The Joy of Vision Integrity

As it turned out, Sharon was not setting goals for herself with vision integrity. She liked basketball and appreciated that she was skilled at the sport, but she didn’t “love” it. In fact, she says in retrospect, her parents wanted her to get that basketball scholarship more than she did. Sharon’s true interest and passion lay in becoming a musician, but she did not go after this personal vision, yielding instead to external pressure from her parents and teammates to continue playing basketball. If the motivation behind your selected goals is anything other than true passion and love, then the reward attached to their ultimate accomplishment will be irrelevant. Choose goals for which you have passion, and participate in activities that you enjoy. A good many athletes become strained over time from participating in a sport that always feels like work to play. I don’t mean to imply that sports should always be fun. Sometimes they take serious sacrifice and commitment.Nevertheless, if you have set goals congruent with who you want to be and how you want to live, it will be much easier for you to muster the self-discipline essential for working through the tough times, and you will be much more likely to achieve great things. If identifying your aims has you stumped, consider using a methodology for choosing goals that Tal BenShahar endorses. Dr. Ben-Shahar’s course on positive psychology has become one of Harvard’s most popular courses. In his book Happier, he outlines a process of selecting goals that produce happiness: First, make a list of all the activities that you know you are good at. Second, of all the activities you are good at, make note of those activities that you enjoy doing. Then go even further by selecting the activities from that list that you really like to do. Once you have that list, go one step further and note the activities that you really, really like to do. Those are the activities on which you should focus. Again, don’t confuse what others want with what you want. To verify that you have selected goals with vision integrity, it’s necessary create a vision for yourself of who you want to be and how you want to live. Identify the three most important priorities in your life and create a mental image of what your life will look like when you have those in place. Keeping that detailed picture in mind, ask yourself if the ultimate, product, and process goals for sport that you previously listed will in fact bring you closer to your vision. If they will, then it is likely that you’ll actually enjoy the hard work necessary for accomplishing those goals. The integrity part entails your taking the action needed to accomplish your personal vision. You will have to make the decision to commit to your process goals on a daily basis. If you have the vision and the integrity, you will experience a more encompassing sense of enjoyment while you work toward accomplishing your goals, and you will be much more likely to prevail in whatever you do.