Goal Achievement vs. Shrinking Focus

George Foreman, former heavyweight boxing champion, and I were having lunch prior to doing a program for a group. Sitting there talking to him, I looked at his nose and thought, here's a guy who understands pain. I asked him how he stood the pain to become heavyweight boxing champion?

His answer is something we can all use. He said, "If I see what I want real good in my mind, I don't notice any pain in getting it."

WOW! Keep that in your mind as your read today's thought.

The best is yet to be, Danny

“What do you have planned for the next six months? How do you think you did over the last six months? What are you doing right now?” (Walt Disney’s three questions to those who reported to him.)

To reach your goals, you have to avoid what I call “wildebeest thinking.” Some time ago, I had the pleasure of taking an early morning hot-air balloon flight over the Serengetti Plain in Africa with world-class adventurer, John Goddard. The scene was beautiful; you could see the elephants, the lions, and the great waves of wildebeest storming across the plain. “It’s a good thing there are so many of them,” mused our African guide, who had noticed me staring at the huge migration of wildebeest. “Otherwise, that species would die out in a hurry.”

I asked him what he meant. He smiled and pointed to a wildebeest that had stopped in its tracks. “You’ll notice that the wildebeest never run for very long. That’s not because they’ve just realized something important and want to stop and think about it. And it’s not because they’re tired. It’s because they’re so unfocused that they forget why they started running in the first place. They see a predator, they realize they’re supposed to run away, and they start moving in the opposite direction. But they lose the focus on what inspired them to run, sometimes at the most inopportune moments. I’ve seen them stop running right next to a predator; sometimes they’ll walk right up to one, as though they weren’t really sure whether this is the same animal that frightened them a few minutes ago. They almost seem to be saying, ‘Hey, Mr. Lion, are you hungry? Care for some lunch?’ If there weren’t a whole lot of wildebeest, I think the whole species would get gobbled up in a matter of weeks.”

It was easy to laugh at the wildebeest while I was on the balloon flight, but before it was over, I found myself with the funny feeling that I’d seen that same kind of problem in the business world.

There are a lot of people whose regular behavior reminds you of the wildebeest. They get a great idea, they commit themselves to a goal, and they run with that goal for a day or maybe for only a half a day. Maybe they just walk around, gingerly, for 15 minutes or so. After those 15 minutes of ambling around, they realize they haven’t gotten to where they said they wanted to get. Then they say to themselves, “Hmmm. This is going to be tough; it isn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be.” And they stop dead in their tracks.

So keep moving. Stay focused. Hang in there!

Point to Ponder: “No one has ever reached a vague goal.” Rick Warren

24 Lessons in High Performance Leadership

Lesson Fifteen
Make a New Reality

I did a program once with former heavyweight champion George Foreman. Even though he is the former champion, I still called him Champ. As we had lunch together that day, I studied his nose from across the table. A heavyweight boxer’s nose is a work of art. George Foreman’s nose is a monument to goal orientation. It has been sculpted by some of the strongest, meanest punchers ever to step into a ring. I wondered how any man could endure the incredible pain that George Foreman must have endured with so many heavyweight boxers hammering on his nose over the years, so I asked him.

"If I see what I want real good," he answered. "I don't notice any pain in getting it."

A new reality is an achieved goal. We are headed into the future every second, whether we like it or not. We can’t hold back time. So, how are we endeavoring to shape the future? What are we doing now that will leave our mark on our future?

Here are my steps to shaping a new reality:

• Visualize your goal vividly.
Generalizations about your intended goals do you no good. The greater the clarity of your
vision, the more focused and efficient your efforts toward it will be. I don’t know of
anyone who gains value through wasted effort.

• Break your goal down into doable daily tasks.
When goals loom enormous on the horizon, it’s natural to feel intimidated and even
overwhelmed. Be realistic about what a human being can accomplish in a day and don’t
expect any more of yourself or others. Realizing goals is far less dramatic that way, but you
will eventually get there.

• Act on your goals every day.
I'm not suggesting that you work seven days a week. But, don’t let a workday go by without taking even a small step toward a specific goal. Progress is progress, no matter how small,
and the feeling of accomplishment is just as sweet in many small doses as it is in one large
one. However, breaking the task down into smaller disappointments will not minimize the
feeling of disappointment at never achieving the big goal.

Here are three of my guidelines for goal achievement:

Make sure your goals are measurable, realistic, and challenging: In other words, they should be within reach but only if you stretch and you should be able to know when you’ve achieved them.

Categorize your goals: Decide which are short-term, which are midterm, and which are long-term.

Set a timetable for achievement––and keep to it: Begin! Don't stop! Concentrate on results! Then celebrate when a goal is achieved––immediately replace it with a new goal.

"If you don't know what to do on a daily basis to achieve your goal,
then it is not a goal--it's a fantasy."