained in this silly statement.

In early teenage, we may have a number of goals, not a single one. We want to be "jack of all". Gradually we begin to realize that our capabilities are limited as the time and space available to our life. We step   by step subtract our goals and reduce it into single one. This seems a logical way for goal setting. (But WAIT – Don't try to reduce even after it is one. Otherwise, it will be zero, and you will be goalless.)

Having too much goal is really a problem. You can not move to east and west at the same time. If you try to do that, you will be pressured by two opposing forces and thus feel trapped and weak in yourself, and both of these two sectors.

However, it does not mean that a successful person is restricted to one profession .In fact, multi-professional people have also achieved great success with great satisfaction all over the world. Ronald Reagan was a successful politician and a popular actor at the same time. In Nepal too, BP Koirala is one of the most acknowledged leader as well as story writer. However, you need to have strength to maintain balance between and among such professions. It will be easier if the sectors, though different in one way, are interconnected and provide a common space. One can be journalist and a littérateur at the same time, because both are games of the words and their intersect-ground exists. One can be teacher and leader simultaneously. But, it will be very hard and required exceptionally great effort for him/her to be an athlete-cum-professor. A very narrow, if any, ground exists there sharing quality of both professions.

The more problematic than multiple goals is not having goal at all. And, it is seen in our society that most early youths are in such a circumstance. "M…………, I want to be …... To tell the truth, I don't have any goal so far……. Suggestions please…………..", most of our friends tend to reply in such ways if they are asked to tell the goal of their life. For it, not only youths are responsible. Our social and cultural values do not guide us to determine and attempt for a specific mission in our life. Rather, it tells "whatever you will meet in your future is already assigned to you before birth". Opposing to general Western belief, our culture thinks that fate guides our life, not our actions. Fatalism leads us beyond goal setting orientation.

So what to do? For success in your life, you need to have a goal.  If you have fixed a goal already, try to make it more specific and attainable and initiate your attempts to achieve it. If you are still in confusion about your future, think immediately and decide your goal. But how to find out appropriate and attainable goal?

Setting the goal

Before discussing about how to set a good goal, lets try to define what a good goal is. Great Poet of Nepali literature opines, "Lets take the goal to fly and touch the moon" (Uddesya ke linu udi chhunu Chandra eka. ) It means that our goal should be quite ambiguous and great. However, modern experts opine that our goal should be as specific and attainable as possible.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia defines, "A goal or objective is a projected state of affairs that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve—a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development." And www.mygoals.com has defined a good goal as "For our purposes, a good goal is one that is worthy of individual pursuit. And that is so highly subjective, far be it from us to define what your worthy pursuit is…………. A good Goal plan is one that when followed, offers a reasonably high probability of success, given sufficient time."

Here are some tips to find out your goal:

·         Observe and study your own behaviours. What interests you most?

·         Assess your strengths and weaknesses. What do you have? What can you do? Know that your life is for those strengths, so follow them. If possible, try to minimize those weaknesses. If you can't, let it be.

·         Know yourself and think critically. Don't follow blindly what other people say. However, don't hesitate to listen their suggestions.

·         Don't lose your confidence. Be optimist.

Traditional goal-setting wisdom has taught us that a good goal must be a) written, b) challenging, c) believable, d) specific, e) measureable, and f) have a specific deadline." However, this traditional formula is outdated now because of rapid development of technologies.

Even then, it is better to follow 'SMART' formula for a better goal. SMART stands for:

 a) Specific,

b) Measurable,

c) Attainable,

d) Relevant

e) Time-bound.

'Life Skills: A guide book for teenagers' published by UNICEF Nepal suggests thinking on following, when one goal of self:

a)      What do I need to do to attain my goal?

b)      What might be the challenges on the way?

c)       How can I overcome those challenges?

d)      Who can help me?

Our destination shows the way and speed to approach it. Determination of our goal is a basic for what profession should we choose. On the other hand, "who has to reach farther walks faster" – meaning, the person progresses better and more quickly, who has a greater goal. Hurry up so, and get a goal.