The 3 most important questions

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Many people are currently writing or sharing their new year’s goals or resolutions or expressing their views on them.?

Are you familiar with?Bob Protoctor's (Bob Proctor Event) view that goals are not for getting, goals are for growing? I share this view.? That is why I will always encourage forward-thinking professionals, especially in HR, to work on their own goals.?

Recalibrate

New year is a great time to stop, re-think and recalibrate. What should we recalibrate? The direction we are heading in and growing into. Growth for the sake of it does not bring as much motivation and joy as that which supports us in progressing in desired direction toward our dream or ambitions - whether professional or personal.?

If you want to be a “superb” HR professional, you need to know what “superb” means in your world. If you want to be an excellent parent or partner, you need to know what qualities this entails and what will be proof of excellence.?

Means goals vs End goals

Vishen Lakhiani , the founder of the Mindvalley , development platform, which is one of top sources of my personal development, takes it even further and very often shares that we are not very good at setting the right goals. We tend to mix means goals with end goals, which makes us stuck in the activities we eventually abandon, as we forget or lose sight of their sense.?

For example, the goal. “become a certified coach” is a means goal. What is it leading to? It may be a great means to better help people around, or to be more effective HR Business Partner while working with the managers, or to get promoted by growing your competence level; When we set up the goal as “getting the certification” we may forget, that this is only the means to the ultimate goal, the experience we want to have.?

If you set your goal on the “means” only, you are also less flexible because you feel like you “must” accomplish this goal (especially if you are an achievement or task-driven person).?

But to set the “end goal” instead - i.e. want to raise my competency level to get promoted - will make you consider different options and different perspectives and you may choose to develop your competencies even further, to maximize the likelihood of achieving the end goal. And such a perspective gives more of the joy of achievement.?

Three Most? Important Questions

One of the great exercises to support you in setting up your “end” goals is “3MIQs” proposed by Vishen, meaning “Three Most? Important Questions”. I have been using it for four years now and at the beginning of every new year, I find it a very inspiring and refreshing way of re-thinking and re-calibrating my life goals. There are three areas that are most impactful in achieving a fulfilled and happy life: experiences, growth and contribution. So the best end goals are set in those three areas.?

1. Experience – the things we want to experience, feel, try, go through?
2. Growth – the things we need to learn, unlearn, re-learn to be able to experience the above
3. Contribution – the impact, the contribution I can make to a better world when I achieve my goals and growth.?

Every year, in my 3MIQ list, some of the experience goals have already been accomplished, some are no longer valid, and some are new on the list. They are changing as I am changing and growing. But I love this feeling of coming back to them. This is my personal “lighthouse” for my fulfilled life.?

Have you ever thought about setting your goals around experience and growth and contribution connected with it? What do you think about such an approach?? I’d love to hear from you.?

If you want to learn more about the exercise, you can find the short video about it here: https://youtu.be/f8eU5Pc-y0g?si=WXCDRu1owlfym1Ru