The first and most common use of strategic thinking in our personal lives, is in goal setting. This goes beyond day to day goals and encompasses our dreams for the future. The vast majority of people never see their dreams take shape in reality. They never accomplish most of their goals either. There can be many reasons for this. Much of the time it can be put down to a lack of proper planning.
People rarely plan well for the future. It is something that human beings just are not very good at. That is why strategic planning does not come naturally to most. But it can be learned.
Most people approach their dreams with little planning or foresight. You want this and this and this. You make whatever decision seems most likely to get you to whichever one you currently want most at the present time. Is it any wonder that this approach fails so often?
Strategic thinking presents an alternative that helps you reach your goals and make your dreams more likely to come true. Take a look back at the process for thinking strategically presented earlier in this series. It will help you come up with sound, logical ways of accomplishing your goals that are likely to succeed.
More than that, however, strategic thinking will force you to engage in some serious self-reflection about what your goals are and why you want them so badly. In the process, you might just discover that some of the goals you think you wanted, are not things that would make you happy after all.
Furthermore, it is not uncommon for people to hold goals that are outright contradictory. What do you do if you hold conflicting goals? It’s not possible to achieve them both. Most times, people do try to pursue both of them and end up reaching neither.
The process of strategic thinking forces you to think about obstacles and roadblocks that might appear in the way of your dreams. This reveals conflicting goals for you. You can then confront the conflict and deal with it by selecting the goal you want most, if you wish to move forward.
Strategic thinking will help you determine what your goals and dreams are and help you concoct a way to get them – which alone makes the skill worth learning. By developing strategic thinking skills, and taking a logical approach to goal setting, you can make your dreams come true. Start learning this skill today and see how it impacts your life.