Goal!

“It’s a goal!”

The object of a soccer match is always to score goals, to evade the opposing team and get the ball over the line into the net, whilst preventing them from getting the ball into your net.

But what happens when the goal is scored?

A ‘goal’ has been achieved, so what next?

In sport, it’s simple – just do it again – score as many goals as you can during the time allotted for the game.

Of course, your team, and your manager, and your fans will have a vision of winning the game, which means scoring more goals than the other side.

But the thing is that this ‘vision’ can only be achieved by ‘scoring goals’ one at a time.

The second goal cannot be reached until after the first has been achieved.

And there’s more.

Your team may have a ‘dream’ of ‘winning the league’ – scoring more goals and wining more matches than the other teams.

But this ‘higher vision’ cannot be achieved until after the first goal has been scored, and indeed, until after the first match has been won, and the second, and the third and so on.

But here’s the thing.

Without that ‘dream’ or ‘higher vision’ why would you ‘play’ in the first place?

Some say that ‘it’s just about taking part, playing the game’ or ‘there are no winners or losers’.

But if that were true then humanity would probably never have invented games in the first place.

How does all this apply to you and I?

In the wonderful world of ‘personal development’, or as some bookshops would have it ‘self-improvement’; there are thousands of speakers and writers who talk a great deal about goal setting and ‘dream building’.

The majority of speakers I’ve heard and writers I’ve read focus their attention on encouraging or inspiring you and I to go for the big ‘dream’, the all-encompassing vision or the ‘big bold goal’.

But only rarely does anyone give us any practical advice on how to get there.

Certainly, there are lots of techniques like affirmations, vision boards, mind movies, meditation, subliminal media and so on.

These all work and do help you and I to elevate our ‘state’ from the ‘normal’ level of consciousness adopted by the vast majority of people.

But most people I’ve engaged with about this do find it difficult to ‘grasp’ the entirety of their own ‘big vision’ or dream.

You and I are often exhorted to ‘write everything down in specific detail’, but for us and most other people that would probably take tens of thousands of words to cover, in detail, everything that we wish to be, do, have and give.

You see, what you and I need to do is to break down our big vision into ‘seasons’, ‘leagues’, ‘matches’ and ‘games’ – and then set about scoring one goal at a time.

Our ‘seasons’ would be our vision for this year, the next three years, five years and so on and our ‘leagues’ are the different domains of our life such as health, relationships, vocation etc.

Our ‘matches’ are the smaller more specific visions we have in each of those areas and our games are the discrete targets and goals we need to ‘score’ to win those matches.

Then for you and I things become a lot simpler. Our goals and targets are clearly defined, as is the process we need to follow to ‘score’.

The soccer analogy helps us again because a goal is scored by hitting a target, but the process of doing so is, as everyone who watches the game knows, simple, but not necessarily easy!

For you and I to achieve those big visions or dreams all we have to do is break them down into simple goals and targets, probably thousands of them in each domain of our lives, that are clearly defined and simple to understand.

Then you and I have to ‘play the game’ and score the goals one by one by one until our first ‘match’ is won and our first mini-vision realised.

And then we’re on to the next game.

I’m off to ‘play’.

How about you?