Recently a very senior executive from a Pharmaceutical company came to see me (let us call him Mr. A). He was earning well, had a nice house, drove a nice car, ….to the world he looked successful. However he had 2 major problems – his son (age about 28) and daughter (aged 25) were quite aimless in life.

He felt his life goals were very clear and he had achieved them, but his children were not fired enough. He had no clue what to do.

On probing I realised that his dreams too were a derivative of his childhood. He explained to me that his father (the children’s grandfather) would take him to meet relatives and cousins. Some of them had cars (in the 1960s and 1970s that was news!) and he had seen his father struggle to buy a house at age 49. So for Mr. A buying a house and driving a good car had become a very important GOAL. However if you rubbed a little you realised that this was just about being there – these are difficult to be called goals. You really need to stretch to call living as achieving goals :).

  1. Hi Subra,
    very well said, but then what could be called goals?
    What were your goals when you were a child? Have you achieved yours?
    if you want to share with your fellow loyal readers..!!!
    cheers

  2. Jai

    What goals who has is a personal decision. Goals are not fixed – what you want as a 6 year old is a shiny bike. What you want as a 18 year old is also a shiny bike – but obviously the bikes are different.

    The ability to separate Goals from material acquisitions is very important if you are starting from a situation when you have all the creature comforts even as a kid. Then the goals could be to get wealthy. It could be to create 4-5 sources of income – a way of de-risking. Creating ‘wealth’ and having a wealthy mindset is a matter of attitude, not bank balance.

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