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Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Undo the limiting effects of goals
In
a recent workshop a young lady asked me a very simple question that turned out
not to be so simple to answer if I was going to make sense.
What if I don’t want to perform at my peak? All I want is a very
simple life that’s all”.
Husband, house, care and some children
is all she wants. She doesn’t want to change the world or go to Mars or any of
those things people dream about. Have I taken this peak
performance thing a little too far? We don’t all want to change the world. On Facebook,
a discussion started when a young lady posted on her wall:
“my goal in life is just to become a wife”.
She had met a young man she is so in love with; the most
important thing for her now is to be his wife—that’s it. Now a comment like that
is bound to attract some attention in the very Jean-Paul
Sartre/ Simone de Beauvoir world we live in. And it did. Well
everyone is reading Napoleon Hill and listening to Brian Tracy these days
aren’t they? So it is almost standard for us to call that kind of thinking
limiting. After all we are the “the sky is your limit” generation.
Ok, in case you haven’t heard, we have gone beyond that actually. Now it
is more like“the sky is not your limit”.
Recently a pastor friend of mine also made a comment in a radio
discussion about, not needing goals as it might be best to leave it all to God.
We just have to do his will and everything should be fine- we become like Moses
(a performing personality of course). Moses didn’t really start life knowing he
was going to be leading some Israelites to a new land did he? After all God is
our biggest fan and is probably the only one who truly has your best interest
at heart so why don’t we just leave the goal thing to him.
If you have been reading my work, you probably already know that I
am the guy behind the dead-end goals idea. Lately I have been
exploring the question of whether goals (whether dead-end, smart or intelligent)
in themselves can be limiting. The answer is a scary one indeed. In my line of
work, we place a lot of importance on setting goals and rightfully so- we need
the structure it brings to things. No one hits a target that doesn’t exist. BUT
the plain truth is; some people have hit targets they did not really
predetermine. But for those who set goals there is a question regarding whether
they could have picked a better target or not. Really how are we to know? I am
going to avoid discussing what the experts’ theories say about setting goals
for a minute and deal with the issue on a more practical level.
How can we determine with some precision what the exact possible ability
of a person is? Could Michael Jackson have given us more? How do we know that
he really did reach his peak and that there wasn’t any more room for
improvement? Did Bob Marley reach his peak? Could he have done more in his
thirty six years he lived? The answer is YES! But that is easy to decide for
someone who passed in their prime. Can we say the same for a person who passed
at 80?
I have been toying with the idea that the term peak performance
itself could be limiting. For example, I have no way of knowing what a client
is ultimately capable of in my work as a performance coach although I might be
able to understand to some degree what
is achievable as per what they have. It cannot be pre-determined. Perhaps it
will be wiser not to place a ceiling on where we can reach or what we can be.
Setting a life goal as most are doing these days can have this limiting effect.
This is where my pastor friend might have a point although it will
need exploring further. For those for us who believe in a God who has a plan
and purpose for us, our goals can be limiting but only if they are out of sync with
his purpose for us. This is why having a God is useful because it gives you an
all knowing personality to turn to for answers. And while you might set goals,
it will be based on his will and hence you will benefit from his guidance and
direction. None one creates a thing and wants it to under-perform. Having a God
also brings some structure to our lives giving it a direction that we must
travel in. This is extremely important because in that direction we can set
goals with a high degree of certainty. And when we reach it, we can always set
another one as long as it is in the same direction.
For my lady friend who just wants to be a wife, there is such a
thing as a good wife and a bad wife. Both are indeed wives. When we say the
goals is just to become a wife we haven’t really said much. But if it is to be
the best wife there has ever been, or perhaps even the best wife in your
family, then we can immediately see a threshold that makes your goal S.M.A.R.T
in more than one way but yet still limiting in a sense. Wife is a position that
is meaningless until we use it to accomplish something.
We might be able to find the best wife there has ever been but why
would we assume that there cannot be a better wife in the future and that in
fact that could not be our lady friend. We don’t stop living when we reach
something and since the sky is not the limit, where does it end. A person must
then keep performing till he passes on, it is then that we can look at what
they did with what was available to them. We must also remember that as we grow
older, capabilities may change and that will influence the context of performance.
In search of a solution however, I believe that my idea of intelligoals may be the
practical way to go without necessarily stepping too far from God’s will. Well
I am still performing so I am likely to bring clarity to the matter before I
pass on and when that happens, you will be the first to know J.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Confuse thou not the branding
Monday, October 8, 2012
Take the pain out of the job
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Funny Face vs. David Oscar |Performance
Who is doing and who is being?
I have had the opportunity of hosting a wedding with
funny face. I didn't know who he was then but the suit he wore on the day had
struggling artist written all over it. That wedding would have been a complete
disaster if funny face hadn't showed up. I told you before; I am just not that
guy. He had everybody laughing and there was no script. I gave him a lift after
the wedding and he barely said a word till he got off. The guy seemed very
disciplined and incredibly focused. The next time I saw him, he was on the
biggest comedy stage in the country with the best from Nigeria and he was the
only one wearing a suit made by Gucci
featuring Louis Vuitton and he did not
disappoint.
So let’s face it the guys got talent or he won’t be hanging with KSM.
The last time I wrote something with names in it. I got a “danduruwa shege” in return for my good intentions. It was about people with talent dropping their skirts on national television. But that’s ok. Even Jesus was crucified… lol. For a guy who writes terrible grammar with a myriad of typos, how can I complain? Feel free to have a go at me and my work. Frankly I will be honored. J Keep laughing.