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Arthur Marara-Point Blank
This is a continuation from last week. The point being made is that without goals, there is no success to talk about. You can perform at your peak when you know the goals that you need to achieve. Successful people develop the discipline of setting goals.
It is my hope that this series has ushered you into some serious thinking for your business, and for your personal life.
Without goals there is no growth.
Albert Schweitzer, French-German theologian, once remarked, “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives”.
His words speak truth of the stage that many people are now in their lives. Many people are afraid to die but they don’t have a reason to live.
When you see some people walking, there is no life in them, there is no energy, and all passion for life seems to have been lost.
The decisions that are made are for now, and are often done without regard to the future.
Some people are waking up every day to goalless empty days and consequently life for many people has become a monotonous routine.
Without setting goals you cannot move forward, and you cannot grow. Life becomes boring when it is goalless. Without goals life also becomes meaningless.
There is no motivation for discipline if there is nothing to look forward to.
I do not know where you have been, but I know this, if you commit to a better life, and set goals for yourself and commit to achieving them you can rise again and be the person that you can be.
I want you to gather yourself up, and renew the zeal and passion for life, and set new, ambitious goal that liberate your energy, zeal and inside fire.
I almost gave up on my dream
Without goals it is easy to give up on life and on your dreams. There is nothing to look forward to in the future.
Growing up as far back as primary school, I picked a passion in me to write books. I obviously struggled on the genre to write on.
My attempt to write proved catastrophic as I could not write two complete pages. I had run out of what to write on.
To compound matters, I was so terrible in written English. I have a “C” in English at O Level, “C” in English at A Level and another “C” in University Communication Skills. I have a “U” in Mathematics at O Level. I was never a part of the debate or any public speaking club at high school and even after.
I decided to work on educational revision materials when I was doing my temporal teaching. There seemed to be no one interested in publishing any of my works.
Some publishers were confident to tell me that my book was not going to be of any value to schools. I walked into a bookshop one day and I saw that someone had published something close to what I wanted to publish.
I was thoroughly discouraged and decided to shelve the idea. One day I reminded myself of the goal that I had set, the dream I had to write books which would help and inspire people.
I gathered myself up, and went into my computer and started working on my scripts even without any publisher in sight.
Determination has its rewards, my breakthrough came, and today I am living my dream.
I have been able to write seven Advanced Level books which have been recommended for use in all schools in Zimbabwe by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, and combined with other inspirational books I have done I am sitting on 20 books.
I have met students at university who have had the opportunity to use my books, and daily I receive messages from all over the world from people thanking me for writing those books.
Imagine how much I would have missed out on an opportunity to touch lives I had given up on my goal and dream. Goals inspire hope!
What was my secret?
I chose to remind myself of my goals, and my dreams. I have spoken to several organisations, companies, schools, universities, colleges, churches without any background in public speaking.
I ignored my “seeming” limitations and decided to focus on my dreams, and my goal.
I made it a deliberate decision to improve myself so that I can add value to others. I have polished my public speaking such that if you see the results I told you earlier and what I do you will be shocked.
Goals have driven me. Now, I can write a book in a single day, I have actually done that. I am so serious and disciplined when I set a goal and I have realised that is the only way I can move from where I am to where I want to be. This has worked for me.
I want to challenge you to be hungry, and desperate to turn around your life, and turn around your business.
Goals push you forward. My motivation every morning is, “I want to Inspire People, I want someone to look at me and say, “Because of you I didn’t give up!”.
Daily goal setting
Developing the discipline to plan and set your goals daily will take you far in your personal life and business.
Discipline yourself to set aside a few minutes (5 – 10 minutes) and set your important goals for the day. You can use a note book, or your iPad, or tablet for that purpose. There are several applications that can help you with this.
I am an attorney, I preside over a busy schedule. I deliberately jot down my goals for the day, calls to be made, people to be met, pleadings to be drafted, follow ups to be made, research to be done, and any court appearances.
By so doing I rarely miss deadlines unless there is a supervening impossibility.
You can also set goals for the following day in advance. This allows you to wake up to an organised day. Significant amount of time is wasted in confusion, and it is possible to actually get to 5pm without anything meaningful achieved for the day.
People are spending a lot of time on social media, because of lack of goals for the day. You can take effective charge of your life by being more organised.
Create room for reflection
Goals are worthwhile and progressive targets that you set for yourself. If your business is going to grow to become what you want it to be, always take time for feedback.
Recently when I was reading I encountered a quote on by Elon Musk on feedback.
You maybe be curious to know who this person is.
Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer and inventor. He is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Motors; co-founder and chairman of SolarCity; co-chairman of OpenAI; co-founder of Zip2; and founder of X.com which merged with PayPal of Confinity. He recently acquired Twitter for a whooping US$44 billion (more than the GDP of Zimbabwe).
I really enjoyed his observation on feedback; “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
Great goals do not always guarantee success; they simply speak of a good starting point if you manage them well. Always take time to pause, and reflect to ensure that you are still on course, and you no longer expending energy on what is not working.
To be continued next week
Join me on Star FM on Wednesdays (09:40am-10:00am) for some moments of inspiration on the Morning Galaxy with V Candy.
Arthur Marara is a corporate law attorney, keynote speaker, corporate and personal branding speaker commanding the stage with his delightful humour, raw energy, and wealth of life experiences. He is a financial wellness expert and is passionate about addressing the issues of wellness, strategy and personal and professional development.
Arthur is the author of “Toys for Adults” a thought provoking book on entrepreneurship, and “No one is Coming” a book that seeks to equip leaders to take charge.
Send your feedback to [email protected] or Visit his website www.arthurmarara.com or contact him on WhatsApp: wa.me//263780055152 or call +263772467255.
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