What pushes you to achieve greatness? What creates the drive you need in order to accomplish the goals you hold in our heart? What is the motivation? The word motivation comes from the Latin phrase “to move forward.” So, what is it that motivates you, moves you forward? Take 2 minutes to read this and take the action in your life and you will never be the same.
The brilliant psychologist, Abraham Maslow, in his paper on A THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION written in 1943 stated; “There are at least five sets of goals, which we may call basic needs. These are briefly physiological (hunger, health, appearance, sex, etc.), safety (security, domain, means for survival/income, etc.), love (partner, family, interests, etc.) esteem (self-esteem and the esteem of others, the need for getting and receiving respect, admiration, etc.), and self-actualization.”
Maslow went on to write, “In regard to the need for self-actualization- Even if all our (other) needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if they are to be ultimately happy. What man (a person) can be, he must be.
This need we may call self-actualization…This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more of what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming…In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically.”
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
-Albert Einstein
Well, it appears that we all have a basic drive for this SELF-ACTUALIZATION. However, in order for us to succeed, our fundamental needs for these deep desires must be in alignment and congruent with our values, they must be value driven in order to be meaningfully successful.
Many times people set goals that have very little to do with what they truly value in life. This is very important to recognize. How many times have we seen people go to college for a specific field or career and then change due to the realization…they don’t like it.
How Will This Help Me? It is not necessarily how you accomplish your goals, but why you want to that is most important. Why? Because there is a unique cycle that occurs when you predicate goals that are in alignment with your values. As you work toward your value driven objective, you will feel totally natural in your pursuit and once this goal is achieved, your values are satisfied and supported by your accomplishment. Because of this your goals support your values and your values in turn support you in the direction of your goals. This optimizes your potential in our direction toward self-actualization. This absolute optimization increases our potential for success a hundred-fold, to become the very best we can, at what WE DO BEST!
If you are to become the best, you must create an organized strategy or method of approach in the form of meaningful short and long-term goals. Here are a few ideas that will help ensure you progress toward achieving where you want to be in the future.
1) What do you want?
2) Why do you want to do it?
3) How will you do it?
4) When will you complete it?
1) What Goals/Things we want to be, do, have. Business, career, financial, academic, spiritual, etc..
These should be divided into three priorities-
A Goals/Most Important
B Goals/Secondary
C Goals/Least Important
“A Goals” are the things that will have the most positive, dramatic affect on your life and your future, the most important thing for you to concentrate on in order to have the life you envision that you want.
List these “What” goals in the categories (A,B or C) then prioritize these goals in each of these categories by which is most important, which is next and so on.
Great! Now do the same for your “Why” Goals.
2) Why Goals/Why we want the things we want. Why we want our “What” Goals. Personal, family, relationship, health, fitness, happiness, etc..
Excellent! Finally do the same for your “How” Goals!
3) How Goals/How am I going to do this? Personal development, education, habit adjustment, who do I have to become?
Now that you have these three powerful categories prioritized set deadlines for each goal in each category. Set these When goals by taking the goals you have now and putting them into four areas.
1) One year 2019 goals
2) Five years (within)
3) 10 Years (in at least)
4) Your Bucket List/What you want and will do before you die.
If you take a small chunk of your time to do this exercise, you will be SHOCKED at the results. You will achieve more in your life, faster than you ever imagined. The reality is most people spend more time planning their vacations, than they do their life.
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw
Reprinted from www.thewinningmindset.com by Kevin Seman