Goal Achievement.

As the New Year begins at least some of your goals should be like the

Prehistoric Cave girls drawn by Robert Crumb…Big, Hairy and Audacious
!

 

Studies have found that those who have written goals are at least four
times more successful than those who just drift through life aimlessly.
Sadly I must admit that up till now I’ve been a drifter and I have all
the lack of results to prove it.

As we go into a new year it’s an appropriate time to pause and
reflect on the year that was and,more importantly, a time to envision
what we want to achieve in the future.

In making our resolutions or goals we should tap into our passions.
Find projects we will be motivated and happy to complete and stay
committed to the process of achieving them. It’s essential to write the
goals down. Also they should be very specific, not vague.The clearer the
goal is in your mind, and then on paper, the more likely that one day
it will be realized.

Those who understand themselves well can easily create a Life
Mission but for most it requires some serious soul searching and
imagination. Having a clear Mission makes it easier to see if a goal
really fits you or not.

Think of your own funeral or if that’s too morbid then imagine your
hundredth brthday party. Now that most of your life goals would
hopefully have been completed what would people say about you ? What
would you want people to say about you ? Are you working towards
achieving that ?

Another, somewhat morbid, exercise that can help clarify your purpose, and
thereby assist in setting good goals, is to imagine what you’d do if you
knew you only had a week or a month left to live. Clarifying your
deeper value systems, by doing exercises like this,will help you set
really meaningful goals.

Most people don’t set goals. They know it would help them be more
succesful but although it’s easy to do,it’s also very easy not to do,as Jim
Rohn said. You must fight procrastination, don’t put off setting your
goals, there is nothing more likely to aid your future success.

Another mistake people often make is to set really easy goals or goals
that don’t reach for much. They set safe targets that will not take
them out of their comfort zone. Although these goals are generally achieved they
don’t bring much happiness or change the world.

Some experts believe that the best goals are those that are so
outrageous your friends would laugh at you if you told them about it.

Other experts advise that you include friends and family in your most
meaningful goals. I think it depends on the goal and also on the type
of friends you have.

In general though it’s good if you have the support of Family and
Friends and a strong faith to help you make it through challenging
times. Whether this means you share the details of all your wildest
dreams with them is a matter of personal choice.

Remember to balance both professional and personal goals and have a
mixture of each type. Use methods effective in one arena in the other
as well. If you use elaborate spreadsheets to monitor your business
finances why not balance your personal credit card expenses that way
too ?

Many goals,especially the Big Hairy Audacious types,will be long
term. It’s not hard for the more meaningful ones to require over five
years to accomplish so the next step is critical.

Break down the Major goals into daily steps. Take your Big, Hairy
and Audacious Goal, Something crazy, something so ambitious that people
would laugh if they knew you wanted to achieve it. Then work backwards
and determine the timeline of likely steps to achieve it and when
they’d have to occur.

From this timeline you can create the 5 year goals, the one year
goals, the monthly goals and the weekly and finally daily goals.

Eat the Elephant one bite at a Time.

Many self made success stories have emphasized that it’s the
achievement of daily goals which are most meaningful as they forge the
habits you really need for lasting success.

Disciplined success habits must be honed each day until they become
unbreakable.

Be undaunted in the pursuit of your Happiness. Follow your Bliss.
Keep evaluating your progress.With focus and determination and creative flexibility

your success is guaranteed.

Billy Scorpio.

Woke up very early and logged into Facebook thinking to myself, “the early worm probably catches the bird”, when I saw one of Jamaica’s best photographers, a guy we’ll call Billy Scorpio, on my chat list. Everyone else in Jamaica seemed to be still sleeping.

Billy Scorpio is someone I never met before, in the real world, but I always admired his work and even had the temerity to make comments, in his Facebook Photo albums, when I particularly hated or,  more usually, when I loved, something he did. He always took the remarks of his many fans with a good natured laugh.

I sometimes daydreamed about what it must be like to have a job like his, instead of one that’s just stressful and under-paid. He gets to photograph the country’s top music performers and actors, he works with the most beautiful women all day long. They fawn over his every word, realising that his skills and opinion can make or break their careers. He spends his days telling them which skimpy clothes to wear and what erotic positions to assume. They love him for it. It’s a hard life, but I guess someone had to do it. Billy Scorpio is that lucky guy.

To my surprise he actually initiated a conversation with me, by saying something about my status message, and after some idle banter  I said to him that it must be tough for him to focus with so many beautiful women on the set of his shoots.

He laughed, then quickly replied, with words that I’d replay in my mind for years to come, “You must hunt like a lion …he picks one gazelle and really only hunts for her…he hardly sees the rest of the herd.”

Hunt Like a Lion

He then discussed a photo of his I liked and I said it could be the start of a bigger project. He asked me how I would develop such an idea further. After many probing questions, which made me wonder how viable the idea really was, he suddenly found a unifying idea, a big concept, that could link a series of such photos and I then mentioned a potential sponsor.

I had one last reservation, one more doubt, ” Someone in the world must have done it before. ” I said.

“So ? Just do it better.” Billy answered.

I knew our ideas were sound but I also know I have no credentials in his area of expertise. I felt curious since it’s rare in Jamaica for people to be so willing to listen to an amateur’s view.

“Why would you even ask me about this ? You’re the pro, I should be trying to learn from you here.” I said.

“That’s why I asked you. You have a fresh perspective.”, Billy Scorpio replied instantly.

He thanked me for the brainstorm session and said he was heading back to sleep. He promised I’d soon see the results because he was definitely going to work on the project we discussed. He left quickly.

I was stunned. I had just spoken to a Master.

I had learnt from reading Musashi, ( in The Book of Five Rings ), that a true master always learns a thousand things, from one thing, yet it still never failed to amaze me when I met a true master.

Billy Scorpio is such a master. He has focused on mastering but one thing, Photography. From this mastery he has learnt about the importance of Focus and how Perspective can affect your Vision. He has developed Vison way beyond that in his camera’s lens. He had the Eye of the Predator. Realizing the value of both hard work and rest. He strived to always keep a fresh Perspective. He’d never be hungry for prey, because he was always hungry to improve himself.