Over the past month, we have been witnessing the Football World Cup. If you are not a football fan then please bear with me.

The Winner, Argentina, won an incredibly tightly fought contest in a penalty shoot out, having had 30 minutes of extra time, and 90 minutes of normal playing time. An incredible achievement. This hard contest between them and France was the pinnacle of the sporting event and crowned Messi as one of the great alltime footballers.

In our lives, we can have similar types of activities. Perhaps it is a long distance walk that you have always wanted to complete, a client that you wanted to work with or perhaps a personal best (PB) in a running activity. One thing that can help you to achieve this goal is to visualise the success. This visualisation exercise takes you to a place where you can ‘experience’ the emotions of success and act as a focus for your targeted outcomes.

So the question.

If I could offer to ‘give you’ this outcome with no effort from your part – would you take it?

For me, this conjures a lot of emotions as I juggle my personal values and goals.

What about you?

Would you take me up on it? No need to put the effort in – you just achieve what you wanted to achieve. Perhaps you answer this ‘it depends’. Perhaps there are some things that you would immediately opt for the easy option, whereas for others, perhaps not.

What is happening here is that you are juggling your Values and Goals. But was is the difference between goals and values?

Achieving your outcome could be your ultimate goal and you may or may not achieve it. What you enjoy is the process you go through in trying to hit that goal. It is about the chase of the sale, the hard work of training to hit that personal best or the adrenaline hit as you jump out of a plane for the first time. It is about your tenacity, your sticking power, your collaboration, your focus, your encouragement, you being you. These are your values.

Whilst Goals may or may not be achieved, values are about who you are that drives the now moment.

I am of a certain age where some of my friends around me are thinking about or being offered
packages to retire from their work. Perhaps this is a place that they have
been for sometime and can therefore consider this to be a real option.
The inevitable question is often asked – so what about you?
I can’t see this for myself and perhaps this says more than a difference between values and goals.
Perhaps my goal is to ‘serve’ what I am which encourages me to keep who I am. The Goals and Values are aligned.

If you are interested – I have compiled a short exercise on values and goals that you could use to challenge your thinking slightly.