The New Dynamics of Goal Setting : Flextactics for a Fast-Changing World

Chaos: Friend or Foe?

Perhaps it's inherent in human nature to seek the security of living and workingin a known environment, but in order to achieve success today you simply can'tremain in your carefully constructed comfort zone. Instead, you must learn tobecome comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. It's what I callchanging your personal paradigm, and it may be the most challengingaspect of reaching your life goals.

Derived from the Greek word paradeigma, meaning model, a paradigm is away of understanding the world. It's a pattern or set of guidelines thatinfluences the way you look at your life.

Today we are facing an incredible paradigm shift in the way we approach ourmost important life goals. The great French anthropologist and philosopherClaude Lévi-Strauss once said that the difference between so-calledprimitive societies and modern society was like the difference between a clockand a railroad locomotive. The clock is designed to make the same cyclicalmotion again and again at exactly the same speed; the locomotive, however, isdesigned to get from one place to another?it's supposed to be fast, powerful,and able to haul tremendous loads. Yet even the most impressive railroad engineever built could not serve as a metaphor for the incredibly fast-paced andconstantly changing lifestyle many of us now experience. It seems as ifeverything?computers, financial transactions, telecommunications?is constantlygoing faster, and all of us are expected to keep pace.

That's why the concept of flexible goal setting that you'll learn in these pagesis so valuable. By putting it to work, you can successfully meet theever-increasing demands of your personal and professional life. You'll also beable to define and achieve objectives that are uniquely your own, whether thatmeans white-water rafting in Idaho, climbing a mountain in Africa, or justspending more time with your family. In short, the purpose of this book is toguide you toward new outlooks and new courses of action that will make successmore frequent and more enduring in every area of your life.

No matter what you set out to accomplish, one thing is certain: You're going tofind yourself thinking that the task would be so much easier if only there weremore time, or more money or if some obstacle wasn't always getting in the way.

Despite the fact that they're everywhere, obstacles somehow manage to seemtotally unnatural. As a result, people try to storm their obstacles as if theywere forts that need to be taken. It's better to step back and ask yourself: DidI cause this obstacle by my own actions or lack of them? Did someone else causethis obstacle? Is this obstacle one that grew out of the natural progression ofcircumstances? These questions may seem a bit academic when you're rushing tomeet a deadline or put together a presentation, but in fact they hold the secretto effectively setting and reaching your goals.

The ancient Greeks labeled the universe Cosmos, meaning order. Wheneversome obstacle appeared to upset the precise balance of nature, they believed itwas the work of Chaos, meaning the forces of confusion and disarray.What the Greeks didn't know is that chaos is actually a normal and naturalelement in the design of the universe and is therefore unavoidable in our dailylives as well.

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Excerpted from The New Dynamics of Goal Settingby Denis Waitley Copyright © 1996 by Denis Waitley. Excerpted by permission.
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