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objectives of life

objectives

The seminar effect

  The effect of the mutual activation of tuning bowls and the overlapping of similar-coloured spheres in a group of people as mentioned above can easily be observed in seminars: Many companies and organizations allow their staff – and in particular management staff – to participate in further training courses. It is always amazing that in such seminars moral and ethical aspects are also tackled with great vigour and plans for solving such aspects are drawn up. People resolve to do many things, but later in their daily life back at the workplace, they actually do not translate any of this or at least extremely little of it into action. External forces are very often cited with great regret as reasons for this, which had the effect that the discussed themes could not be implemented by the person concerned. This person naturally hopes that all the other participants in the seminar will not find themselves stuck with such unpleasant constraints.

The priorities of objectives

  If we assume that we wish to pursue several incompatible objectives, how do we decide in a given situation which of the objectives should guide us? We have already discussed the interaction between objectives and abilities earlier. Thereby we saw that abilities which already existed can influence the choice of guideline when making a decision.

As we will soon see, we often also make the choice of which objective we will use as a guideline in making a decision in interaction with our surroundings. Other people, insti­tutions, animals, plants, nature etc. can all have an influence on the selection of our goal in making a decision.

Abilities and objectives influence one another

 

Right at the start of this chapter we established that abilities and objectives clearly mutually influence each other. If expressed according to our two models, we considered the relationship between the light sphere, which represents our abilities and the tuning bowl, which represents the corresponding objective. Apparently the tuning bowl and the light sphere cannot be considered independently of one another. There is mutual influence between them1.

The model of the tuning bowls

  Have you already had the experience where you find someone very likeable without knowing anything about them and without even having spoken to them? As you get to know this person later you often find that you have many things in common. In particular you will normally find that he has similar objectives in his life. Or, since we often prefer to speak about experiences, you have both had similar experiences in your lives. Pure chance – or perhaps more likely not? Similar life experiences mainly point – according to everything we have previously discussed – to the fact that we are working on similar development steps. Since we do not develop by ourselves this finally however indicates similar objectives for our lives.

Our own objectives are difficult to hide since in fact we constantly «radiate» our objectives all the time. In reverse we frequently feel the objectives of other people without even knowing anything about that person and without having spoken to them.

The interaction between objectives and abilities

  In our day-to-day lives we find that someone who is already good at playing football in most cases also likes to play football very much and would like to constantly improve his football skills. If a good programmer has the choice between jointly working on a forward-looking software project and working in a vegetable shop the chances are usually significantly greater that the programmer will stay true to his line of business and would like to develop further within it. The same is true for practically all abilities: If we can already do something well the motivation is greater to use this ability and to improve it.

It is therefore worthwhile investigating the relationship between our abilities and the corresponding objective. We have already established earlier that we don’t develop our abilities without reason, but rather we develop them specifically to be able to achieve a certain goal. From the above examples it is however clear that a stimulation also occurs in the reverse direction: Already-existing abilities lead us to continue to pursue the corresponding goal – and under certain circumstances even more strongly than before. We will therefore now introduce a model to demonstrate our objectives:

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Decisions

  Our lives consist of an abundance of decisions: The first thing we do is to choose our goals. As we discussed in the section on objectives in doing this we can also decide to take over the objectives of other people or help other people to achieve their own objectives. If we pursue several incompatible objectives they compete with each other when every decision is made. We therefore choose one of these incompatible objectives as a guideline for our decision. This means that we select an objective and then make the decision on the basis of this objective. When the next decision is made it is naturally possible to use another objective as the guideline. In any case it is always our own decision as to which objectives we strive towards.

 

Tasks

  In the previous chapter we saw that tasks do not simply appear of their own accord. They are not «simply there», but result from a certain objective in the personal or professional area. The tasks can therefore also be just as diverse as the goals. The nature of the tasks correspond with a concrete plan, showing how a goal or partial goal should be reached.

There are usually different options for how to achieve a given goal. In selecting our tasks we plan our personal route to the goal for which we are striving. It will however certainly not be the only possible way of reaching this goal but it will simply be the best way in our own eyes. The criteria we use to select this best route are naturally very individual.

Pursuing your own objectives

  Our goals lead us to the situation where we do certain things in our life and leave other things aside. We can therefore influence other people in a simple way, if we influence their objective or at least the choice of their partial goals. Our deep longing for peace, happiness, calmness and harmony – as described in the highest needs of all beings – is also at the same time our weakness.

In the advertising field this longing, which is deeply embedded in every one of us, is exploited in more and more refined ways: By linking a service or product with a blissfully happy person or a harmonious situation, it is suggested to the viewer that thanks to the use of this product you will become successful, beautiful, desirable, rich or whatever – and this will (also) make you happy. We have already dealt with this briefly in the section on the needs of humankind.

Objectives as an aid to success

  In setting our objectives we instruct our subconscious to help us in realizing our goals. As an example of this we discussed the glasses model in the previous section. The subconscious creates the preconditions so that we can more efficiently achieve the desired goal. In the above example of the daughter we saw that this would also provide for example a good motivation for learning at school. She had considered the learning materials through a pair of glasses which had made them appear interesting.

In top sports events so-called mental training has been used for many years to achieve tremendous levels of performance. In essence this is virtually the same as what we are discussing here: The subconscious helps to focus our strengths and abilities on a concrete objective. Our performance with respect to the goal we are striving for can thereby be tremendously increased.