How will you know when you achieve a great outcome? This is my new thought process when trying to visualize my future. Having a bit of a rest day yesterday, I was able to spend a little time thinking through what would be my next evolution. What is the future me that I am trying to achieve?
With my running commitment this has been easy. I have a future vision of myself crossing the finish line of my first marathon, in under 4 hours. I know what that will feel like, and I can imagine family and friends supporting me. I can almost feel the weight of the medal they put around your neck at the end of the race. My visualization is pretty strong for that moment and I will know at that moment – outcome achieved. Of course, I will then have to create another one – which I have already started to think of some candidate ideas.
Of course it gets harder when you start to visualize yourself without something. Rather then adding, taking away. Also, it gets harder when you have something to improve that is not obviously measurable. Improving my relationship with a family member is not as simple as completing a event, like a marathon would be. So creating achievable outcomes that will let me know that I have accomplished the cool impossible, is not that simple . . . or is it?
This is the challenge that I took on yesterday in my meandering thoughts. Could I create a moment in the future that I could visualize so that I would know that I achieved something significant? At first impression, some of my goals were so esoteric that this seemed impossible. Then I spent a good 15 minutes or so really thinking it through, and surprisingly there were some concepts that I could see being memorialized in a moment someday in the future. So maybe now I am of the opinion, that all future ambitions can be measured – you just need to think them through a little more.
Perhaps an ambition is not an ambition at all until you can actually figure out how you will know when you have had success. If you cannot do that, then how can you possibly change your life to achieve it? A few days ago I talked about implementation intention. A goal, as nebulous and as impossible as it may seem, is not really a goal until you have defined measurable objectives. Cannot measure your goal? Think you goal is too touch and feel to be measured? Then you do not have a goal at all, better go back to the drawing board and your future authoring and determine how you can measure your achievement.
So I have a new opinion on this matter. Everything I am working toward, every habit I am building are tied to a measurable future outcome. Some pinnacle moment when I know that I will have achieved success. True, I may need to come up with something new once I hit it, but that is OK. As long as I am making forward progress, I am not going backward and that is a lot better then I was doing a few years ago!
Guy Reams
365 Alumni
91 Days Left to 1st Marathon – Sponsor Me!
