A new year always brings with it reflections about what one has achieved or not in the preceding year, along with a promise to do better this time around. Reflection and introspection are wonderful ways to help reset your priorities based on evolving professional and personal interests. However, if you undertake this exercise, do you analyze or rationalize your missed goals? I learned the difference recently. To ‘analyze’ means to look dispassionately into the causes of what did or did not happen; to ‘rationalize’ on the other hand, is to make excuses.
If you choose to reset your goals foodier this year, there are two things you need to keep in mind. The first is ‘focus’ and the second is ‘commitment’. Both can draw plenty of examples from the world of sports and business so this should help us along nicely.
Focus requires you to trim your list of intentions and interests down to a manageable few. You cannot dissipate your energy into too many pursuits as you will never have the time to do anything properly. Focus also means keeping your mind concentrated on the task. Take the example of a tennis player during a match: is she focused on the shot she has to play or the shopping she has to do? During the match, she tries as much as possible not to allow extraneous events to distract her. (Notice what happens when players are distracted or argue with the umpires!) Players get into a ‘zone’ in which all their energy and concentration combine to produce their best result.
And this is where commitment comes in. If you do not back your goals with commitment, then you are really only left with a wish-list . A professional athlete spends many hours honing his skills- from training to playing. Are we not professionals who should be sharpening our games? A critical contributor to our efforts is the company of good books and the encouragement of friends.
We usually do not have all the resources we need within ourselves and this is how we can make up for it: there are many motivational books and videos available, including biographies of individuals who have been successful in a variety of fields or who overcame gigantic obstacles. Friends can give us the right amount of reassurance to help us along. Your ‘resetting’ does do not have to take you on a completely different path. It just needs you to refocus your attention and revitalize yourself.
By Leon Menezes. The writer is a senior HR practitioner, professor-of-practice and an executive coach.