What do you want to achieve?
This is the main question that leads a coaching conversation. I have noticed that clients do not often have an immediate and clear answer. A possible reason is that this person has never thought thoroughly about their life, career or future opportunities. Sometimes, people do not completely control the path of their life. Someone can get a good job, progress within their career, have a family or realize many other projects without being fully aware of the impact of every choice on the different life domains. Everything seems to follow a natural process because the ambition and desire to realize something meaningful and important has driven behaviors and actions.
How can you really obtain what you want?
Be aware of your ideal self and its main elements:
- a dream or desired image of the future
- your core identity: who you really are
- having hope: which serves as the emotional driver.
These elements support the ability to craft a personal vision and open the mind to see new opportunities. The dream, the core identity and hope is the fuel that moves to the realization of sustained and desired change.
When it is clear what you desire and strive to achieve, behaviors and actions will drive toward it. In fact, establishing specific goals and finding the correct strategy to make them real becomes easier. People often consider their dream or a wish they aim to fulfill and the first thing they envision is what they don’t want, the difficulties and the negative aspects. Consequently, people have a clearer vision of what they don’t want rather than what they really aim for.
How much more effective and with greater impact on personal awareness is to ask yourselves: what do I really want? How will I feel when I reach my goal? Associating a desire with a bodily or sensory sensation allows you to give concreteness and reality to what goes through your mind. First, establish specific goals. This helps you to focus on the result, on what you really want to achieve. A well-established goal is specific, measurable by some precise way to evaluate progress, achievable through a planned path, realistic for own abilities and ambition and time bounded. To use an acronym the goals is SMART. It is easy to achieve your goals, if they reflect your values and work style.
There are no impossible dreams and goals, but an important aspect is to put in place a series of actions that will allow you to continue climbing until you reach the top of the mountain. Goals serve as a road map to guide decisions and efforts. They represent the objectives, benchmarks and milestones in personal and professional development.
How can you move toward the desired goal?
The way of thinking influences behavior and communication with others and with yourselves. Creating imaginary barriers in mind that distance from reality and making see the top of the mountain increasingly faraway and impossible to reach seems a natural process. The fear of change or taking responsibility for your actions sabotages yourselves. Open your mind, look at the future with a positive attitude and, begin to act as if the goal has already been achieved. This is a way to put unconsciously in place a mechanism that will make you feel stronger and more energetic towards the present.
These few questions can support the discovery of dreams and goals and shape your identity as a person and as a leader.
What do you want to create?
What do you want to preserve?
What do you want to accept?
What do you want to eliminate?
