Key Ingredients For Achieving Your Goals

In our role as Financial Advisers, we exist to help our clients set and achieve their goals.  We all have goals in our life that we want to achieve.  And we all face significant challenges that stand in the way of us achieving them. 

Sometimes, we place these goals on a pedestal, that upon achievement, we will be suddenly filled with happiness and contentment.  Have you ever wondered why is it that some people achieve their goals and still never find satisfaction, whilst others who don’t quite reach their objective continue to be happy and content?

This year I have been doing my own reading on this topic and have learned some really interesting concepts, mainly Japanese in origin.  Some of these concepts are ancient, yet are more relevant in today’s fast paced world than ever before.

A wonderful short read is a book called “Ikigai – the Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life”.  Listed below are some of the very simple concepts that you can use to shape your own path toward your goals.
 
YOUR GOALS NEED TO HAVE MEANING
What really stood out in this book was the fact that we are all searching for meaning in our lives.   Ones “ikigai” is the reason we get up in the morning. When we spend our days feeling connected to what is meaningful to us, we live more fully: when we lose the connection, we feel despair.  Pretty basic right?  But how often are we guilty of over-complicating our lives, and possibly losing connection as a result.

Basically, keep doing things that fill you with meaning and happiness and start rejecting things that don’t.  Goals that are not connected to this personal meaning, will fail pretty quickly.

Goals that have great meaning for you will provide you with real purpose.
 
STAY FOCUSED
If you have any connection to a school age child, you would have heard the word Resilience many times.  Teaching resilience, becoming resilient etc.  its certainly a concept with psychologists that has become popular in recent years.
I love the simplicity of the Japanese proverb “Nan korobi ya oki”

Fall seven times, rise eight.

We mostly associate resilience with persistence, yet resilience is not just the ability to persevere. 

The key ingredient for resilience is the ability to stay focused on the objective, on what matters, without giving in to discouragement and/or distraction.

Put simply, resilient people adapt to change and to reversals of fortune, they worry about things that they can control and don’t worry about things they can’t.

Don’t let setbacks distract.

BEAUTY IN IMPERFECTION
Without doubt, my favourite part of these readings was the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi

The world we live in has a nature that is fleeting, changeable and imperfect.  Wabi-sabi acknowledges this and finds beauty in that nature, rather than searching for perfection which is likely to be either unachievable or a “flash in the pan.”

I reckon that so often we aspire for the perfect outcome and can be easily deflated when it doesn’t arrive. Certainly the media in general and social media especially play roles in idolising perfection. Perfection, simply doesn’t exist. 

By staying open and in touch with the changeable nature of the world, your mindset will always be better positioned to adapt to keep your goals on course.
 
ITS ALL ABOUT PURPOSE
Once we are clear on what is important to us, the clarity gained is immense.  Happiness is generated not just in achieving the goal but also in working towards it.  And the financial plans we build behind these purposeful goals have real meaning.

Our Dream Catcher program is offered to all our clients so that they can bring their goals to life, bringing a real purpose to what they are doing.  We love our clients doing this program and we see firsthand how it enriches their plans. 

So if I was asked to list the vital ingredients to achieve your goals, I would look no further than these three:

1. make meaningful goals
2. and go into it with a focused resilience
3. adopt a wabi-sabi mindset to mould and evolve your plans

We specialise in creating the small steps, to keep you focused and accountable and most of all to Make it Happen!

Article by:

Tim Henry

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