chapter 3

EXPECTATIONS AND GOALS

Service to those around you is the rent you pay for your room on earth.

– Les Brown

Föreläsaren Les Brown talade på en föreläsning om Döda havet och varför det är dött. Han sa att det inte tillkommer något nytt vatten genom åar eller floder. Det är samma vatten hela tiden, det byts aldrig ut. Han sa att det är därför som allt är dött. Han gjorde kopplingen till oss människor, att de som aldrig tillför något nytt till det egna livet eller till andra människor, i form av utveckling, dör på insidan. Samma koppling kan man se med företag som slutar att utvecklas och står stilla, dessa visar då det första tecknet på död.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

– Thomas Carlyle

WHAT IS YOUR GOAL IN LIFE?

Regardless of age, you need to have both short- and long-term goals if you want to continue to develop and be successful. Some classic questions posed during job interviews include: Where do you see yourself in five years? What will you be doing in five years? In ten years? In twenty years? In one hundred and fifty years? Yes, your read that correctly, in one hundred and fifty years, what will you have achieved by then? You might think I’m mad; why should you set yourself a goal for long after you are dead, presuming you don’t plan to reach that ripe old age? What do you think? Think about it for a while.

Everyday life seems pretty small when you start thinking one hundred and fifty years forward, doesn’t it? Paying your bills becomes a triviality. Why should you have such long-term goals and how could you possibly implement them? Having a long-term focus, and having the amazing feeling that I may be able to influence something even after I am dead and buried, really motivates me. Imagine starting a foundation that can help X to achieve Y. If the foundation is managed correctly, it will continue to do the work you started and uphold the values you instilled in it. In this way, you and your ideals will continue to live long after you are gone. An exciting thought, right?

What footprints do you want to leave behind on earth?

Don’t be afraid of setting earth-shattering, innovative goals. Ignore what others think is possible or not. If you want to fulfil something badly enough, you’ll do it!

EXPECT SUCCESS

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

– Henry Ford

Consider this quote again: “Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right”. This has a really deep meaning. It means that if you say that you can do something, you can. If you say you can’t, you probably won’t. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy – whatever you think and believe, this will be your reality. It applies to all aspects of your life; success in your love life, your professional career, or in the sports you practice.

Another notable quote is from Dale Carnegie: “You can think yourself into defeat and misery, but you can also think yourself into success and happiness”.

In the first chapter, we spoke about mentally visualising a specific event to ease the way to your goals. By doing this, you create an expectation that it will go well, that it will develop you, that you will learn from it or that you’ll set a new record. When you create an expectation, it will be imprinted on you. It will look like you are waiting for something great to happen. Some might call this charisma. You get a glint in your eye that says you will get to where you want to go. Expect success, then success will follow – through yourself and through others!

COMMUNICATE YOUR GOAL

As I mentioned earlier, we all have different ways of looking at the outside world. Sometimes conflicts and misunderstandings arise, because one or more of the parties have not been sufficiently clear with their views and perspectives in a particular situation. I’d like to tell you two stories to highlight how things can go very wrong when there is a breakdown in the communication.

Once, there was a family who wanted to go on holiday to Abilene, where they had been every summer for the past three years. When they’d been on the road for a while, the husband turned to his wife and said: “It’ll be fun to go to Abilene again, won’t it? You’ve been looking forward to it for some time”.

But this year, the wife decided she was going to be honest, and say what she really felt, so she replied: “No, not really. I just want to go because you want to go, you’ve been talking about it all year”.

The husband was taken aback and turned to his children in the back of the car, and asked his son: “You think it’ll be fun to go to Abilene, don’t you?”

The son replied: “Well, I just go where you want to go.”

“What about you”, said the husband to his daughter, “you’ve been really looking forward to this trip, haven’t you?”

She responded: “I’d rather stay at home and hang out with my friends.”

So the husband said: “But I don’t want to go to Abilene at all, I just thought it was you lot who wanted to go!”

Another example is about an old married couple who ate breakfast together in the same way they had done for years. Each morning, the man sliced his bread roll in two. He gave the bottom half to his wife and kept the top half for himself. One morning, the wife complained: “Typical! I get the bottom half again!” So the husband asked: “Don’t you like the bottom half?” She said: “No, I much prefer the top half!” The husband replied: “But I don’t even like the top half, I’ve always eaten it because I thought you liked the bottom half better!”

What can we learn from these stories about the trip to Abilene and the breakfast rolls?

If we don’t communicate properly within our family, at work or amongst our friends, we come to believe that we all have the same picture within a situation and that everyone is happy. For the family that went on holiday, it took three years before they told one another what they really thought of their choice of destination. For the older couple, it took them many more years before they finally said how they enjoyed their breakfast rolls.

Don’t wait for others to eventually read your mind, and don’t assume that they want something that hasn’t been explicitly expressed. Talk about everything with one another and don’t hold back your opinions, trying to be kind. As the author and film director, Kay Pollak says: “Being someone’s doormat is never an act of love”.

In the workplace, it is easy to believe that everybody in the group has the same understanding of the organisational goals and visions. But often this is not the case, because everybody has their own view of their environment. There is no shared, communal view of anything in our world, and if we don´t explain to one another how we understand things, it is a perfect breeding ground for misunderstandings. To create a common picture of a company’s goals and visions, it is necessary to discuss and agree on a way of interpreting them.

If you are a leader of some kind, it is important that you gather your personnel and create a common picture of what it is you want to achieve. Don’t do as the family who drove to Abilene did, or the old couple who shared their bread roll. Stop to say which way you want to go, instead of believing you are on the right track, only to discover, far too late, that you are going in opposite directions.

REALISE YOUR DREAMS

Now is the time that life is mine, this is my time on earth.

– Gabriella’s song, As it is in Heaven

For two and a half years, I was employed by a manpower agency. During that time, I worked in around thirty different workplaces. I met many different people and my persistent curiosity and thirst for knowledge drove me to ask them many searching questions. Questions like: Why do you work here? What are you going to do with your life? What would you do if you won one million dollars on the lottery?

Many people described how they had dreams that they would like to pursue, if only they had the money from a lottery win or such. They spoke of opening their own café, hairdressing salon or some other venture. With some of the people I met, I delved even further with some more motivational questions. Questions which often challenged their basic values and sometimes caused them to be anxious. But they also generated change.

I recall one particular workplace which had a very open, friendly and welcoming climate. Here, people often spoke in the canteen about fulfilling their dreams and goals. A few days after having such a conversation with a work colleague, he came to me and explained how he had applied to do a course to become a production manager. It was something he’d dreamed of for many years, but he had somehow found himself settled into a comfortable way of life where the days just went on, almost automatically. He hadn’t stopped to challenged himself and his life, until I awakened this idea within him. A...