Winning the battle and losing the war
Sarfaraz K Niazi, Ph.D.
Irony, irony, irony. That’s what this world is actually made up of. Our first day of life begins with a purpose—to live; yet the war that we fight is for death and not life. In the end, everyone loses—we all die. However, until such time that we lose the war we keep fighting battles—some big and some very small. And we get so grossly involved in our battles that we forget the entire scope of the war. We win some battles, lose some and feel accomplished. However, the broader vision tells us otherwise. We ought to concentrate more on the war and less on the battles. Extending this doomsday prophecy to a step lower, to our daily routines of careers, education, family, community and politics, we find ourselves in the same predicament. We fight like hell to educate ourselves, we fight like hell to succeed in our jobs, we fight like hell to grab a spouse, we fight like hell to build a home and family, we fight like hell to raise our children right, we fight like hell to keep us healthy but in the end we only get to say, "what the hell are we fighting for?" The problem is not that we fight, the problem is that we fight often at the wrong time, at a wrong place and in most instances for wrong causes. To be realistic, let us break the biggest of all wars—the war of life, into components. Let us say the war is to have a happy life—now that is worth a war. How we achieve it, through many battles, is what we oughta’ plan.
In preparing for the many inevitable battles, we need to look at what is the goal (which is equivalent to war) and how we reach there (which is equivalent to objectives). To be happy, is a goal; how to become happy is our objective. Unfortunately, the measure of happiness is not absolute. So, it is possible that people may choose different course to reach the same goal. The cliché oriented discussion of money and happiness need not be repeated here. However, what does need reconciling here is the zeal to succeed in achieving the goals. Here are ten things you can do to make sure you do not lose sight of the goals while you pursue objectives, any objective for any goal:
Now, I want to hear from someone who did all of these things and did not achieve his objective. It is simply guaranteed.