Focus on Practical Goals

 

Let me put it this way. If you knew that you were going to be put in a box tomorrow, what kind of life would you have desired for yourself? In that instance, knowing that you’re going to die, you are forced to look back at your life and judge what you have accomplished and be clear about what you wish you had accomplished. That’s how we know what our ultimate goals are.

There is also the other set of goals. These are practical goals.

Too many people confuse the two. This is a mistake that leads confusion, wasted energy and wasted focus.

If you want to be more effective, and if you want to tap the power of motivation to push you to live a more effective and purposeful life, focus on the big things. Focus on the grand outcomes and objectives of your life.

Practical goals are involving putting food on the table, paying off debt, saving up enough money for your kid’s college, taking care of insurance costs, so on and so forth. These are important goals, mind you, but in the big scheme of things, they’re just steps that you take to go a certain direction. They are means to an end, and the ends are worth the most. These are your ultimate outcomes and objectives. Don’t confuse the two.

Be Clear about the Big Outcomes and Objectives of Your Life

I have to confess I can’t help you with this. Everybody’s life outcomes and life objectives are different.

Maybe your grand life objective is to become the largest landowner in your state or province. Another person might have the grand objective of simply seeing his or her grandchildren graduate from college. Another person’s grand objective have something to do with traveling to at least a hundred different countries.

Everybody’s different that’s why I can’t help you with this, but one thing is clear. You must have a crystal-clear idea of the outcomes and objectives you want for your life. Nobody can do this for you. You have to decide. You have to put in the work to clarify these things. As you can tell, there is no right or wrong answer.

 

Choose to be Clear about Your Need for a Process

Now that you have an end goal in mind, understand that this goal is not going to happen by magic. It’s just not. Once you have a solid objective in mind, please remember that is point B. You are at point A. Your job is to figure out how to get from point A to point B.

Now, this is not a simple matter of a few hops, skips and jumps. This is a life’s journey. This involves a process that doesn’t just involve going through time. It also involves a change in your mind and consciousness. You become a different person as you go through this process. It’s the journey that changes you.

Every single day, there will be practical goals popping up all over the place. These goals need to be achieved to be achieved so you can continue your journey to your ultimate objectives and outcomes. I am, of course, talking about practical realities like keeping a roof over your head, making sure there’s food on the table and making sure that a lot of the everyday practical considerations of your life and your family are taken care of.

All these require process, and this process is your state of flow. Now, this is where a lot of people slip up. They think their process is them showing up to a job or doing whatever it takes to pay the rent.

However, they’re looking at it in the wrong way because if you look at your need for the process and you allow yourself to enter that state of flow, everything else becomes easier. Everything else falls into place.

To a large extent, your state of flow should be your practical goal. You should think in terms of how do I do trigger this state of flow so I can blow through my to-do list and then some? How can I trigger this state of flow so I can think about the challenges that I’m facing and come up with better solutions?

Believe it or not achieving this state of flow and getting it to happen on command should be your daily goal.

 

Recap: Your State of Flow

Here’s a quick recap of what a state of flow is. It is a mental and emotional state where things become easy precisely because they’re clear. It seems that whenever you make an action, it produces a result. When you look at on what’s going on around you and the task in front of you, you are able to connect the dots.

None of them intimidate you. None of them make you feel that it’s not worth your time. None of them make you feel burdened and heavy. Instead, you can see how things connect and you’re excited about it.

Everything is clear. Everything is predictable. You notice that when you take an action, it leads to something and you can see the consequences of the decisions you make when you are in this state of mind.

This enables you to become bold. You’re no longer feeling like you’re this piece of plastic floating out there in the middle of a tropical storm in the ocean of life being pushed from one end of the ocean to the other end with absolutely no control nor a sense of ownership about what’s going on.

This is the precise opposite. It’s like you enter into a cube and everything is well-defined, predictable, quantifiable despite the fact that everything is moving quickly. This gives you courage, boldness and resolution. Everything that just clicks, and everything just works. This is your state of flow.

Now, please understand that states of flow vary from person to person. Other people can sustain it for a very long time until they totally obliterate their to-do list. Other people stay in it in a fairly short period. That’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you enter it, get things done and, eventually, call it into being on command.

If I haven’t said it enough times, let me say it again. Achieving a state of flow should be your practical goal. This is the secret. This is what leads to not only knocking out other practical goals but also leading you in a big way to your life’s big objectives.

The best part about your personal state of flow is that it helps you take care of the now. Believe it or not the now is the foundation of the future. The future is not going to happen until you lift a finger to do things now.

Your hopes, dreams and wishes – they’re just going to remain in your mind, free-floating out there, nice and irrelevant, until you reduce them into reality based on the decisions you make in the here and now. Focusing on that state of flow enables you to do that.