2021 will probably be one of the defining years of our lifetime. So we’d better make the best of it! Setting goals and believing in our ability to achieve them are key to success.
If you want to be inspired about Goalsetting, listen to Earl Nightingale’s 1956 radio talk The Strangest Secret. It is 30 supercharged minutes of timeless and priceless advice from the Grand Master of Goal Setting.
Although this is from a different era (with cranky sound and old-fashioned ideas about gender roles) Nightingale’s insight into of the power of goals is totally up to date — and his key message is more relevant than ever:
Success is the Progressive Realization of a Worthy Ideal
This was half a century before Simon Sinek published Start with Why and TED-talked his way to global fame with his ‘Golden Circle’ model (also worth a (re)visit: watch it here.
Though Nightingale and Sinek are from very different times, they essentially say the same:
What we do should align with a meaningful purpose.
All the rest follows…
Further valuable takeaways from Nightingale’s lecture:
- People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. So blatantly obvious, yet only a few people are really serious about their goal setting.
- The opposite of courage is not cowardice: it is conformity. Setting goals takes guts because it can require breaking with what other people do — and what they expect us to do.
- We become what we think about. As we sow, so shall we reap. The human mind is far more fertile than the land, but it works the same way. Whatever we plant (Success? Failure? A concrete, worthwhile goal?) will return to us.
- No one can ever be rich without enriching others.
In this spirit, we want to help you to set goals in the various areas of your life. Use this Goalscape template as a starting point: add new goals and delete any you do not want to pursue. It may take 10 hours, it may take 40; that investment though maybe one of the best you ever make.
And keep your goals in mind: revisit your Goalscape project every week — or better yet, every day (as Nightingale suggests). Your project will show you where to focus your attention as you work, and checking off completed tasks then seeing your progress advancing will give you a real buzz.
What you sow, you will reap.
May you achieve great goals in ’21!
