Straight to the Goal

Sometimes in personal development, or other areas of action that can seem fuzzily defined, like relationships or social change, I notice myself and others losing sight of a simple, essential heuristic (a rule of thumb) of goal achievement. It's an idea that really jumped out at me a few years back from a success-with-women seminar.

I'll phrase it as follows:

1. Givens: you have a starting place/condition A, and desired finishing place/condition B.
2. Proceed as directly as possible to B.
3. Adjust course as necessary.

Diagram the 1st:

The straight line between A and B is the abstract ideal -- and for simple goals, it's pretty common. E.g.: "I want a glass of water." I go to the cupboard, get the glass, fill it with water. Done.

The next two frames illustrate step 3 of the heuristic as simply as possible. I go to the cupboard: no glasses (the barrier/obstacle). I take the extra time and energy to wash a glass from my counter. I proceed to fill it with water. Victory! (And yes, my house can be a bit slovenly at times.)

The glass of water example is to get the gist. Of course, any really interesting goals -- especially those that can't even quite be pinned down as goals (clearly defined outomes, timelines and behaviours) but rather must be framed as intentions (visualized, ongoing creative images of a desired condition which may be too large or too subjective to define clearly) -- are going to have a lot more barriers than "wash a glass".

I'm going to come up against barriers I could never have imagined, barriers within myself that I had no idea were there or didn't realize were significant (such as limiting beliefs), and undergo completely unexpected transformations in the process (by accomplishing unforeseen sub-goals).

Diagram the 2nd:

Here we've added a few more barriers, until at last entering the beating heart of B. (Of course you have to remember that the little red-line of progress is flying blind for the most part, and can't see the whole map of obstacles in advance.)

Duh?

This probably sounds obvious. Why write about it?

Because it can be all too easy to encounter a challenge or two, get distracted (and probably discouraged; emotions are a factor here too) and forget to keep going towards the goal.

Again, for any really interesting goal, the path cannot be foreseen. (That's a large part of what makes it interesting.) There can be incredible numbers and complexity of barriers and challenges over the span of years. And sometimes, encountering these, we can make the mistake of changing our goal unnecessarily (often for an impossible or less-desirable one), or forgetting about it completely, and proceed to wander aimlessly and/or fruitlessly in a wilderness of miscellaneous obstacles.

Another misstep is to simply get hooked on battling barriers and hope for the best. There are obstacles and challenges in all directions, but facing them willy-nilly brings limited, willy-nilly results.

So let's go straight on to the goal, as straight as possible. Even if the end path is a baroque curlicue of epic proportions (see Frodo, Lord of the Rings), it was the best path you knew, and you got the results. Even if the adventure is the thing, and the journey is what counts, without focus on the goal the journey becomes a drunken dream, and often a rather anxious one.