eVIEWS STUDENT VERSION An interview with Warwick Merry. Warwick is a professional speaker/presenter, and talks about setting and achieving goals. He can be contacted at www.merrymentality.com.au GLOSSARY to bumble through to live without direction or goals to dawn on to realise to trigger something to suddenly realise “Alice in Wonderland” famous book by Lewis Carrol obese extremely fat to be concerned to be worried to refrain from something to avoid doing something kilo short for kilogram close-minded not open to outside influence or distraction to float to wander without any fixed destination income earnings, money testimonial a statement expressing the qualities of a person or a service conference meeting involving discussions and lectures on a particular topic S.M.A.R.T. acronym (explained in the comprehension answer section) leave form formal request by employee for holidays to get in the road to obstruct to stand up for something to defend loose not well defined to get fit to get into good physical form to encourage to support, to animate to acknowledge something to recognise the accomplishment to raise the bar to set a higher goal to struggle towards to proceed with great difficulty towards self esteem opinion of oneself chunks pieces or steps achievable possible to reach subconscious mental activity just below conscious level to face issues to confront problems to count to be serious COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS 1. What was Warwick doing when he became involved in goal-setting? a) reading “Alice in Wonderland”. b) working with cats. c) trying to work out the meaning of life. d) losing weight. 1. What are the 3 types of goals he mentions? 2. He uses his own example of losing weight. How does he illustrate each of the 3 types of goals mentioned? 3. “There are some negative things when it comes to goal-setting... You can be _______ to other things that happen; there may be some _______ that happen in your life and you don’t _______ to that because you’re so ________ on your goal.” 4. Other people don’t like goals because they find it _______ . Warwick likes goals because he was just _______ without them. 5. What are his 3 current goals? 6. Goals need to be SMART. What does SMART stand for? 7. What’s the difference between a goal and a dream? 8. “In my experience, people don’t _____ _____ for their goals. They don’t _____ for them.” 9. How often does Warwick think “we should re-visit our goals”? 10.What does Warwick think we should do once we achieve our goal? 11.Why? 12.What can be the problem of continually setting higher goals? 14. How can telling friends help in achieving goals? (2 reasons). COMPREHENSION ANSWERS 1. Reading “Alice in Wonderland”. 2. They are dream goals, performance goals and daily goals. 3. His dream goal was to lose 20 kilos, his performance goal may have been to exercise at certain times of the day and limiting his diet to 3 meals a day/no chocolate bars/etc. and his daily goal was actually to do the exercises and stick to the diet. 4. “There are some negative things when it comes to goal-setting... You can be close-minded to other things that happen; there may be some changes that happens in life and you don’t fluctuate to that because you’re so focused on your goal.” 5. Other people don’t like goals because they find it restrictive. Warwick likes goals because he was just floating without them. 6. His 3 current goals are to have a certain level of business income, to get to the next level of accreditation with the National Speaker’s Association, and to publish a book. 7. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. 8. A goal is a dream with a thought out plan for actually achieving it. 9. “In my experience, people don’t stand up for their goals. They don’t fight for them.” 10.We should re-visit our goals every week. 11.Once we achieve our goal we should celebrate our success by acknowledging it. 12.If we reward ourself for reaching a goal, we will have more energy to reach the following goal. 13.The problem of continually setting higher goals is that we might set the level too high, not reach it, and lose our self-esteem. 14.Telling friends can help achieving goals because then you can ask them for their support, and also the goal is no longer our secret, and becomes more important. TRANSCRIPTION eViews Tell me about your work in goal-setting? Warwick OK. I was bumbling through life, not really achieving what I wanted to achieve or knowing what I wanted to achieve. And then finally it sort of dawned on me after I’d heard from nearly everybody else, that if I had set goals, if I set goals for myself that I would be more focused on achieving things. One of the key things that I read that really triggered this for me was a book called “Alice in Wonderland”. And the section that I refer to is when Alice is lost in the forest and she stumbles across the Cheshire Cat. And she says to the Cheshire Cat, “I’m lost. Which way should I go?” And the Cheshire Cat says “Where do you want to go?” And Alice says “Well, it doesn’t really matter, as long as I get somewhere.” And the Cheshire Cat says, “Well it doesn’t matter which way you go!” That’s what I found, for me, I wasn’t really going anywhere, and then finally I decided that I needed to do something, and the big thing for me was, I was obese. And I was very concerned that I was going to be a 30 year old heart attack victim. So what I did was... got a group of friends around me, told them that I was concerned about it, and that I wanted to lose weight and increase my health. And when it came to goal setting, I’m really focused... There’s three types of goals. There’s the dream goal, the performance goal and the daily goal. Now by that, when your dream goal is... For me, for example. I want to lose twenty kilos, so I’ll wake up and think, “yeah gonna lose twenty kilos”. The performance goal is, OK, what do I have to do to lose twenty kilos. And that might be, I’ve got to exercise certain times in the day or do a half hour walking every day, or maybe it’s going to be I’m only going to eat three meals a day and no chocolate bars or whatever. And then there’s the daily goal which is actually doing that, and actually refraining from eating poor foods, etc. Now goal setting... There are some negative things when it comes to goal setting; if you set yourself a goal and you’re so focused on it that you can be close-minded to other things that happen. There may be some changes that happen in your life and you don’t fluctuate to that because you’re so focused on the goal... Many sporting people get very focused on goals, and if they focus on a certain time for an event, thinking that that time will win, if there is another time that’s faster... They’re focused on their time. And so that’s usually what happens cause they’re... The mind is so powerful that they meet the goal that they’re focused on. And other people don’t like goals because they find it restrictive, whatever... but I... I’m a very big one for goals because my personal experience is that I was just floating without them. So what I did and what I currently do is at any point in time have three major goals, that I’m aiming for. At the moment I have three major goals and they are: to have a certain income level with my business, to have a certain level of accreditation with in the National Speaker’s Association of Australia. I currently have the third highest level and I want to have the second highest level. And the final one is for me to have a published book. Now they’re the three goals that I have, and what I do is I think about those, basically, every day. I have an affirmation that I go through and think about those goals. Now they’re effectively as I said, my dream goals. There’s other levels of the goals and what I have to do to that, so for, for example, for my accreditation, whenever I do a presentation or do any work, I make sure I get a testimonial, a written letter saying how wonderful they thought I was, because that’s part of what I need to do to get that next level of accreditation. Also I need to go to a national conference, I need to do a few other things. So I’m working on those and I put those in my diary and I have time plans for them. The other things about goals is... frequently we hear people say that they need to be SMART which is an acronym for; they need to be specific, they need to be measurable, they need to be achievable, realistic, and timely. So if you have a goal, let’s say “Oh one day I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro”, and then five years later it’s like, “Oh yeah that’s right, I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro”, it’s not really a goal, that’s more a dream. By having it as a goal it’s when are you going to climb it by, what process are you going to put into place. So it’s all about, bringing all your energies to focus on achieving your goals. eV Why is it that most people do so badly at reaching goals? W A lot of it’s focus, they lose focus. Everybody’s life is busy. There is so much happening in everybody’s life that what happens is they might have a goal, and then something will get in the road of that. Maybe their goal might be they want to go on a holiday every year, and they put in their leave form with their boss, and their boss is like, “Oh now’s not a good time, we’ve got this such-and-such project on. Can you wait... a month?” And then next month it’s, “Can you wait a month?” And so different things get in their road, and people don’t’... in my experience, people don’t stand up for their goals. They don’t fight for them. They let other forces push them round a little bit. Also a lot of people don’t set goals. They think they do, but it’s either a dream, or it’s a very loose goal. So when it comes time to making a decision about an action they need to take in their life, the goal is so far back in their mind that they don’t act in its best interests. Also because, people will sit down and go, “Oh, here’s my goals”, and forget all about them. By revisiting them every week... is a good plan, they stay top of mind, they stay in your mind so you can make actions based on them. I mean, so many of us have had New Year’s resolutions where we say, “Right, this year I’m going to yufgyg!” Usually it’s lose weight or get fit or give up smoking or whatever. Come February, you’ve forgotten all about it, life goes on and it’s not as important any more to you. eV Once you reach a goal, what’s the next step? W One thing that I would strongly encourage is to celebrate success. Once you have made and reached that level, it is a real must to celebrate it. That way you are acknowledging it to yourself, you’re acknowledging this level of achievement. What I used to do is, once I’d hit a goal, I’d instantly raise the bar. Set a higher goal. And then struggle towards it, and ultimately... I would set the bar too high and I would not reach my goal, and then that would decrease my self esteem, decrease my self worth. I wasn’t achieving what I had set for myself so... a whole lot of negative things happened. I’ve turned it around now so when I set my goals I try and set them in nice little chunks that are achievable, follow that SMART formula we talked about before, and then once you do achieve them, celebrate it! Do something nice for yourself whether it’s like, buying yourself something or, having a massage or something that helps really acknowledge that you’ve made an achievement. What happens, as part of your subconscious, you enjoy that celebrating process, and so it gives you extra energy for you to reach the next goal because you know you’re going to celebrate at the end of it. Then after you’ve celebrated that, and really acknowledged that you’ve achieved it, turn around, look at it and, “OK, what’s the next level?” And it may be something completely different. eV I want to go back a couple of steps. You said when you finally decided that you wanted to get serious about losing weight, that you gathered some close friends together. How does that fit into the process? Why was that important? W It was important for me because I needed support. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. I was at a size where, if I could have done it on my own, I mean I’d done so many diets, I would’ve done it years ago. I realised that... there were going to be some tough times, and I’d need support from people to help me with issues I was facing. To when I felt like eating some food that I’d prefer not to, if I wanted a chocolate bar or something, if I could ring up a friend first and say, “I want to eat a chocolate bar. Tell me not to or just... whatever.” They could give me support, that I didn’t have at that time. Also it helps because I was able to share my problems with them, I could then also share my success with them and... I think also, with some of our goals, if we tell other people they’re no longer our secret. Frequently what I used to do was set a goal and say, “Right. I’m going to do “this””, but not tell anyone, so when I never did it, well it didn’t really count. So by telling other people, “I really want to do this and I seek your help”, they could keep you honest I suppose. end eViews