Just three hours left of 2013. Keep an eye our for two further posts before midnight.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, this is another chance to see my recent Tweet poll about 2014 Goals.
Get in touch, if you want to start 2014 with my professional coaching support on your side. I look forward to learning about your goals.
Goal Setting (Photo credit: lululemon athletica)
If you were to picture yourself sitting in your rocking chair, in your twilight years, what would you imagine were the highlights of your life? Could they include your:
– Big detached house in the country?
– Fleet of fancy cars?
– CV chock full of high-flying jobs?
If so you might want to think again. Research conducted by Dr Gregory Bonn, a lecturer in psychology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia provides compelling evidence that ‘close and enduring relationships are considered central to life satisfaction’. According to the coverage in the Independent newspaper, material achievements are not too high on the list of Things That Make You Happy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/money-cant-buy-you-the-good-life-8508265.html
Interestingly the survey findings also indicate that ‘Having a worthwhile career was rated as more important to a good life than having a successful one’.
There is a segue from the Independent story to one on the BBC news website. It seems that the University of Chicago has researched the flip side of the ‘happy relationships equal happy life’ paradigm. Their findings suggest that loneliness can lead to physical as well as psychological harm.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21517864
If that is sound information then it is timely, especially for the so-called ‘leftover’ women in China. Their ambition and drive for early career success seems to have a downside. According to BBC coverage, if these women mis-time their career peak they risk being viewed as too old for marriage. The bad news is that over 25 may be ‘too old’!.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560
I wonder if these findings establish any useful goal setting principles? One’s purpose in life fuels goal setting, so perhaps it is important that some goals relate strongly to building and maintaining healthy relationships. These might take precedence over goals involving gathering material possessions.
That makes sense. When goal setting we think about what we want to Be, then to Do and last of all, to Have.
Maybe the attachments to the key people in one’s life are more powerful and lasting than the links to physical possessions.
English: An artist’s depiction of the rat race in reference to the work and life balance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race Made with following images: http://www.openclipart.org/detail/75385 http://www.openclipart.org/detail/74137 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve received some useful performance coaching recently, to help me successfully suggest how the future contributions of a voluntary project group I belong to could be improved, improving my work-life balance.
It was good quality coaching, following the GROW – Goal, Reality, Options, and Will – formula championed by Sir John Whitmore amongst others. It left me holding a clear set of actions for two, cards-on-the-table, meetings about the project. I was going to influence greater participation from group at the first, grass roots meeting. I was then going to suggest changes to the project vision in the second high-level event.
Of course reality doesn’t work like that. In the first meeting no one wanted to participate more than they were already doing. In the second meeting the request for help with the vision went up the line, and came firmly back down again. The issue with the vision thing was ours to address, not anyone else’s.
Which goes to show that, where you can coach with improvements in your own performance in mind, you cannot expect your actions to produce specific outcomes in others. After all, others haven’t been coached to ‘participate more’ or to ‘change their vision’.
All this possibly means my next coaching goal may have to be: ‘to successfully document my contribution to the outcomes of this project, so I can use my skills in another context this year’.
(More information about Sir John Whitmore is available on this website http://www.performanceconsultants.com/ )
Experience Your Life 