Go, Get Your Life GOALS: 2 — Don’t make this mistake at the very start of goal setting to regret it later.
This mistake can fail your goal setting.
People often make the mistake of choosing others' desires as their own goals. Remember, until you don't have your own desire to do something, you will not have a deep willingness to do it.
Many times we get little motivation from others (maybe our guardian or parents or maybe friends) to do something, and we misunderstood it as our want and set it as our goal. But external motivation doesn't last long. Initially, we feel motivated enough to do that, but after getting some tough times (that you definitely have in any goal), we may start losing our motivation to do that. Eventually leaving that task half done.
What can be the reason for that? We had enough motivation, and all required resources. But why do we leave it? The only thing that was missing for the goal was, the chosen goal was not the thing that we deeply wanted to do. Rather, some external motivation has made us think that it should be our goal.
Another reason can be, sometimes just because of FOMO(fear of missing out), we chose something as our goal. Say for example all your friends around you keep talking about MBA, and choosing MBA as further education or talking about MBA, then you may start feeling that you also should do an MBA. And without deep diving to understand that do you really want to do that? you take admission in MBA and might fail to complete it since you took influenced decision. Then you lose your confidence to do any other thing. You took the decision of choosing something as your goal, because of your fear of missing out.
In order to avoid taking something as our goal out of external motivation or FOMO, we should give the thought, enough time. We should take a break from thinking about it all the time. If it is just an external motivation or FOMO, then after some days of break, motivation to do that thing will not be going to exist at all, or FOMO would have been gone.
After the break ask yourself a question, Do you still want to do it? Think also about the tough times or problems that you may face in order to achieve that goal. If the answer is YES then it is not influenced because of external motivation or FOMO. You are now ready to achieve that goal, can go ahead with it to consider it as your goal. If you get the answer NO, then you are saved from choosing the wrong goal.
The points I have mentioned here look small but if not taken care then they may fail your goal setting. Hope this information is helpful to you. This story is part of a series (named Go, Get Your Life GOALS) that I am writing for goal setting, to help people set better goals; and to help people with some methods to achieve it.
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Poonam Bhatt is an avid reader, blogger, and author of the book GOAL TO SUCCESS.
