Now we are ready to start

Interviewer: Tell me about your work in goal setting.

Mr. Merry: Ok. Getting what you want out of life doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen. As for me I was bumbling through life, not really knowing what I wanted to achieve, and then finally it sort of dawned on me. I realised that 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 too heavy.

So what I did was … I got a group of friends around me and told them that I wanted to lose weight. It was very important for me to let them know about it because if you tell other people about your goals, they’re no longer YOUR secret. Frequently what I used to do was set a goal and say, “Right. I’m going to do this, but I didn’t tell anyone about my solution, so when I never did it, it didn’t really matter because nobody knew about my goal”. So by telling other people, “I really want to do this” I was looking for some kind of guarantee that I won’t give in. It helped me to be as good as my word, I suppose.

There are three types of goals. There’s the dream goal, the performance goal and the daily goal. For me, for example, I want to lose twenty kilos, so I’ll wake up and think, “I’m going to lose twenty kilos”, it’s a dream goal.

The performance goal is, OK, what do I have to do to lose twenty kilos? And that might be, I’ve got to exercise every day or I’m only going to eat three meals a day and no chocolate bars or whatever. So, actually, I start planning things.

And then there’s the daily goal which is actually taking actions. Many of us have had New Year’s resolutions where we say, “Right, this year I’m going to lose weight or get fit or give up smoking or whatever”. We think about actions that should be taken, we talk them over with our friends, but February comes and we’ve forgotten all about it.

Also when it comes to goal setting, we frequently hear people say that goals need to be SMART that is they need to be specific and measurable. So if you have a goal, let’s say, “Oh, I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro”, and then five years later it’s like, “Oh, that’s right, I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro”, it’s not really a goal, that’s more of a dream. By having it as a goal it should be realistic and achievable.

Interviewer: Why is it that most people do so badly at reaching goals?

Mr. Merry: They lose focus. 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 way. Maybe their goal is to go on a holiday, 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 project on. Can you wait … a month?” And then next month it’s, “Can you wait another month?” And so different things get in the way, life goes on and they fail to remember what their goal was all about.

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 to making a decision about an action which they need to take in their life, the goal is so FAR BACK IN THEIR MIND, so indefinite and vague, that they don’t act in their best interests.

You have 15 seconds to complete the task. (Pause 15 seconds)

Now you will hear the text again. (Repeat)