Thanks Vadim.

I did a bit of retrospection on previous attempts at goal setting last night, so I think I know some of what I need to tackle now with learning how to set goals properly.

The things that I think I need to work on most are:

- Learning how to set goals which I can actually achieve and work towards
- Not trying to do much at once
- Setting goals strongly enough that I will remember them throughout my whole day and keep coming back to them, even when I've got lost

I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone's input! Thanks very much in advance!

David

Hello guys,

Thank you for starting that, like David I have my weaknesses in planing. So far I am doing it according to the deffects I am becoming aware of. When I see something in me that has to be changed, I concentrate without planning on that, so far so good, but egos like laziness and glutony are panetrating me because of this disorder in planning. So it is like a hole through which a lot of work is leaking. I' am definatly missing this kind of discipline and am very glad to hear all the possible suggestions about how to realize smart goals.

Being the direct result of our discussion, I've found my biggest problem with the goals -I rarely commit to them fully and give them my maximum.

Planning ahead and setting goals is something my work is fundamentally lacking I think. Mostly my goals don't extend beyond the present day. I think it is good to have a goal in mind each day; such as being aware of and targeting a specific ego. However having larger long term goals would really give me more direction, purpose and something to really strive for I think. Something a bit closer than 50% of my egos gone :-)

Thank you very much for this thread. I will spend time dedicated to searching out what I really need to work towards over this week.

There are a couple of things that seem to help me. I've read some about goal-setting and there's a lot of research that shows that difficult (but attainable), specific goals are typically more motivating than goals that are vague and/or too easy or hard. This seems to be the case in my experience.

If the goal is too easy, it doesn't really motivate me and I don't make progress. If it is too difficult, events in life eventually provide excuses for me to not reach those goals.

Regarding being specific, this seems real important to me because it requires me to really think about what it is that I want to accomplish, which is motivating in itself. Also, if a goal is too vague, I don't really make much progress and it's hard for me to determine whether I have made progress.

It helps me to try to work towards goals each day. If I do a little at a time instead of trying to do a lot once in a while, I usually make more progress. This requires some time management.

It also helps me to reflect on how I have attained goals in other areas of my life. What was motivating me to attain those goals? What was required of me to attain those goals? How can I adapt those strategies to my spiritual work? etc...

For a long time I never had goals, I just drifted through life. It is kinda like I never had anything too important to look forward to.
Because of gnosis, I have alot of spiritual goals now. I think about approaching the idea of what goal needs to be reached using as much conciousness as possible helps eliminate all the things that get in the way like egos and the like.

I read the original forum feed. It was interesting but I hadn't anything to really add until now.

Retrospection upon failed attempts, and fully comprehending why they didn't work, helps me attack a goal from a better angle.

!

Thanks a lot for all your comments, Everyone!

Going further with the investigations how goals work for me, I've found that I oftenly don't reach my spiritual goals for the following reasons.

First of all, I have a tendency not to give for my spiritual goals more importance than I give for my other goals,
giving for mundane activities much more importance than they really deserve.

Secondly, oftenly there are things in my life which I treat like they are my goals, but they come not from me, but from my egos.
It can take strength and honesty to see it, admit it, and change it.

And finally, in many situations, I am just not serious enough about my spiritual goals. Occasionally, I set them up not really in order to reach them, but just to have a good goal, so I can have a certain direction to go and feel a bit more confident and comfortable. It becomes a feeling that I am moving in the right way, instead of moving in the right way.

Any other ideas, suggestions, insights on goals?

Regarding the non-spiritual activities getting in the way, it helps to just build spiritual goals around those. That way, you can keep up with all of your responsibilities while still making progress in the spiritual work. When I do this, I feel like I am getting the most out of life. Of course, there are some activities that probably should be sacraficed completely in lieu of ones that help one to attain higher goals.

I find those ones tricky too, where my egos push me in a direction by trying to think about things, and if I'm not careful that can override what I'm trying to achieve.

I find that happens frequently when I plan out my day if I plan too much for the time, and I end up rushing and being compulsive trying to get it done rather than using the plan to help me focus.

Gabrielle when you mentioned building goals around non spiritual activities, do you mean stuff like staying aware for a certain amount of time, or not giving in to certain egos you know will probably come up etc?

--

So trying to take into account everything people have said, this is what I've done to try and learn how to plan again. (A lot of this is brainstorming and I'm sorry if it's quite long, but I thought it might be of interest to see someone else's approach to things).

I wrote down a big list of all the things I wanted to achieve. There are long term things like getting off the wheel which I think just has to stay my long term goal for the time being. Then a slightly shorter one with getting onto the path to start off with. I tried to work out what I needed to achieve in order to do that, so I'm going to try and study things like anger and attachment and so on, and go through the egos that might be stopping me getting on the path.

Beneath that I have other smaller goals I want to achieve for the astral like learning how to prolong my time there, or being able to investigate or do more than one thing per experience. I also have to start getting there more often, so I need to work out what I have to do for that.

I've also tried to see what's holding me back, so I have goals I want to achieve for self knowledge and the work generally which I've written down. I also wrote down a list of my biggest problem egos.

In the past I've done this but I've tried to achieve lots of things on my list at once, and then got disheartened when I wasn't able too. Also I found with lots of different goals or things to achieve at once I just ended up forgetting.

So for now I'm just trying to work towards 1 astral goal, 1 self knowledge goal, and work on 1 ego per day. So for today that's been starting to get into the habit of reality checking again, using talking (me or others talking or my egos talking inside my head) to remember, and trying to balance my centres. Also working on an ego I saw in my dreams last night. So far my self knowledge goal hasn't been great, because I'm forgetting to use it. How do you guys set really strong goals you remember to work towards all through the day?

I want to keep my goals simple and balanced without giving myself too many things to work towards which I won't achieve. I also want to be flexible too. For instance, do I work on a particular ego which has come up over awhile which I plan, or do I work on the worst one from the day before, or something strong that has come up in my dreams from day to day?

I'm trying to watch out for resistance to what I'm trying to achieve or goal setting generally (and there's a bit there), and I want to be reliable. By that I mean I want to consistently work towards something rather than jumping backwards and forwards or having bad days where I don't set a focus properly at all. I also want to make sure that once I've achieved something I don't let it slip back in (if it's a bad thing) or get lazy (if it's something I should keep up).

In the morning I'm trying to plan and start my day well and spend some time asking my divine parents for help and doing the asanas to help me focus on my goal for that day.

I need to learn how to feel my way in the work more than thinking it, because I've spent too much time thinking in the past. So I'm going to try and retrospect each night with my days goals in mind, and see how I went and try not to analyse with my mind. If I'm not meeting my goals I want to work out if it's a problem with the goals, or my efforts to meet them, or something taking me away etc.

I'm still not quite sure how to break my smaller goals down into bits that I can achieve and see progress against outside of the retrospections I just mentioned.

And I wonder if I have ideas of what I need to do to plan which are holding me back. I seem to complicate things very easily, and I wonder if I'm still being too intellectual.

In the Self Knowledge course Belzebuub says that our main goal should be to be aware in whatever task we're doing, and that it's vital to learn to use the events of life to learn.

So that should probably be my first and foremost goal.

What do you guys think about that? Any comments are appreciated, if you think I'm doing things the right way or going about things the wrong way, they'll all help!

I also noticed some egos which were giving me a confused kind of feeling about planning generally. I'm not sure if it's a form of laziness, or just my egos putting up resistance but it was making me procrastinate.

Thanks for this thread everyone! :) Sorry about the long post.

David

Thank you Gabrielle,
I agree with what you've said. It makes a lot of sense.

David, thanks!

Me too, I like to brainstorm and to write down all what I can remember, because after it's much easier to sort my ideas out, placed together on one sheet of paper.

For myself, I've decided that from now on, I will have only one spiritual goal daily, just one very clear goal, and things which I have to do in my mundane life, will be just "things in the list" to do them well and fast, while following that one spiritual goal.
So, for example, if my goal will be to be conscious for all the day, I'll try to be aware while talking with people, washing dishes and concentrate on driving, concentrate during my concentration practices. etc.
Or, an example can be: to be aware for all the day and to focus on ego of anger, which manifested a lot yesterday and was seen in my dreams today.

Then, I guess, it's just a question of doing that one concrete, precise, needed goal. I think that strength of setting up a goal depends primarily on the personal will-power at that exact moment of making a decision.
In my view, it's the best to do it after the remembering dreams, thus focusing to follow right away the Divine messages.

Hopefully, working on one spiritual goal will activate more consciousness and consciousness in its turn, will put more light on my planning for the day and highlight the priorities, incompatability of something from my plan with the actual reality, and help me to see and to act upon any immediate "windows of opportunity", etc.

About the medium term goals, perhaps, writing things down, using intuition with common sense, can be very helpful to find the real goal, possible to acheive within the medium term (one week?)
Maybe, for each week: 1 Self-Discovery goal and 1 Astral goal and yes, choose 1 specific ego, too?
But not more?

About the long term goals, I think that they are needed too, however I doubt if I can realistically plan the way to them on my level, and there is already a map given by Masters, so maybe for me now those goals can be my "dreams", "visions", inspiring me to move forward.

Perhaps, we can meditate on our long term goals in order to understand better how to make them true by working seriously in the present.

Yes, I know what you mean about thinking too much.
My problem too.
Perhaps, yes, it is a matter of reeducating ourselves and learning how to rely on consciousness, intuition, dreams, etc., and plus use common sense, learn again when and how to use the mind.

I hope that all what we are doing, will help us to learn how to trust more our consciousness, particle of light in us. As I understand it, trusting consciousness is the result of overall spiritual development, trying to apply consciousness in all the spheres of life, as often as it is possible, doing well, but trying to do it better.

"The future belongs to those who beleives in the beauty of their dreams"
Eleanor Roosevelt

I am sorry for long post too,

Best regards for all,

Vadim