Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Perry on Keeping Your Eye on the Target

There is so much talk in the industry of Personal Development about goal setting, affirmations, and achieving what it is you have an absolute desire for. One of the biggest stumbling blocks in making your goals a reality, or I should say my making my goals a reality, is the ability to keep my eye on that target, truly believing that I deserve it. In the world of shooting you do that by controlling your breathing and squeezing the trigger, slowly and methodically. In the world of goal achievement it is done by controlling your thoughts and most importantly truly believing that you deserve what it is that you are striving for.

One of the ways that I have learned to start believing in my deservability was discovered in a book by Joel Osteen called "It's Your Time". This book is an odd one for me to be reading simply because it has a very heavy religious tone to it. I have great faith, but I am not overly religious. My upbringing was in a very religious family, which blessed me with great faith and at the same time a hesitation with the institution of religion -- yet another story!!
In the first chapter of the book Mr. Osteen talks about a story of his going hiking at a very high elevation, which he was not used to. Please realize that I am paraphrasing a lot here but the story talks about the signage at the bottom of a trail saying it should take about 3 hours to get to the top. After less than an hour he was breathing really hard, there was no air it seemed, and as he sat and took a break he was met by an elderly man on the way back down. It appeared to the elderly man that Joel was "done" maybe even thinking of turning back and he simply said "you are closer than you think" and carried on back down the trail.

Upon hearing this Mr. Osteen picked himself up and began to get moving again. Within 15 or 20 minutes he was at the top of the trail. He had made it in about half of the time that the sign said -- actually was over 3/4 of the way there when he thought of turning back. He was thinking that he had another 2 hours or so to go. It was too difficult. He was closer than he thought.

For most of us this story rings true in all aspects of our achieving our goals. When the going is tough and it feels like we will never make it, we turn back, we jump right back into our comfort zone and we settle for the norm in our lives. What if we were over 3/4 of the way to achieving all that we desired?
Keep your eye on the target -- You are closer than you think!!

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