Shooting Without Goals

It’s the championship game of the NBA season. Two team have worked hard to reach the final game. They warm up and go to their respective locker rooms for final pre-game information and motivation.

The coaches of both teams are doing their best to get their teams in the right mindset for victory. The coach of the underdog team is working extra hard to insure his players know what is at stake for them. He reminds his players about how they have overcome adversity all season long and how he feels that they will not want to settle for second best tonight. Finally in his most enthusiastic vent yet, he rallies them with the thought that they deserve the championship and challenges the players to go out and win that world championship!

The players leave the locker room highly motivated! They literally tear the doors off the locker room as they charge back onto the court. As they grab basketballs and begin to approach their goal for final warm up shots, they are stopped in their tracks.  They can not believe their eyes! They look to the sidelines and yell to the coach that someone has taken down the basketball goals while they were in the locker room. How can they play a game without a basketball goal to shoot at?

A puzzling situation at best. Now, think with me: “How can you win in the game of life and business if you do not have goals?”  

• Do you have written, well-defined goals so that you know where you are going? 
• If not, how do you know where you are? 
• How will you ever know if you will win or fall short in your efforts?  

Goals are important. 

They make us take action. 
They make work and life more fun. 
They allow us to experience a sense of accomplishment and stretch us toward higher achievement. 

Goals also give us a needed sense of purpose and as baseball great Yogi Berra proclaimed, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

If you have not made time to put your goals on paper, you need to do so. If you have not set aside time to clearly decide what you want and need to do professionally and personally, you should stop what you are doing and establish goals for those purposes.

You cannot play a game of basketball without goals to shoot at; and, you cannot effectively play in the game of life and business without a list of goals either. 

• Make a decision to have goals. 
• Share them with others.  
• Look at them daily and see the difference they will make.  

As speaker/trainer Paul Myer noted, “No one ever accomplished anything of consequence without a goal. Goal setting is the strongest human force for self-motivation.”

Goals make a difference. Establish some goals and win yourself a championship!