Personal Goals - Value and Importance

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. I have a wife and two kids. One day my boss came up to me and he said, “Hey Joe, push this button with your right hand.” So I did. Hi, my name is Joe…….

How many of you experienced, as a child, the sensation of mud between your toes? Remember taking in the fragrance of a spring flower, the taste of a succulent peach plucked fresh from the tree? Do you remember how you were capable of taking it ALL in – how you reveled in the experience?

How is it that in a world that is ripe and teeming with experiences, sensations and a wealth of possibilities we so often find ourselves just going through the motions? How is it that we end up as our own versions of Joe, taking actions we are total detached from. How is it that we seldom examine our own actions? How is it that we end up talking in manufactured voices that we are not connected to, that our void of sincerity, speaking words we don’t even hear? I’ll tell you how it is.

When I was five years old I happily entered Grade One. Happily and willingly I went to school because I had goals – three of them. I wanted to learn to read. I wanted to learn to write. I wanted to learn how to count money. Fifty-two years have passed since I poured over Dick and Jane. Fifty-two years ago I began to work diligently and enthusiastically to form my letters and numbers;I happily began to learn how to add and subtract.

Gradually my enthusiasm for school waned, my goals faded from my mind’s eye and I began working on goals set for me by others. “Push this button with your right hand.” So I did. Not only did I unwittingly allow others to define my goals, I also allowed them to determine when I had achieved those goals. I was no longer working towards my own goals. My goals, in fact, were forgotten. In my forgetting and abandoning my own goals,I failed to acknowledge when I had achieved those goals. Not only did that, but, in my working towards achieving the goals set for me by others, I failed to set new goals for myself. I trudged my way through drudgery and toiled to achieve mediocrity.

Forty-eight years passed before I remembered what my goals had been at five years old. Forty-eight years passed before I acknowledged to myself that I had achieved those goals. Not my teachers’ super-imposed goals; not my parents’ superimposed goals, not my friends’ super-imposed goals but my goals –My Own Goals.

Our dreams and goals are our most precious and valued possessions. When we abandon and give over ownership of our own dreams and goals, we give up ourselves and our lives. We lose ourselves, we don’t play our own game and we end up in life just going through the motions. When we fail to acknowledge our accomplishments we fail to set new goals. We seek approval and acknowledgment from others. We give our power away. We stop reaching. We become detached and we live a life of pretense.

Remember how it felt to squelch mud between your toes. Now, feel your back connecting to the chair you are sitting in. Feel the seat of your chair connecting with the backs of your legs. Feel your feet touching the floor. Notice the walls in the room; notice the color of the walls. Look around, notice the people in the room. When you are driving your car, feel the steering wheel in your hands. When you are wiping down the kitchen counters feel the texture and the dampness of the cloth. Heighten your awareness. Experience your life. It is only when we are aware that we can effect change. We cannot change that which we are not aware of. We cannot fully experience that which we are not aware of. Wake up, feel, experience fully and then set your course – create your life. Honor your dreams and goals and do not superimpose them on others. Instead, help others find and achieve their own dreams and goals. You can mindlessly go through the motions or you can live a life wherein you honor your own dreams and goals plus the dreams and goals of others.

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” - Langston Hughes

Jenafor Tanner