Every year we set goals. And every year almost everyone I know fails to reach their goals. Now why is that?

It’s seems to be that a goal is not strong enough of a word for us to commit. And what’s more is that we create all sorts of steps, plans, charts and actions on how we are going to achieve our goals. And yet we fail almost every single time. So what do we learn from all this? Are we not to set goals? or are we not to have definite plans? What must we all do to achieve what we truly desire?

Firstly we need to give up our goals to attain our goals. Sounds crazy right? Hear me out. Every time we set specific goals we are practically dooming ourselves to follow a course of action that may or may not work. But instead if we pick a general enough goal, we can use strategic intuition to come up with a plan that actually works.

Let your dharma follow your karma. Strategic intuition is basically seeing what works and adapting it to formulate a new plan to achieve the desired goal.

There is an old saying that is often misused and misunderstood in this country and that is “to think outside of the box.” I don’t know how to think inside the box let alone outside of it. I am guessing they are trying to say that our minds are like boxes and they want us to look outside ourselves for ideas and solutions. But where do we look? I reckon we ought to be looking at other people’s boxes, books, notes, etc. and take out all the good stuff and adapt it to our own needs.

Usually when we fail at something, we tend to blame either ourselves or other people or even the things we had or haven’t had a control over. I cite my own experience with my aboriginal tongue as an example. My failure to master it in school was because I wasn’t motivated to put in the hours. It is estimated that it takes about 10,000 hours for anyone who is smart enough to master a cognitively complex skill. And in order to put in the hours, I had to be interested in my mother tongue. And the problem was I never got the thrill of learning because almost every Tamil book that I read unwillingly or willingly seem to justify my opinions of Indians and that is we as a society lack variety in the human experience, it’s the same old; same old. It’s easy to see why I never gain mastery in my mother tongue. I simply didn’t put in the required hours because I wasn’t interested.

Similarly, when I first got exposure to 3D modeling, I admit I wasn’t good at it. But I had something most of my friends didn’t. I was really interested in this new medium. I started to read everything related to 3D modeling, buy magazines and books with my lunch money, download training videos and even learned other additional programs. In short, I put in the hours because I was genuinely interested.

Another peculiar thing also happened. I no longer depended on one program to accomplish my projects. Since read and watch hundreds of books and videos I started to create a workflow I was most comfortable with. I was basically taking what was working and modified it to suit my needs. I never invented anything, I was merely rearranging the stuff I learned in a way that was logical for me to accomplish the task.

Secondly, remember I told you that a goal is not a strong enough word. Here’s why when you say the word goal, most people think of it as a means of scoring, as in any game of soccer, chances are you will miss more than you score. And as an effect, our brain tends to think that if we pursue a goal chances are we may or not succeed. It becomes worse it you are a depressive person or the fact that your motivation lies in other people’s approval. So that’s where a promise comes in.

Human beings are socially obligated creatures. Whenever someone makes a promise we expect them to keep it no matter the cost. So the best way for us to achieve anything we ought to promise ourselves that we are going to achieve it. But be general about. E.g If you want to improve your English just promise yourself that you will read a book a week. What happens next is that you will find yourself buying and reading books that interests you rather than being forced fed with Shakespeare and other boring text that you had the misfortune of reading in school.

So be interested in the general promise you are making to yourself, see what works, work hard at it and put in the hours. I guess there’s a truth in the saying that if you have a strong enough why, the how will come about.