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Goals versus systems(DW# 841)
Here is your daily dose of Wisdom for Living Your Best Self!Benjamin Franklin set up a system whereby he continued to work on his endeavour of achieving moral perfection.
The way his project was set up reminded me of what Scott Adams says in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a great book with lots of wisdom which we shall perhaps explore at another time.
For today, I want to focus on what he says about setting up systems rather than focusing on goals:
"You could word-glue goals and systems together if you chose. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of...
Set lofty goals(DW# 840)
Focus on the journey rather than the destination(DW# 839)
Rinse and repeat(DW# 838)
Write it down(DW# 837)
As we have been discussing, Ben Franklin had written out in detail what he wanted to achieve and grow within himself.
He was onto something.
Researchers have found again and again that those who write down their goals are much more likely to achieve them (between 1.2 and 1.4 times more likely!)
Writing down goals (rather than trying to commit them to memory) has immense power because:
1) Once goals are externalized and written down, they act as visual cues, they can be reviewed and accessed at any time (even if your brain is distracted by other things).
2) if you just THINK about one of your goals or dreams, you’re only using the right hemisphere of your brain, which is your imaginative centre.
On the other hand, if you think about something you want to achieve, and then write it down, you also tap into the power of your logic-based left hemisphere.
Acknowledge your wins(DW# 836)
This is the question that Ben Franklin asked himself every night before bed.
For some of us this will be challenging. We do not like to think about how we have succeeded because we fear this will make us arrogant.
We prefer to focus on our challenges instead, ways that we need to improve, to do better.
Here’s the thing though:
What psychologists have discovered is that we can only perform as high as our self-image allows. If we continuously bring ourselves down by focusing on how we have fallen short, how high is our self-image likely to be?
So consider this:
We may want to practice noticing and acknowledge times when we did, in fact, live up to our best self. Each time we succeed at something, we need to affirm that by making micro imprints in our consciousness that we can do this – that we are up to the task.
There is a really simple way to do this: Simply say to yourself: "That’s like me!!!"
"That’s like...
Start and end the day with reflection(DW #835)
He started each day with reflection about how he wanted to show up in the world and ended each day with examining whether or not he lived up to his intention from the morning.
He asked himself simple questions to initiate the process of intention and accountability:
In the morning he asked himself: "What good shall I do this day?"
And at the end of day this question:: "What good have I done today?"
So simple right?
I would add though, that it might be helpful to be slightly more specificin our daily intention and reflection.
For example:
Morning: What specific act of kindness shall I do today? To whom? How? At what time?
Bedtime: Did I do at least one act of goodness/kindness today? To myself, the family, my community, the world?
Develop daily rituals(DW #834)
Time tracking(DW #833)
Account for your time.(DW #832)
