a beautiful gift

I have always known that the road to greatness is in having clear, specific goals that at first seem impossible and scary, but are realistic. My experience has shown me that unmet goals can really frustrate and lead to stress and quitting. I have been guilt of this all my life.

I had stopped making ambitious goals last year, 2007, as a result of a bagful of unmet goals because reflecting on them made me realise i was going nowhere and only served to stress me more. So i stopped setting goals. However when i went back to my roots i.e. Zimbabwe, last week, i reflected on my experiences with goals and i realised i had met most of my goals albeit not in the planned time frame.

This reflection revealed to me the real nature of goals and set me up to come up with goal-setting theory i would like to share with you. I will use a scenario based on one of my many encounters with goal setting:financial goals.

Lets suppose my goal is to make or earn total of $16 after four weeks through doubling my income at the end of every week as in

week 1:$2,

week 2:$4,

week 3:$8,

week 4:$16.

Whenever i have set such goals in my life, my experiences have mostly been akin to the following scenario:

week 1: -$4(am in debt, had to borrow to start),

week 2: -$2(managed to make $2 and paid off part of the debt),

week 3: -$2(didnt sell/earn anything),

week 4: -$3(didnt sell anything had to borrow $1 to survive).

In most instances after week 4 i would then face reality and do the inevitable:quit. Stress and lose of self-confidence followed. After 4 weeks i was supposed to have $16 in pockets but i had, -$3, a deficit.

However in a FEW occasions where i was stubborn(coz i can be stubborn) here is a probable scenario. After the 4th week as above with a deficit of -$3 i refused to quit but soldiered on and this is what happened:  

week 5:  -$1(i sold $2 to a relative who pitied my seemingly useless business),

week 6: $2(sold $3, am now out of the red!),

week 7: $10(eureka, i got a big order from a real company),

week 8: $90(got three really big orders). I will stop here.

Do you get the picture? I planned for 4 weeks, didnt meet my goal, but i soldiered on and after 8 weeks i was making what i never planned to get. Thats life you dont get what you want, at times, when you really need it, but with faith and persistence you could get more than you never dreamed of. Be blessed.