The Power of Goals

To Help Achieve Your Dreams

I was 35 years old when I first heard about the importance of goal-setting in achieving one's dreams. In college, I had dreamed of being a writer but at the age of 35, I was far from my dream. I had only written about 200 poems in 15 years. I set a goal to write a poem a day for a year and that year I wrote over 400 poems.

Now, after more than 40 years of setting goals and writing thousands of poems, I have come to understand what Ziglar means in this quote.  The person I have become through the process of struggling to achieve my goals is more important than whether I did or did not achieve my goals.  As others have said, the journey is more important than the destination.

So, how has achieving my goals made me a better person, a better writer?  Has my journey been more important than my destination?  

My creative journey has given me a greater appreciation for the struggle of all creative individuals.  I understand what it means to be an artist, a writer, and a designer.  I am less willing to criticize the creative work. of others.  Yes, some of us may be more skilled than others, but we all have creative energy running through our veins.  I know what it means to put pen to paper or paintbrush to canvas and not find an audience for my work.

I have a greater appreciation of the creative energy that drives my being.  If I don't write or draw, I become melancholy.  I need to expend my creative energy.  The more I create the happier I become.  Failure to create leaves me lifeless, empty.

I have gained the ability to create anywhere and anytime.  I don’t have writer’s block. I can write a poem while sitting in a mall while my wife shops.  I can write in church while the minister is preaching.  I can doodle while sitting in a business meeting.  I can take a walk at 6 a.m. and compose a poem.  Creativity has become a way of life, not a destination.

Most importantly, through my creativity, I have found spiritual healing and understanding.  As a teenager, I was troubled by the hypocrisy of church members. Writing has helped me see beyond the hypocrisy and understand the hearts of others. I am a better person for the time I have spent creating.

Have you set goals for your creative journey?  Do you understand that the journey is more important than the destination?

Research shows that only about 2% of Americans write goals. If you want to achieve your dreams, then change them into goals.  Goals are dreams with deadlines. Some creative leaders don't set goals because they fear they will not reach them. But the truth is that people achieve more when they have goals than when they don't.

While you may not reach your goal, you will come closer than if you had no goal. As many people learn, the joy is in the creative work, not in achieving the goal. When goal-setters reach their goal, they quickly set a new goal. 

I once met a 101-year-old man who was writing his first book using a laptop computer in a nursing home. I visited that nursing home a couple of years later and the man, then 103, was writing his second book. What goals have you set for yourself? Your work? Your life?

Dr. Benjamin Mays must have been a master goal-setter. Mays was the youngest of eight children born to tenant farmers and former slaves in South Carolina. He earned a B.A. from Bates College in Maine, a Masters and a Ph.d in religion from the University of Chicago. He received almost 30 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.

Mays was an ordained Baptist minister and an educator. He became President of Morehouse College in 1940, a post he held for 27 years. Mays wrote nearly 2,000 articles and nine books including The Negro's Church, the first sociological study of African-American religion. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who graduated from Morehouse in 1948, called Mays his "spiritual mentor" and "intellectual father."