To achieve something meaningful, stay focused on a clearly defined goal. Your ultimate purpose should guide your actions.

Beginning at the end may seem easy enough. But conceptualizing the right outcome can be tricky. Often, we confuse goals with objectives (the means to an end), and when we achieve the objective, we are no closer to the outcome we’d hoped for.

For instance, if you want to be a force for good in the world, whose words and ideas touch hearts and change lives – then that’s your goal. Period. Any task between you and the change agent’s way of life is an objective. Engaging in a profitable and sustainable writing career, signing with a “Big Five” publisher, or a top literary agent are objectives, and a method used to achieve your goal.  

Many will say, ‘Of course, I know that,’ but world-renowned author status is my ultimate goal. But is it? In our haste or despair to make something happen, we often lose sight of what we want to accomplish. We often forget that a goal serves as our guiding principle.

MISALIGNED

Case-in-point. A few years ago, I unwittingly set a personal goal, and in achieving it, I knocked myself right off my life’s path. After a series of professional setbacks and failed intimate relationships, I wanted to disappear. Just go and get lost in the world. Five months after that heartfelt plea, I accepted a job as an international flight attendant with one of the world’s largest airlines. For the next eight years, my friends and associates would send me messages, “Where in the world, are you?” Looking back, that was mission accomplished. I’d set a goal subconsciously and was surprised when I achieved it.

[The Power of Your Subconscious Mind: Updated Audible Audiobook – Unabridged Joseph Murphy (Author), Jason Culp (Narrator), Penguin Audio (Publisher)]

However, that’s what many of us do, then wonder why we fall short. We may say, “I need this, or I must have that. But it’s usually unrelated to our desired outcome. Yet our subconscious doesn’t recognize the difference between desires and principles. Thus, it continues to carry out tasks that achieve a misaligned objective. Therefore, it’s important to carefully determine your principled outcome in your logical mind and then reinforce it in your heart. If I did, my heartfelt plea would have aligned with my rational mind.

My subconscious would have worked to stabilize my career and help me build a healthy relationship. I would not have been distracted by the next person who caught my eye.

This highlights the unintended power of setting subconscious goals.

The goal I had haphazardly created became my guiding force, and it led me down a different path.

Here’s how it happened.

You may have noticed that “the why” of your goal is just as important as the goal itself.

LIFE IMITATING ART

My everyday life sucked, and it triggered my desire to get lost.
Everything that happened afterward followed the novel’s three-act structure.

[How to structure a story: The Eight-Point Arc 1996 | “Writing a Novel and Getting Published” by Nigel Watts]

Ex.
You’re in your comfort zone – it could suck, it could be lovely, but it’s what you know. Then something happens to snap you out of it and forces you out of the zone and onto a journey. Your goal is to get back to your routine. On this journey, you’re likely to face obstacles, objectives (a means to an end), assistance, and more to help you achieve your goal.  

Note: This journey is to make your character stronger and wiser, but that’s a decision you’ll have to make as you go through the struggles.

To illustrate this, let’s use the current global pandemic as an example of one of those triggers in literature.

The conflict is “Human against Nature.”

The three-act structure is as follows:

The protagonist in this story is you. It’s not virologists, epidemiologists, health care workers, or government leaders.  

Here’s how your story looks.

Stasis: Good, bad, or indifferent; you are going about your daily life.

Trigger: Hostile extraterrestrials from planet Corona invade the Earth –

The Quest: (a journey specific to achieving a goal or mission.) While the world’s governments work with industries to eradicate the COVID-19 Virus, your task is to mitigate the effects it is having on your life. The goal is to return to the pre-Coronavirus status quo.

Surprise(s): It’s not going to be as easy as you thought it would be. Governors have closed major states for about three months; you learn you’re either an essential or nonessential worker. If you’re the latter, your employer might lay you off. Only jobs available are for essential workers, including those in delivery, cashier, and store clerk roles, as well as healthcare workers and first responders. You’re social distancing to remain healthy because even with health insurance, you may not get treatment, and without it, you won’t. In addition to hostile invaders from Corona, bad actors within world governments emerge. Con artists, opportunists, and anarchists flood the airwaves, the internet, and the streets. There may be some in your family, and you might not be able to trust your neighbors.  

Critical Choice: Then you come to the big test: “Decision Coronavirus.” The test is a “pass or fail.” You won’t know the results until you make a decision. Here’s where you learn if your guiding principles are selfless or selfish. Will you make the hard decision for a good outcome or take the easy road that will undoubtedly lead to an awful end?

Climax: The moment of truth: The results of your decision reveal your character. You choose “normal” easy over unknown.

Reversal: You experience a character change, or at the very least, you’ve learned something about yourself.  You change your mind and follow your heart into the unknown.

Resolution: You’re now experiencing a new normal. You may have a whole new story and are bound for a new journey to learn a lesson. Or you’ve returned to regular life. But now you’re a hero with a gift for those in your community.

CORNERSTONE
So long story, short. “Too Late,” as the characters said in the 1985 film “Clue.” A goal isn’t something to do – it’s your foundation. It’s a way of life. A state of being is your cornerstone from which all objectives originate.

Hence, always begin with your end goal in mind.  ~MH

Question of the Day: Is your job on the Essential Workers list? Were you shocked to learn your job isn’t considered essential?

I was surprised to learn that all client/customer-facing personnel and first responders are on the front lines during the Coronavirus pandemic. High-Five to Health care providers including virologists and epidemiologists, delivery personnel, grocery clerks and cashiers, adult infant and child caregivers, journalists, transportation personnel – (shout-out to the flight attendants, pilots and workers above and below the wings), sanitation workers, farmers, ranchers, fishers, EMT, Fire and rescue, Peace officers, ICT personnel (I’m mean really, cloud computing isn’t 100 percent automated, right?) apologies for any other essential workers I’ve left off the list.

THANK YOU!!!