Goal Setting

Strategies for a Balanced Life

by  Dinae M. Eade

 

Caught up in the hectic daily activities of clinical practice and administration, health care practitioners can easily lose sight of long-term goals … easily forget what they set out to accomplish for themselves and for their loved ones. Yet proven strategies exist to help busy professionals achieve happy, healthy, productive, and well-balanced lives. To help you regain some perspective, an expert in life planning and personal productivity presents the following tips.

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in Familiar Studies of Men and Books1. Simple as that goal may sound, most people get so caught up in the day-to-day activities of living that they never come even close to realizing their full potential or their lifelong dreams.

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners, like other health care providers, are particularly vulnerable to this "activities-of-daily-living" trap. Starting with The Oath of Hippocrates ("With purity and holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art.... Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick....") and ending with the rigors of daily practice, health care demands personalities willing to place the needs of others ahead of self. Does this leave the practitioner with no time to pursue personal goals and dreams? Sometimes. But there are ways to assure personal growth and fulfillment, which ultimately improve a provider's ability to care for others.

GOAL PLANNING: WHY BOTHER?

Goal planning challenges the individual to give life a preplanned direction by employing specific exercises and strategies. Through goal planning, a person can take the shapeless life "direction" that most professionals have fermenting in the back of their minds - that fatalistic voice that says "work hard, do your best, and let whatever happens happen" - and learn to control many of the key events that ultimately give form to a person's life.

The first step in goal planning is to ascertain the control you do have over your life. Try this exercise: First, on a clean sheet of paper, list the past five years vertically along the left side (1994,1993,1992,1991, and 1990).. Next to each year, list the most important event that occurred in your life during that year. Now examine that list and estimate the percentage of control or influence that you had over those events.

After using this exercise with numerous groups, I've observed that most people exert a significant influence over at least 80% of the most notable developments in their lives. Too few, however, take the time to reflect on their influence, allowing themselves to drift into believing that external forces really chart the course. Seeing how much control you personally exert over your life helps you to realize that you really are in charge, and that you can chart a course to success.

How does someone actually plan for success in advance, rather than letting things happen and hoping for the best? Skeptics still balk; even though, in retrospect, they acknowledge some influence over events, they do not concede an ability to plan these events in advance. To some degree, their argument is true: Goal setting is not a crystal ball, nor does it carry with it any guarantees. But goal setting definitely improves your odds for a successful outcome.

Many companies use "Management By Objectives" (MBOs) to motivate their work staff to higher levels of achievement. This is a simple method of translating an organization's business objectives down to each individual's specific contribution. For instance, if the goal for your entire office is to see 500 patients each week, your individual objective might be to see 125 of those patients personally.

In one review of studies on MBOs2, 66 out of 68 studied (97%) attributed positive results to their use. In fact, in 28 studies using objective measurements, productivity was shown to increase by 44%. The studies also showed that when commitment on the part of the management is high, results are even better. When goals are personal and individual, rather than corporate or vague, they are more readily adopted.

TARGETING YOUR GOALS

To get the most out of each aspect of your life, start by creating a life plan from which to set specific goals. This way you'll know where you want to end up. Setting goals "programs" our minds: The goals we set direct our mental focus. Subconsciously, the mind works continuously to satisfy the expressed need.

Notice that, here again, I said "life plan," not "career plan." Goal setting has application far beyond one's career. In fact, those people who set only business-related goals decrease their odds of having a well-balanced, happy life: Those who direct their subconscious to solve only business problems risk creating lives that focus on careers and neglect all other areas.

MEASURE YOUR LIFEBALANCE

Use The Wheel of Life to measure your overall degree of life satisfaction and to identify areas that might benefit from goal-setting. On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is low and 10 is high), ask yourself how satisfied you are with your: financial situation and career; social and cultural situations; spirituality and ethics; family and home; mental and educational levels; and physical well-being and health. Consider your answers carefully, taking into account the following issues:

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