How to unleash your greatness by Milton Kamwendo
Boredom is a symptom of lack of purpose and imagination. A life without goals is not exciting and lacks flavour. Greg Anderson once said, “When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.”
The importance of having clear written goals that inspire action has been talked about in many circles. However, most people do not seem to ever get to doing it. For most people goal setting is a yearly “new year” resolution ritual. They casually write their resolution on the 31st of December and from 2nd of January, it is life as usual.
Goal setting is different from wishing or dreaming: You can tell you have set an effective goal by action that flows from the goal. Wishes and dreams are not bad. Goals are dead line driven dreams. We need to follow through our dreams and translate them into actionable goals. Effective goals bring about action!
Are goals really necessary? Why should one set written, specific goals? Goals are as necessary to the life of success and achievement as oxygen is to human life. Without goals life is a mere existence. The purpose of life is a life of purpose. Goals are an expression of where you are going and what you will do and be when you get there.
Here are some reasons why you should set big, bold, written, specific and crystal clear goals to power your life to greatness.
A person who boarded a sheep and ate mangai
A person who ran after an antelope but could not recognise it
A person who asked the cat where their place is
- People who set goals achieve more in less time.
Goals create a sense of focus that causes you to move quickly forward on the path of your greatness. No one can get far in any journey by just taking an aimless lazy stroll.
Jesus came into the world with a very clear and specific goal: to “seek and save the lost”. His goal and mission was clear and specific. He therefore did not need a hundred years of ministry. Due to the clarity and intensity of his focus on his goals he only needed three years of intensive ministry and he was done. The organisation that he set up, namely the Church is still alive and growing today after two thousand years. Goals help you to achieve more in less time. Goals help you create a lasting legacy.
Goals help you achieve faster than you naturally would; they are the catalyst of all meaningful achievements. The clearer your goals, the faster you move forward in any area. Underlying and major achievement known to people are clear goals that are pursued relentlessly.
The colonial ambitions of Britain in the late 19th Century were given expression by a goal directed man called Cecil John Rhodes. He had a very clear goal of annexing the whole of Africa, for the British crown and building a railway line from Cape to Cairo. Because of the clarity of his goal, Britain colonised more territory in Africa than any other European power. All this was a result of the power of goals that are clearly defined and then violently pursued. I have spared my comment on the morality of colonisation, but the story of this man demonstrates that goals accelerate progress.
- Goals create a sense of focus and mission
Without clear goals you are hopelessly lost. Goals create a sense of focus. Nothing great can ever be achieved without a sense of focus. Focus leads to concentration of power. He who cannot focus can never win.
You are on a mission to greatness when you start doing something to get your goals and achieve your vision. A vision that cannot be translated into clear goals and mission is a mere dream. Unfulfilled dreams sometimes mutate into nightmares. I like to put it this way, “If you cannot dream, why should you sleep and if you cannot pursue your dreams, why should you wake up?”
I believe most people bath daily, usually in the morning. Before taking a bath you need to ask yourself this question, “Do I really have something to pursue today that is really worth bathing for?” If you have clear goals your answer is easy. Goals give you the sense of focus and mission that you require.
Goals give you more that a reason to get up in the morning. They give meaning to your daily activities and keep you going even if things get tough and terrible. Goals tend to tap the deeper resources within yourself and help you draw the best out of life.
Joe Klock put it well when he said:
“It is the absence of immediate and compelling goals that leads to boredom, low energy, pessimism, depression and despair, among a heap of other unpleasant conditions. The worst affliction in life is neither pain, nor poverty, nor misfortune, nor the perfidy of others, because all of these have been met and defeated by those within a determination to do so. The ultimate scourge is purposelessness – a pervading realisation that one’s life has no value to the world. Fortunately, it afflicts only those who choose to have no purpose”.
- Goals provide a standard for measurement of progress and inspire motivation
Without some form of measurement you can never tell how far you have gone. Goals give you a sense of direction and achievement. When you have goals you can tell how far you have gone. This motivates you to work harder and to achieve what you would not normally have achieved.
Most students can testify that the pressure of examinations gives you a push to read and master things you would never have mastered. A goal motivates you; it pushes you to do what you have never done before. It releases in you a new energy and internal resources you never knew you had.
The only way to get what you never had is to do what you have never done. Set new goals and pursue them as though your life depended on them because it actually does.
Goals allow you to measure your progress. They motivate you to take action. If you feel purposeless and de-motivated, set some goals and that will kick you into action. Towards examinations all students are highly motivated to study; towards a major competition all athletes are motivated to train. Goals release force of personal motivation for great achievement.
- Goals facilitate discipline, order, achievement and the effective use of resources.
The key resources in life include time, people and money. Without goals we are bound to squander or abuse the resources that God gives us. Goals help you maximise and stretch your resources.
Clear goal always rouse discipline. Discipline is the power to say “NO!” to things that are not consistent with your purpose and values. There is no greatness without the discipline of training and steadily working towards your goal. Goals take pain out of the torment and labour and preparation.
Goals, by their very nature challenge you to be disciplined, to be organised and make it imperative for you to develop a specific plan for their achievement. If you do not have a plan for achieving your goals, you are just dreaming. Dreaming is a necessary but insufficient ingredient of success. Goals without action are a daydream and action without goals is futile unproductive activity.
May the following words of Aristotle inspire you:
“All people seek one goal: success and happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal – a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends – wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end”.
Taungana kuti tizonyaradzana. Asi mukunyaradzana ikoko hatidi kutarisira pasi marwadzo enyu. Hatidi kuti tinyengetdzane kuti zvose zvakaringana, kuita sepasina dambudziko. Hazvina kuringana. Murikurwadziwa. Tose tiri kubaiwa moyo. Marwadzo aya pamwe achagara kwenguva ndefu zvikuru kwamuri. CHinoita kuti tirwadziwe ndechekuti chipo choukama chatakambogamuchidzwa nhasi chinoita sechabvutwa takavarairwa. Tarasikirwa nemudikwanwi wapadyo takarivara. 
Minyengetero 