Prajeet Budhale is a certified coach from the International Coaching Federation (ACC ICF) with twenty-two years’ experience in leadership, sales, sales management, customer service, operations, and consulting. He has a post-graduate certification from XLRI and a Masters in Psychology.
Prajeet has worked with over 150 national and international organisations and 40,000 professionals from more than 20 countries, using his consulting, coaching and training experience to help them enhance profits and productivity. Below you can read an excerpt from his book, INFIN-EIGHT. Courtesy: Fingerprint.
An excerpt from the book INFIN-EIGHT
If you set a goal and gave it your best and still did not achieve what you wish to achieve, it is okay. Just move forward. You can’t drive a car at two hundred miles per hour by shifting your focus completely from the road ahead and concentrating on the rear-view mirror. It is not important to carry the experiences forward; it is important to carry the lessons forward. Take the lesson from the instance and plan for your next goalpost. Focus your energy on doing things that enable your next goal rather than brooding about past unaccomplished ones.
Similarly, there is no use living a life resting on past laurels. What you did yesterday was good for yesterday, it has got you this far in life. But what you did yesterday cannot propel you forward. So, get ready to keep yesterday’s trophy in your accomplishment showcase and get back to the race track for the next marathon with the passion to win. Stop being complacent and wasting time describing your achievements to people. They don’t care and neither should you. At best, focus on describing the life lessons you learnt, see how you can use them, and how you can help people with them.
So, before we start working towards creating/sharpening your goals, take a deep breath and drop any mental baggage related to your past achievements. Your past has very little to do with the future you are about to create. When you are ready to give up your past, you are ready to look at the future with zeal and enthusiasm. The zeal and enthusiasm of achieving a goal are limited by the brakes of past baggage. If you want to speed ahead, take your foot off from the brake and be ready to accelerate in the direction of your goal.
In summary, if you achieved your goals and are proud of what you achieved, good for you. Now is the time to start afresh so that the confidence does not build into over-confidence or complacency. If you tried your best but did not achieve what you wished for, still good for you. Now is the time to start afresh so that your pessimism does not interfere with what is superlatively possible in your life. If you never worked towards achieving goals and were merrily whiling away time, again, good for you! Now is the time to give up the habit of being directionless and start focusing on the way ahead.
There is a Chinese proverb which reads “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years back. The second best time is now.” So, let the past be in the past and use the present to create a future that you believe you should own. Wake up every day and ask yourself this simple question. What is the purpose of my effort today? The day you don’t have a clear answer is the day which is telling you that you don’t have a goal towards which to channelise your energy.