Goals – Praveen's Blog

From the beginning of evolution of life on this planet if there was one thing which remained consistent, it was the challenges it brought to the group that was trying to survive and thrive.

If you are someone who believes (or does not) in the Darwinian theory of evolution, you will know how the evolution came about and how human beings ended up here. The mechanism that Darwin proposed for evolution is natural selection “Because resources are limited in nature, organisms with heritable traits that favour survival and reproduction will tend to leave more offspring than their peers, causing the traits to increase in frequency over generations“

Something that was felt by and survived by all the organisms who thrived were the same challenges that their environment and the conditions threw at them. And on the other hand, the one’s which did not survive also had to face the same exact challenges but could not handle them well or overcome them.

The bad news is, we will also face challenges (if not already, which I highly doubt) as our ancestors did, and so would our future generations without any exceptions regardless of we liking it or not. But the good news is, we can overcome it and we have what it takes to adapt, survive and thrive. Let’s find out how!

Challenges can be broadly split into 2 types –
Internal – Mental
External – Physical

While most of the external challenges we face every day, every minute in our lives are external but how we react to them is based on our mental state and how we deal with them. It is that mental state that decides if we will survive, thrive or perish.

With ever increasing challenges in the world, it becomes harder for an individual to get back to his normal state as soon as it is ideal to do so. The connected world keeps throwing things at him to keep him in that negative zone forever, if he does not become aware of where it is leading him and takes charge of the situation.
Take any social media for instance, you constantly are bombarded with all the so called “great” things people are able to achieve and do in their jobs, life, family. And looking at all that you start to feel that you are not “there” yet and start questioning your abilities and life.

The challenge arise when you as an individual are already facing inner turmoil. Human mind has unimaginable potential to imagine whatever it wants to but is limited to its experiences, environment and situation at the time.
For instance, in his famous book “Man’s search for Meaning” Viktor Frankl writes “when someone becomes unemployed, they often suffer from their provisional existence, a deviation from the more well-defined path of an employed individual. This provisional existence can change one’s relationship to time, making days feel longer and filled with less meaning than the busy days of employment”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” _{Viktor E. Frankl}

**Percentage of adults in select countries worldwide currently experiencing mental health conditions (e.g. depression, anxiety) as of 2022** – Statista

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” _{Marcus Aurelius}

Our mental state is the ultimate decider. External factors such as financial instability, issues in our relationships, uncertainty in our careers, issues with our physical wellbeing or issues with the environment we live in, no matter what the situation is, it is our mental state that determines if those issues break us or we make them the building blocks of our strong characters.

Creating a strong mindset requires lot of practice and usually years of intentional work on it. Just like to maintain peak physical state one has to consistently put in the hard work at the gym.

It is easier said than done though!

And it is not all gloomy!

The good news is, as individuals we can keep trying to be better. We can try to be better professionals, we can try to be better parents, better spouses, better friends or better children and eventually we will be better than where we are currently at in whichever area we wish to get better in, and that’s a surety but…

It will take immense courage, courage to take the responsibility and own the situation we are in.
It will take immense planning, plan to get to where we want to get to.
It will take immense discipline, discipline to follow the plan we made for ourselves.
It will take immense adaptability, adapting to ever changing world and finally
It will take immense patience, patience to continue until you get what you want.

To make sure that this is just not another motivational rant you are reading and give you the the best ROI on your time, let me lay out 3 simple strategies (the ABC’s) to help you get started,
1. Acknowledge – Take a good hard look at yourself and come to terms with who you really are. Be true to yourself and acknowledge. You could be a good person or a monster, You could be a great communicator or a terrible one or you could be a great singer or may be its just a hobby. No matter what you conclude, make sure your are brutally honest with yourself.
2. Believe – Believe in whatever you concluded with in the previous step but also believe that you have taken the first step towards change already and now its going to get easier. Start by going back to your experiences and observe what you are good at, or even decent at. Let’s say you wanted to become a public speaker but are always shy to speak in front of large groups, you also realised that though you are shy, you have spoken in front of a group in the past and have received good or even bad feedback. The point you must focus on is, when you spoke, people listened and that’s why they were able to give you feedback. This should give you enough courage and belief to take up public speaking seriously.
3. Change – Change accordingly! Change your strategy if you have to, change your habits if you have to, change your environment if you have. The objective should be to adapt to the situation and change your response to it. If your objective is to become a good musician and you are already past your 50’s, you still can change your situation and become a good musician. Without changing your mindset or response or habits you will not be able to accomplish your objective. Take it from me in writing!

To sum it all, I will close this blog with C. W. Longenecker’s “The Victor”

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will.
It’s all in the state of mind
If you think you are out classed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of your-self before
You can ever win the prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

Be Great!
Praveen.

All of us love to be organised and disciplined however, only some of us are really good at being organised. Be it our professional lives or our personal lives, we crave to have a plan for everything. We plan our lives, our years, our months, our days and even our hours and minutes. For all our goals, we have “TO DO” lists where we write down what we would want to accomplish at that particular moment which will help us achieve our objectives in short term and long term.

However while listing our To Do items, we forget an important factor which is, what are the things we won’t do at that particular moment.By neglecting this factor, we often end up doing everything except what that To Do list had and even if we are able to complete that task, we end up spending a lot more time and energy it should have taken.

As long as you have discipline, you can be a success. Discipline is what makes you do everything you need to do. _{Anthony Joshua}

I personally struggle with keeping up with the plan I have for myself for that particular hour, let alone the plan I have for myself for the year. However, along with the other numerous things COVID has thought me is, the importance of having a “To Don’t” list too. It has helped me personally to remove all the unwanted and unproductive things I do while doing something productive. For instance, in the “to don’t” list I wrote, Do not use mobile phone, no music, no social media while writing an article. Which happened while writing this very article. By doing this, I told myself what are things I would not do while I write this article. Which helped me in focussing on my thoughts while I write, this automatically took care of an item I had on my “to do” list for the week (which is, post one article per week)

I’ve been applying this principle for some months now and it has allowed me to stay away from all the non-productive things I was getting used to. It has made me stay focused and concentrate on what I was working on and what I really loved doing. The more I started applying this in my everyday life, the more I felt I have lot more time than I thought and I felt my life is getting better. For instance, I made a note of what I won’t do after work hours (which used be, watching news endlessly, watching random movies or series which never really were of “my kind”) This automatically shifted my focus on spending quality time with my 2 year old daughter, reading books, listening to audio books or podcasts or even spiritual songs (Bhajan’s) which sprouts positive thoughts in my mind. Because now, I have all these hours for myself which I can invest on productive things where as, I used to think I never really have time for books or podcasts or even spending quality time with my daughter.

Focus so much on the productive things that you don’t find time for the unproductive one’s. _{Praveen (Me)}

Let me break this down further, let’s say, you are driving on highway at 80 KM/Hr, am sure along with all the other important to do things, we also know what we must not be doing. Things like, don’t drink and drive, don’t look any where else except the lane ahead, don’t try to cross and overtake a vehicle especially if you don’t have the complete vision of what’s ahead and obviously don’t take your hands off of the steering wheel. Another example I can give is, If I have “Wake up at 5AM” in my To Do, It is important to have “Do not sleep later than 10PM” in my To Don’t.

Similarly, If you are a leader or an organisation, you have all the things you would like to be known for and what you must do to get there. Subconsciously, you also know what you would not do to get to your objective or the goal. Usually, these things are the one’s which might question your integrity, your ethics, the quality of the product or the service. As an organisation, you would never want to do something unethical to win that billion dollar contract, you would never want to be complacent with the quality of your product or the service to beat your competitors on the price.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. _Buddha

To summarise, “To Do” lists are important however, “To Don’t” lists are equally important. To Do lists tell you what needs to be done and To Don’t lists tell what you won’t do while working on your To Do’s. To Do’s are the goals and To Don’t’s are your plans to achieve those goals.

Note: By no means I am telling you that I am an expert at this and my life has changed completely after following the above principle. However I promise you this, my life has definitely become better and I am loving it 🙂

Be Great!

Tag: Goals

The Importance of “To Don’t” List