Goals vs Wishes

Today I was having a chat with a friend who told me that she didn’t want to work at her job for the rest of her life, so naturally I asked what would she rather be doing instead? She told me she wanted to be an events planner and have her own venue yada yada yada. All in all it was an ambitious but achievable dream.

My next question was what steps are you taking to achieve that goal? She replied that she was having challenges with time, money and resources, she didn’t have clients and she was thinking of starting small, with a birthday here and a party there. We moved the conversation to another topic, then it hit me, wait, she didn’t answer my question.

So me being as undiplomatic as ever, stopped the conversation and pointed out that she hadn’t answered me. She was confused for a bit until I pointed out that I had asked what she had done thus far insofar as reaching her goal was concerned, i.e. what steps she had taken to achieve her goals. She actually stopped for a bit and thought about it, and the answer was… nothing really.

It wasn’t a goal, it was a fantasy, a wish. She didn’t have a plan in place to get her where she wanted to go, or any idea when she would start, or how she could start. She didn’t even have plans to start planning. That got me thinking, what are my goals? Last year I sat down and wrote out a list of things I wanted to accomplish and how I am supposed to accomplish them, and for a while I used that as my guiding light in everything I did, unfortunately my single biggest failing kicked in (lack of self discipline) and I strayed away from my plan.

So I dug up those goals from last year and now I’m going to have a sit down and review everything, update what needs updating, add what needs to be added and trashing what should be trashed. But most importantly I am going to focus on that list even if it kills me.

Image Credits: To-Do List by john.schultz used under CC BY-SA 2.0.