Have you ever decided to do something only to find later that it’s not working out?

If so, then it’s not necessarily your ultimate goal that’s the problem. It could just be that you need to stop how you’re doing it and try something else.

There are three things to remember about goals & achievement:

1. Defining what you want is not just a “nice to have”. It’s essential.
2. Your personal values help plan the route you take.
3. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Knowing what you want means you don’t get stuck with what you don’t want

Some people have asked me why I no longer have a facebook account.

In an earlier post I mentioned that I had outlined some personal and business social media objectives (or goals). Because I had done this to quite a level of detail, I was able to evaluate how the various social outlets I’m subscribed to were working in my favour.

Now’s a good time to point out the difference between goals and tactics. I had goals to achieve through using social media. But the way I go about it and the methods I use are tactics.

What I discovered with facebook is that it tries to be all things to everyone. For me, it’s doing so at the expense of  what I want. Facebook puts it’s emphasis on “opt-out” of it’s various social elements. I prefer giving others, and being given the choice myself to opt in.

Can you think of a time where you didn’t define what you wanted from a situation and ended up wasting weeks, months, even years caught up in something you later realised wasn’t suitable?

Your personal values tell you whether or not a route is right for you

My “friends” on facebook include actual family & friends, colleagues, online friends, networkers and business contacts. And as facebook tries to be all things to everyone, therein lies the problem.

• My family & friends don’t want my business news.
• I don’t want my colleagues, business contacts and random strangers to click and dig their way into profiles of my family.
• I don’t like networkers spamming my family & friends with “friend requests”.
• I don’t like being tagged in photos.
• Unlike twitter where short is sweet, the facebook version of snippety, bite-sized friendship leaves a hole.

Facebook offers customisable privacy levels but they’re limited in scope. And I’ve grown tired of spending my spare time customising facebook privacy every time they implement a change.

The nicest and most satisfying way to reach your goal is by travelling on a road that fits with your personal values and aspirations. Facebook brushes the wrong way against many of my personal values.

What could you change to make one of your goals more pleasant to reach?

There’s more than one way to skin a cat

Just because you started in a particular direction, doesn’t mean you have to follow it religiously. Remember the difference between goals and tactics?

If there’s no commitment, promise or obligation on a certain path, then you can meet your goal in a way that feels more in tune with yourself.

If you do have commitments, it’s a good idea to track and understand if there’s a deeper source of discomfort. It’s an important question because throwing off one commitment because you’re too tired means it will probably come up again in a different form.

A lot of people find themselves in a seemingly never-ending situation because they had entered it without knowing what they wanted from it. That’s why defining your goals is so important. For a long time, I hated the word “goal” – it was too corporate mumbo-jumbo for me. But you don’t have to call it a goal. It’s something that you want and you can call this anything that does it justice.

As soon as you define what it is that you want – either on your own or with a personal coach – you suddenly discover that you do have options.

A different way of doing things exists in almost every situation. Your natural flexibility and curiosity will help you find it.

This is a list of some of the most read articles on Paradox of Reality during 2009 (based on number of page views).

Whether you’re new to this blog or a long-time reader, thank you for your continued support and also for your emails and comments, both here and on twitter.

There are some improvements to this site coming your way throughout 2010 – stay tuned for them.

Later on, I’ll be officially asking for your suggestions on the things you’d like me to cover. However, if you have any suggestions now, you’re more than welcome to get in touch.

So, on to the list:

• When an NLP technique is not enough – A student’s imagination is often captured by the flamboyant techniques within NLP.  But because the strength of NLP comes through it’s principles and the thought processes it teaches, there is a need to consider the whole picture before applying a technique. Applying an NLP technique without understanding the cause can mean that the issue gets temporarily buried rather than fully resolved.

• Seven Ways Role Models Influence Your Success - Just as water moulds it way into rock, the people we encounter leave their mark on the bedrock of our world too. As you think of areas in your life that have been influenced or shaped by others, it can seem as if the enriching encounters happen more by luck and good fortune. When luck is an attitude, you control the influences entering your life.

• Setting Goals the NLP Way -  You can give your New Year Resolutions a helping hand with this thought process. This PECSAW model is a streamlined version of the Well-Formed Outcomes model of NLP and was taught to me where I studied NLP. It’s a set of guidelines that help goals become do-able.

• Four Reasons You Procrastinate – Where there are goals, there is procrastination! But when we address the stubborn forms of procrastination through what the blocks mean to us, we have the opportunity of not only achieving the task, but achieving it with enjoyment.

• Three Ways to Reduce Anger & Cultivate Forgiveness – When disturbances from people and situations around us affect our state of mind, they distort our perspective. Anger becomes a disturbance-triggered reaction and often, it becomes a way of making pain easier to bear.  One way to develop a stronger resistance to external disturbances is through cultivating an attitude of forgiveness.

• A “muscle test” For Your Subconscious Mind – It is said that our subconscious mind holds the memory of every single experience we have ever had. This exercise is designed to help and train you to get into “the zone” to access this information. A benefit is that it gives you the potential to understand your motives a lot better than you already do.

• The Double Edged Sword of Help – Two questions: 1) When does helping someone become self-serving or controlling? 2) When does asking for help become making someone else responsible for your happiness?

Finally, there’s ReetaLuthra.com is Live! If you haven’t visited this yet, it’s a new hub for my therapy and coaching practice, it focuses on matters concerning Stress and Your Health and has it’s own blog. It’ll be great to see you there.

That’s 2009 wrapped and onwards to a greater 2010.

Wishing you a 2010 full of 365 days of amazing opportunities and great health.

Happy New Year!