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Goals and why they are important.
by Wolf Halton

Rocketing into the holidays, I am starting to feel un- focused. Next year is fast approaching and I haven't quite finished with this year. I have a couple of analogies for you. I believe in goal-setting. I strongly believe in goal-setting. Seems like I believe in it like some people
believe in Santa Claus. Some-how, if I am a good little cow, my goals will get here.

There is a lot of good stuff written about how well that stuff works, but up til now I haven't really done much with the information. It always seemed like I was finishing one project or another and then starting another project to fill in the time hole that the finished project took up. Every so often, I would look up from my desk and say, "Gee, it sure seems like I should be closer to my goals than I am." Then I try to remember what my goal was. Up until now, I could pass blithely through whole decades without looking up.

Today I am going to tell you my goals.

1. I want to change my style a little bit. I am clearing the busy-work off my plate, so I can clearly differentiate the important projects when they come, so that I can give space in my life for goals and so that I can put my energy where it will do the most good for everybody concerned.
The scope of this is quite short. I envision being able to take a day next week and clean my office.

2. I want to be able to take more speaking engagements, and do more live training workshops. We already do live training workshops, but they are almost all very intimate one-on-one affairs. We have been talking about starting a radio show, and this could easily translate into more
of this. How does "The Little Cow Prosperity Talk Radio" grab you?

3. I am taking classes starting in January. One of my earliest goals was getting a PhD and teaching. I was giving lectures on the nature and habits of dinosaurs when I was four years old. I am starting my PhD in Education next year. I am facing this with joy and loathing, both. Joy because I really like taking classes and thinking about all sorts of things, and classes keep you organized enough
to read some tremendous books that you probably would not have been able to make time for without a professor saying, "Summarize chapter 46 please, Mr Halton..." The loathing is because I am aware of how much of the next three years will be spent reading and typing what I hope are scholarly replies. I finished my Masters in IT last December, and took the whole year of 2003 off. I had promised my wife, Helen, that I would not hole up in a cave somewhere and research the habits of climbing plants. I kept that promise for a whole year!

4. I also want to move to a house that is warmer in the winter and has room for guests to visit and for seminars. I am envisioning a sort of a prosperity retreat bed and breakfast. This is not a retirement home I am thinking about... The time scale on this is somewhere around 4 months to 5 years. Oh, I want the house to have enough land to run a few head of miniature Hereford cattle around
the place.

I don't think you need these specific goals or aims in your life, but they are the sort you might want to formulate. Aims like this should be sort of like planning a trip to Ayers Rock in Australia. You can go any time. The aim cannot be really time-sensitive. "Pick up the boss at the
airport at 5:00pm on tuesday," is not an aim or a goal. It is an action item on your schedule.

A. Your aims must be possible to accomplish.

B. They must be general enough that they are achievable by lots of different ways.

C. The Aim must be personally important to you. Would you complete college if the only reason you were doing it was to make your momma proud? You might _want_ to, but it would be incredibly hard to submit to 4 years or more (in my case closer to eleven years) just to get a one-time payoff of Ma
saying, "You did good, son. I am proud of you." I am not knocking this payoff, but your parents are proud of you anyway. You can get the same payoff with a whole lot less work.

What happens when you achieve a particular aim? Enjoy the feeling as long as you like, and at the same time be open to a different aim. The way you make your life feel organized is by comparing where you are to where you want to be and where you are now. I want to misquote and probably misattribute Confucius with "If we do not consider
where our road is taking us, we will most certainly end up there."

If your current actions are not supportive of your eventual aims, then what actions do you have to make to retrain yourself toward your aims?

If you do not have any eventual aims at all, ask yourself this question. If there were no obstacles at all, what would I be doing right now?

Write your answers down, and let your creativity take you to the best steps to make it real for you.

Wolf Halton
"Quotations from Chairman Cow"
The Little Cow Foundation
http://www.thelittlecow.org

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