Wednesday 5 March 2008

Achieving a personal goal

Wednesday March 5th 2008

Longworth

I think it is important for everyone to have some idea of what their personal goals are at any time - even if they are poorly defined or are wholly unrealistic at the moment, they still provide some motivation in the long term. I have sometimes seen it suggested in Life Coaching books that long-term goals should be formally written down and reviewed every so often, perhaps once a year. I have done that on occasions and keep a little file in my desk with my current and past lists in it. Sometimes I would delete something from the list and add something else, but more than half my list has been unchanged for quite a number of years.

Perhaps this suggests that my goals are unrealistic, but in many cases they were things that I thought of as very long term goals that might not be feasible to target for many years. So, for instance, my goal to climb a mountain over 20,000 feet has been on my list for 20 years and is currently pencilled in for November 2010. My goal of returning to University to do an MSc might happen this autumn.

Yesterday I achieved one of the goals that I've had for over ten years. This related to fishing and my quest to catch a chub weighing over 5lbs from my local River Evenlode. In the past 10 years or so I have caught loads of 4lbers including 5 weighting a tiny fraction under 5lb. Yesterday I caught one weighing 5-01. My other fishing target - to catch a barbel over 10lbs - has not been under any threat for some years. So my new chub target for the Evenlode is 5 1/2 lbs, my target for any river remains 6lbs.

These are perhaps not goals that will inspire many people but are 2 of the 20 or so things I would like to achieve long term. Challenging, but not impossible.

My Evenlode chub of 5-01 - hopefully I'll catch it again in a year or two's time when it will perhaps weigh 5-08+

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