Set goals and find your purpose along the way: The Sweetest of Fruits

As a life coach, I work with people to set goals and then work towards them. I hold them accountable to the strategies and action steps they set out and I cheer them on or support them along the way. It is said that we need to be very specific when writing these goals, in fact SMART even about them.

However, if you have read my books and articles you would know that I also believe in surrendering. What is the fine balance between doing and allowing? In “Don’t Think of a Blue Ball” there are paragraphs about it but just yesterday, as I was sitting with a client of mine, and he was carefully penning down his specific goals, I had to interject with what I really believe which is inspired by a verse in Chapter 2 of The Bhagwad Gita about detachment to the fruit of our labour.

So as I fumbled to express myself, I came up with this analogy which I really want to share with all of you as it really really drove it home for me. Yes set your goals and be specific about them, this is like entering an exact address into your GPS system, so that you can move forward. Then think about the feelings that the attainment of these goals will give you, not just the measurable outcome. For example, if it is a promotion, then the feelings could be of “respect” and “confidence”, or in an example of a financial goal, the feelings could be “freedom” and “security”. After that, surrender, and trust that what is in store for you is so much more than our limited experience can even imagine.

Is it then a coincidence that the quote action email that I received from a friend yesterday was this one: “If you try too carefully to plan your life, the danger is that you will succeed–succeed in narrowing your options, closing off avenues of adventure that cannot now be imagined.”
American Diplomat, Harlan Cleveland

So let’s just say that the feeling I want to experience or taste is “Sweetness” and I set the goal on a pursuit for peaches, because it is the sweetest fruit that I know existed. I then spend my time and energies working towards finding these peaches. I toil, and work hard, I climb high and seek low, and then I face disappointments after disappointment, but I keep going and I don’t find these peaches. Instead, because I never gave up, I end up in this farm and there I am presented with Alphonso mangoes and this is the sweetest, most exquisite fruit I have ever tasted. The sweetness is beyond imagination!

So, yes write your goals, yet pursue them, connect with the experience and feeling that you feel achieving this goal will give you and then as much as you can, feel that feeling now, where you are and surrender with full faith that whatever is in store for you will be far far sweeter than anything you could have imagined, so don’t be disappointed along the way if things don’t look as you had hoped they were, your path towards the sweet mangoes is just being laid out as you walk it. Malti Bhojwani