The Value of Vision and Goal Setting
Optometry by S Nada
I read something fascinating at the weekend that really made me think. In David Allen’s book ‘Ready for Anything’, he entitles chapter 26 ‘The value of a future goal is the present change it fosters’: ‘It’s value is not about achieving something in time, but rather about how it changes the substance and quality of the decisions you’re making in this moment’…. ‘Imagining a positive outcome forward in time provides a believability of the scenario and matures the consciousness. In spite of ourselves, we begin to act as if it has truth’
Now how powerful is that?: It doesn’t matter what the goal is, or whether it is achieved. What matters is the present change that it catalyses and that this change is of value to you.
This thought was then compunded by further reading of Claxton’s Hare Brain (yes, I know it’s taking me forever to read)
Claxton made a comment about how the unconscious can take a set of inputs and act as if they were true. It will not question in certain circumstances the validity of the inputs unless they are tagged or raised within the conscious as being invalid: ‘the more vividly you can get someone to fantasise, the more likely they are subsequently to misrepresent this experience as a true memory’
To tie the two together therefore for you to see what I’m getting at:
1. We create a fully formed vision of a successful outcome (particularly using NLP techniques)
2. We consider in the first instance that this is a valuable vision or goal
3. We ensure that the vision or goal is as wild or inspiring as we want it to be (but we have to believe it to avoid the conscious stopping movement towards it)
4. We start to act as if it were true and unconsciously do all that we can in the present to take action to deliver
Job done.
Just Seven Things 