WHERE Is the Best Place to Start

When you have a goal or dream in mind, do you ask yourself where the best place to start is? The answer is in the question: Where you’re going.

You’ve seen floor plan maps in public places like large malls, stores, or office buildings that let you see where shops, offices, or sections are located. Here’s what’s interesting about this: you might think the first thing you do is find the You Are Here X then look up where you want to go. But the first thing you do is THINK about WHERE you want to go.

You may be one of many who approach goals or dreams by looking at where you are before you do anything. And, this may be an obstacle for you. Why? Because when you put your primary focus on where you are rather than on where you want to go, you open the floodgates for self-doubts and can come up with a number of reasons—or one big zinger—for why going after what you desire will be too difficult.

Before GPS, when you wanted to travel to a place you’d never been to, you didn’t look at a map of your city. Yet, that’s what we do when we focus on where we are instead of where we want to go. Once you know where you want to go, then you look at where you are and make a plan for how you’re going to get where you want to go. You even allow for pleasant surprises and detours along the way. You figure out the various aspects like money you may need or want to have on hand, how far your car can go before it needs fuel or what your comfort level is about filling up, stops to rest, and so on.

When you go for a goal or dream, you plan as much as you can, like for a road trip, and manage your way through what comes up that you didn’t include in your plan. Life always surprises us along the way. Sometimes the surprises bring even better opportunities and results than what you plan. Sometimes it’s an opportunity to find out how creative you can be.

You also want to watch not to pick up “hitchhikers” like fear that’s attached to the opinions of others. Carlos Castaneda said, "The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity."

Another “hitchhiker” may be discipline, or rather lack of, if you believe you don’t have enough self-discipline to do what it takes to go for a goal or dream. Therese Skelly wonderfully reframed what discipline is: integrity—meaning your personal integrity. So often, we believe integrity is all about how we engage others. That’s just one aspect. Do you act with the same integrity with you that you would with others?

One of my coaching clients had put off a goal for five years, a goal she genuinely wanted. She allowed a lot of negative self-talk to block her; and the longer she waited, the worse she felt. By the time we began to work together, her self-esteem was way down there. She’d spent five years looking at where she was rather than where she wanted to go and how to get there. We explored what discipline looked like for her, integrated it into her day, and voila! Her integrity, discipline, self-talk, ability to take action steps that led her to her desired outcomes fell into place in a very short span of time. Five years of misery ended in two months… sooner actually.

If you’re hesitating to go for a dream or goal, check your focal point. It’s like archery: when you want to hit the bull’s eye, you don’t focus on your feet.

What will it cost you to go for your goal or dream? What will it cost you if you don’t?

Practice makes progress.
© Joyce Shafer

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