Goals and Values Continued

Goals and Values are interwoven throughout everybody’s life. Every time I have read about this subject the writing has been so intellectualized and complicated that by the time I reached the third paragraph, my mind begins wandering. I’m going to simply tell a story. I hope you can instantly understand and incorporate my story into your life.

In the beginning as children we learn values from our parents, good and bad, right and wrong. One big problem is that in today’s world, the family structure has been disseminated to the point that many people never learn right from wrong. Consqcuently, these people’s values are distorted or nonexistant.

Along with these values we learn the consequences of violating them: punishment and reward. Everybody wants reward; nobody wants punishment. Therefore, we accept our parents’ values. My parents did the best they could until I was about 5 years old.  Then they turned me over to the Catholic Church where I was brainwashed into believing that God was a supreme being who kept track of my sins and should I die with mortal sin on my soul, the consequences were that I would go to Hell for Eternity; or if I died with an unspecified number of venial sins, I would go to Purgatory for thousands of years. My head told me that I would do about ten million years in Purgatory, or go straight to Hell. Who could live with those values?

In addition, I met my first peer group — the other kids in school. These peer groups changed as I got older, and as long as my values coincided with each peer group, I fit in and was accepted.  Therefore, my self-esteem was not damaged. So it went… In every environment I found myself, there was always some person in authority whose values I had to take on in order to get on. As a result, I constantly had to accept the values of a boss, professor, or some other leader of the pack, in order fit in and maintain my self-esteem. The whole concept didn’t work; I didn’t fit in; psychologically I was a mess. These values that I had accumulated for 18 years weren’t mine.

I was not becoming the person I wanted to be. In 1963 I heard a lyric in an album by Bob Dylan called, “Bringing It All Back Home.” The song was, “It’s All Right, Ma.”  The lyric that impacted me was, “I ain’t got nothing, Ma, to live up to.” That was a relevation!  Who did I want to live up to?  I looked around and saw nobody who qualified. So there I was: no real values, no goals, and no role model. I needed a Mentor.

What did I do?  That’s the question that I will take up in the next chapter. I had no values that were my own.  I didn’t even know what a Goal was, nor how to get one. It’s obvious that I was headed nowhere.  Mediocrity would have been a step up for me, but a life changing transformation had to occurr in order for me to become the person I wanted to be. The next step?  Ed Harding

Goals-VALUES

Goals are a very interesting and necessary part of any person’s plan to become successful. Goals give you a reason to get out of bed and charge into the day. I have set goals since I discovered that I wanted to become successful. If at twenty-seven years old I had made a list of all the things I thought would make me successful and happy, I would have severely short changed myself, not only materially but also spiritually. The evolution that has taken place in my life between twenty-seven and sixty-eight years old expanded my consciousness and therefore broadened my vision, resulting in greater and more enlightened goals allowing me to achieve more than I could possibly have ever conceived at twenty-seven years of age.

This short introductory paragraph doesn’t even begin to broach the infinite subject of setting, accomplishing, resetting and evolving process that takes place in your life once you begin setting both short term and long term goals. A short term goal is one that can be achieved quickly, a simple modification of behavior or vocabulary. A long term goal can take years to accomplish. Many people don’t understand that their first attempt at attaining a goal should be one that is not too difficult. Also, you can have more than one short term goal operating which you are working toward at any given time. Each short term goal that you attain strengthens your beginning core belief system.

As I stated above, this is a complicated subject. I want to “Keep It Simple and Stupid”, ( better known as the KISS formula). But in order to really understand setting goals and incorporating them into your life as a reality so that your dreams come true, you must be aware of how it all starts in life. You may have started at your Mother’s knee and developed values that formed a healthy ego or began with no values or bad values that led to you waking up at twenty-seven years of age a loser with sick values — much like my own life. The result for me was that I had a sick ego which required a complete one hundred and eighty degree transformation in order to apply the Principles of Success in my own life.

In my next message I will talk about the history of creating values that lead to a healthy ego and a strong core belief system which will serve as a platform for stepping out into the world and becoming a successful person.

Sorry

Sorry, If there is anyone reading this blog yet, yesterday I said I would talk about goals today. I actually wrote a long first chapter on Goals. Unfortunately, my computer malfunctioned and I lost the whole chapter. I will start again tomorrow. By the way, if I miss a day, maybe traveling, I will continue the following day.