Weekly Thought > Personal Growth > Setting the Proper Direction

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Setting the Proper Direction

Choosing a goal in life is not our most important decision. Choosing the direction is far more critical. Enticing short-range goals can take us in the wrong direction. Quick successes and fast progress often blind us to the fact we are traveling swiftly in the wrong direction. Mature success and satisfaction come in the direction we move, not the goals we attain.

Too much goal orientation brings us the same problem Harvard Business School identified in their study of the learning process. Their very bright students became adept at solving problems, but lost the ability to identify opportunities. I am convinced that the true progress is in the recognition of opportunity and helps us set the proper direction. Problem solving is a key skill, but it can cause us to become too goal-oriented. We can become mechanical and technological. When we focus only on goals we can fall prey to formulas and start looking like human computers.

I very much oppose setting one ultimate goal for life in the sense of having a definable, dollars and cents, figure-oriented aim. I do not like identifying the "place in life where I want to be." I don't want to say when I have so much money, or such and such a car, or this title, or that possession, then my life goal is achieved. I want to set the direction for my life, much as did the Apostle Paul. When I look only at certain goals, it can alter my decision making and sometimes entrap me.

I have seen too many friends experience the futility of reaching what they termed success only to find it was only the chasing of the goal they enjoyed, not the achievement. Too many men come to the "yellow leaf" time of life to find that their ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

Understand that I am not opposed to planning --- I do that faithfully on January 1st of each year. But it isn't to mark off a scorecard, but to determine if I am moving in the right direction. Make goals the touchstones, but not the destination.

This week ask yourself: 1) What motivates me -- goals or direction? 2) How do I communicate my mission? 3) Who can I help to clarify goals and direction this week?