When you have ‘tested the water’ and picked up one or two new skills such as bread-making and tenpin bowling, you may find that what you really want is a bit more of a challenge. Perhaps you feel ready to learn a skill that is more difficult, takes a great deal more time to master or requires a significant amount of expenditure or commitment from you. To ensure your greatest success and happiness in this new undertaking it is essential that you outline your idea so that you can see clearly and in detail your goals, the means of fulfilling them, possible pitfalls or setbacks on the way to attaining them and the commitments you will have to make in order to succeed in your ambition. Here are the features that should be included in such an outline
1. State clearly and categorically what you want to achieve
For instance, stating that you would like to learn to dance is not as clear as saying you would like to ‘learn to tap dance’ and that is not as categorical as saying you would to “learn to tap dance to certificate level’. Remember, you can always amend this statement later when you have learned exactly what is involved in achieving your ambition.
2. Discover Precisely What is involved in Achieving Your Goal
Do this by making some phone calls, writing a few letters or visting informed people,At the same time make inquiries to learn what you might achieve on either side of your goal. For instance, you know there is a certificate in Tap Dance, but you may discover that a further certificate will enable you to teach and that a series of grade badges are available if you don’t wish to become certified. Knowing that these options exist and learning precisely how much time and effort is needed for each of them will help you settle on the goal you really want to set for yourself. Here are some of the details you should learn:
1. Find out the dates and times of the classes or courses that will start you off on your challenge. You may have several opions here: a weekly class, ten eight-hour Saturdays or a two-week Summer school course may all provide you with the same amount of tuition. You must pick the option that best suits your schedule, lifestyle and personality.
2. Discover the financial and material requirements if you are to meet your goal. A pair of tap-shoes are an obvious necessity for your dance ambition, a set of books for your A level in Biology, a loom for your qualification as a master weaver. Now make certain that you will be able to meet these needs but be optimistic! Many people have set out to meet a challenge without knowing where their funds will come from but, somehow, things have worked out because of their sheer determination and perseverance.
3. List the stages of achievement – in terms of dates, breaks, qualification and reward – which culminate in your goal being reached. This is a very important part of your outline, one which may make all the difference between you achieving or not achieving your goal. For instance, the Keep Fit Association requires that their teachers first experience a certain number of hours as a pupil in a Keep Fit class, then attend a set number of teacher-training sessions, then gain an Adult Education qualification and then teach under supervision for a certain number of hours. At this point they gain their first certificate and there is a further certificate if they wish to strive for it! The beauty of outlining each of the steps involved in reaching your goal is that this allows you to achieve it with as little disruption to your life as possible. For example, you could gain your Keep Fit qualification in two years or four – depending on your other commitments – without losing your sense of achievement.
3. Allow yourself a trial period
During this time you can “throw in the towel’ and decide that, after all, you don’t really want to be the world’s first eighty-year-old astronaut or a National Trust Guide or a swimming instructor. If you are attending classes or in some other formalized situation, let the trial period coincide with term times or examination dates, for instance. That way you can continue to a ‘natural’ break before you terminate your studies. When you set this trial period you are creating a positive option for yourself. After all, you don’t want to feel bound to a goal or a subject that doesn’t really suit you. Many of us have ambitions that, once tried, are not all that we thought they would be. A trial period ensures that you like the subject and actually want to achieve your goal as much as you thought you did. If you find that you don’t want to continue, then break off your efforts without remorse and get straight on with setting goals for another skill you would like to acquire.
4. Set goals that are attainable
Earlier on, when you made a list of skills you would like to acquire, you found that some ofthem just weren’t going to happen. The example I gave was wanting to be an opera singer but not being able to hold a tune. Realistically, the two just don’t go together so I crossed opera singing off my skills list; but I still love opera and so I could translate my desire to sing and form an opera appreciation club instead. Opera doesn’t have to drop out of my life altogether. My point is that when you are realistic about your skills you minimize the feeling of failure that so often accompanies unattained skills. When you set realistic goals it is easier to attain them, and having done it once, easier to do it again.
5. Allow for setbacks
There are always one or two, and you should bear this in mind when you outline your plan for achieving new skills. They can be as brief and minor as getting a flat tyre on the way to your class, or as prolonged and severe as illness in your family. You can’t actually anticipate these events but you can build flexibility into your plan. Do this by getting all of the date options for a class, by discovering that the same course is held in another city not far from you, and by relaxing your statement that you will achieve your goal ‘by the end of the year without fail’. Flexibility is important. Very little in life is black and white, either / or, so why should you be that way? Making allowances for the unforeseeable will prevent you from failing because of something that could, instead, have been just a setback.
6. Reward every goal that you fulfil
Goals are often met by first achieving a series of mini’ goals and each of these should be rewarded. If you think you want to become a Keep-fit teacher your first goal must be to attend a term of Keep-Fitclasses “as a student. When you have done that, you should reward yourself for your achievement. At the same time, set your next goal! When you have completed the required number of hours in teacher-training, reward you have achieved yet another goal. Reward yourşelf again when you have completed your Adult Education Qualification and again when you have taught your own class under supervision. When you receive your certificate and are a fully fledged Keep-Fit teacher, reward yourself for reaching four mini-goals and for finally acquiring the skill you set out to achieve in the first place.
In your plan of things decide how you wish to reward each of the achievements you make on the way to acquiring your new skill. Actually write something special down now, so that you can look forward to the reward as part of your pleasure in acquiring a skill.
Then, after all that you have done, and in the words of that old prayer, Desiderata, ‘enjoy your achievements as well as your plans’. I take that to mean, be proud of your achievements and your skills, use them as much as possible and allow them to stimulate your appetite for life so that you continue to Seek new skills, new challenges, new opportunities for your personal qualities to emerge.
