Knowing What You Want, Is It Enough?
To begin, I suggest you stop for a few minutes to answer these two questions: if you are comfortable with the life you lead and if you feel satisfied with what you have achieved. Sometimes knowing what you want is tricky. It may be that the relentless rhythm of your life does not leave you time to reflect on whether you live the way you want or whether there are goals you would like to achieve. Or maybe you do have clear objectives, but you don’t know how to start the path that will lead you to them.
If so, if you have goals that you want to achieve, in this article I will give you some very useful keys that can help you achieve them. But first I would like to accompany you in a reflection about your life, the path you follow and how you decide it, since knowing what you want, having your own criteria and being on the “correct” path is the basis for the objectives you seek to really have a coherent meaning in your life.
Do you have a compass to guide your way?
Whether or not you have specific objectives set, always try to maintain a general objective. Build a compass to guide you so that you always know where your four cardinal points are. This compass may not avoid obstacles, but it will keep you from getting lost or disoriented.
Your path can take many turns, it can go up and down, you can find obstacles and storms to go through, but the fundamental thing is to know that you are on the “right” path. In addition, the way in which you advance will highlight what is valuable to you and that is essential for your life to enrich its meaning.
How can you know that you are on the right track?
From the outset, you are always faced with the uncertainty of whether the decision you make is the most appropriate or whether what you do is the best. It is normal, since this uncertainty is part of the risk that accompanies many of the decisions we face.
There is no one in the world who can assure you that you are right or on the best path. Fortunately, there is more than one correct path, even different paths that lead to the same place. In any case, you are the one who decides the course is always going to be a good omen.
It is not difficult to know what you want and find your own way, what happens is that you are not used to it. Many times you let other people guide you, perhaps out of comfort or fear of not getting the results you expect. Sometimes you trust others more than yourself, but no one will know better than you what is best for you.
Listen to your emotions, they will give you information about what you need and this will help you to have your own criteria, which is what would allow you to reach a state of “autonomy”, which has an integrating function in the system of moral regulation described by Villegas (2011).
Do you decide with your mind or with your heart?
Once you have listened to your emotions, use reason to follow the cues they offer you. They are a combined work in which the balance between the sources of information (emotions) and the work with these sources of information (reason and intuition) is what will somehow increase our chances of success.
Within this balance, motivation plays a fundamental role. As Grad, M. (2015) says, you will not believe that you are capable of doing it, until you do. Although, on the other hand, it is also good that you analyze if these objectives are realistic, if achieving them is within your possibilities.
Is knowing what you want enough?
After realizing the importance of moving on your own path in a general sense, you probably have some goals that you would like to achieve on a more practical level, but which at the same time bring you closer to a greater sense of well-being and fulfillment. These objectives can be very diverse: wanting to do more sports, learn a language, tidy up the room or house, acquire the habit of meditating every day, etc.
However, knowing what you want is not enough. It is useless if you are left with only a general idea, such as “I want to do more sport”, since it will turn out as if you had not set any goals for yourself. To really achieve your goals, in addition to being motivated, planning is essential, as Dr. Díaz refers to in his article “Thinking about the future throughout the life cycle.”
In this way, the specific objectives are the ones that will shape the general objective that we referred to at the beginning. As exemplified by Toja and Bravi (2015), instead of saying “I will do more sport”, it is better to define the goal more specifically: “I will do ten sets of sit-ups a day”. Thus, you are not left with a rather abstract statement, but with something concrete that you can commit to making. As you can see, knowing what you want is not enough.
How can you achieve your goals?
Sometimes your challenge can be much higher, such as “I want to run a marathon,” which can feel overwhelming to think about and can lead to procrastination. This is why it is important that you divide the goal into parts, for example, train 30 minutes a day. It is about starting with the most affordable goals and, when you are consistent with these, stick with the most expensive or increase the time of dedication.
It is also very useful to determine the time of day when you are going to achieve your goal. It can be when you wake up in the morning, when you come home after work or you can also determine a precise time. This is a fundamental point, since if you do not specify when you are going to get to it, the hours of the day can go by without realizing it and without having found a good time to dedicate to your goal.
One of the key points to achieve the objectives, according to Pérez (2014), is to define an objective that he calls “zero tolerance”: this is not the optimal objective you want to achieve, it is much simpler, but precisely for this , you have to do it without any exception so as not to lose consistency.
For example, if your goal is to train 30 minutes a day, but one day it becomes really difficult for you to do it, you can achieve the goal of “zero tolerance”, which could be to train 5 minutes. Surely you can dedicate 5 minutes! This will help you remain consistent.
What do you need to take action?
After knowing what you want, listening to your emotions and planning your goals, you just need to take action. To be successful in achieving your goals, I propose to follow all these keys and, above all, it is important that you be optimistic and believe in a better future, since this way you will be able to pursue your goals with greater perseverance.
In addition, beyond knowing what you want, you must be clear about why you want to achieve these goals. Remembering it will give you strength and give meaning to your effort. Do not give up, each time you are closer to reaching them.
Bibliographic references:
-Grad, M. (2015). The princess who believed in fairy tales. Barcelona: Obelisco Editions.
-Pérez, A. (2014). The 88 steps to success. Barcelona: Alienta Editorial.
-Toja, O. and Bravi, S. (2015). Positive attitude for lazy people. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta.
-Villegas, M. (2011). The error of Prometheus: Psycho (path) of moral development. Barcelona: Herder.
