Is Your Personal Goal Setting Plan Too Self-Centered for Your Own Good

Continually looking for brand new personal goal setting ideas, a recent Internet search for "personal development" resulted in 157,000,000 results. Really intriguing.Lots of individuals are publishing articles and templates to fill out with details about how to help us help ourselves. Or, possibly to "repair" ourselves.And in general, we are swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker. We believe we deserve better.We, as a overall group of people, are hunting for methods to get better. For what reason?

• Boost self-assurance
• Improve our relationships
• Look better
• Feel better
• Get a better job
• Produce more revenue
• You can fill in the blank for your own search.

But here's the dilemma. The further you (or I) focus upon yourself, the more you will see yourself as coming up short of the mark of flawlessness. It's a spiral. Personal goal setting, or personal development in general points to introspection. i.e., turning a focus on ourselves. This, in turn, points to a self-centered concentration.In a recent blog post, John Carlson observed the following:"Your ego is like a snarling little yap dog. Always pissed off, or looking for reasons to go into a hissy fit.I'm telling you, after years of seeing all sides of this: Your ego is not doing you any favors.Your ego...... is an idiot.And it's robbing you blind..."That's pretty graphic. But the part about "your ego... is an idiot" really struck home.OK, so this is more of a personal observation. But I can see other people with the same self-centered focus."How can I sell more... How can I influence so-and-so... How can I - I - I."It's time to take a different take on life. Revise your personal goal program and move your focal point so that it is no longer looking inward. Rather than being ego-centered, we need to begin the process of being "others-centered".This is not something I just concocted on my own. It occurred to me recently that Zig Ziglar said this time and time again, "If you will just help enough people get what they want, you will have everything you want."I bought that tape series over 30 years ago when I first tried to set up a personal goal setting plan. Listened to it hundreds of times. Just this week it finally made sense... duh! What an idiot I am. But, hey, it could have taken longer, I guess. Most recently (and the reason for the "lightbulb experience") I have been reading Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The whole book is about how obnoxious us self-centered folks are and why we keep missing the gold ring... whatever it is we are trying to obtain, especially sales.Go-Givers Sell More is a sequel to The Go-Giver. You should read them both because it will give you a new point of view on how to become more successful, not only with sales, but also with relationships and nearly anything else related to interacting with people.Personally, I feel like a massive weight has been lifted. The stress of performing so that I look good to others simply ain't there right now. It feels real good.We (I) need to rewrite our personal goal program with a new perspective.I am a huge fan of personal development and personal goal setting. I just have missed the mark.Hoping you don't do the same.www.goalsetting101.info