This blog is about my experience about the Goal Setting Exercise I recently completed, why it was different and how it gave me immense clarity on what needs to be done.
I have been on a journey to define my life goals and milestones for a while now. Probably for 5 years at least. I have tried it under the guidance of different mentors and also individually.
After the initial high of the exercise, pretty quickly I used to disassociate with it. The goals didn’t seem meaningful and relevant, I started finding flaws in them and soon they became another piece of paper which quickly got lost somewhere in the pile.
However, even then I understood the importance of doing the exercise till I get a meaningful outcome.
Recently when my wife (Shruti) and I were going through some tough times, I thought this might be a good time to have a conversation and see where it leads us.
One fine Saturday morning, with no social activities to distract us, we started discussing what we individually wanted to do. Being the organised person I am, I started writing those things on our whiteboard. Quickly I realised the things we were writing were really powerful and meaningful to us.
I asked Shruti, what would she regret on her deathbed and she answered truthfully (getting a bit emotional). I also answered the same question.
We tried to connect with our values and unearthed some deeply seated beliefs, motivations and expectations. We wrote down what would make us happy, what kind of life we wanted to live and then what legacy we would like to leave.
But most importantly, we wrote down ‘Why’ we wanted those things. What are our intrinsic motivations to achieve those outcomes.