A goal is a dream that has an ending. This famous line had been quoted by Mr. Duke Ellington who was a well known Afro-American composer, group band leader and a pianist. His real name was Edward Kennedy Ellington who was born at Washington DC in USA in the year 1899. He died in 1974 at the age of 75. He won many awards during his life time for his outstanding work in music industry in America.
To achieve a goal, we may have to plan the whole activities in many steps and usually each step corresponds to the next step, till the final step, when we achieve our intended goal. So from conceptualization, to plan, to implement, and to monitor each of the steps in the process, to reach to a successful achievement; we have to invest our precious resources in terms of time, money and our own hard consistent efforts without the loss of our enthusiasm.
Therefore, from start to finish, a goal pursuer keeps striving to achieve his goal. During this crucial period, he always keeps reminding himself about his goal to stay focused. This way, the goal actually rests in his mind like a dream, and when he achieves it; his goal arrives truly to a happy ending. So, in my opinion, Mr. Duke Ellington must have definitely something similar to this thought in his mind when he said, "goal is a dream that has an ending." I believe goal is a strong desire to achieve something worthwhile that has essentially an element to make a difference in improving people's quality of life. It offers an immense satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment to goal achievers.
Every genuine goal has four basic attributes like; it fixes the purpose, it sets the direction, and it sticks to focus to achieve the same. But at the same time, it also poses challenges, involves risks, seeks sacrifices and calls for a real hard work from those who’ve determined to pursue it. Every goal has an ending, whether it ends with a successful achievement or with the failure without fulfilling it. But, unless a goal ends with a successful achievement, it remains a dream in the minds of those who're pursuing it. So one should always keep continue with the efforts towards his goal until he has achieved it.
Mr. Geoffrey F. Abert, who, although, gave us a very inspiring quote about the goal and said, "The most important thing about having goals is having one." But I feel this popular quote is missing a critical element which requires to be added with that missing element. So it should now be read like, “The most important thing about having goals is having one at a time". As people may have multiple goals at different stages of their lives. With this improvement, they could focus on one goal at a time, and then follow another, only after they’ve achieved their previous ones.
So those who had set their goals and achieved the same, not necessarily they had achieved these in their first attempts, instead they might have made multiple attempts and had faced with many failures before they actually achieved their goals to success.
We may aware about the famous Japanese proverb that "Fall seven times, stand up eight". This quote clearly encourages and tells us that we should not loose our hope so easily while making our efforts to achieve our goals. We should always keep motivation and enthusiasm level necessarily high because these elements are keys to success. A popular quote by Winston Churchill that "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm", and another one, in the same context, from Mr. Henry ford that "a setback is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently", suggest clearly to all of us that we should never give up our goals, instead we should keep on our attempts till these have achieved and concluded with an positive ending.
As Mr. Harrison Ford, rightly said, "The force is within you, force yourself". It gives us enough hints that we should use the true force which is lying within us, to achieve our desired goals. With regard to the setting of goals, Mr. Andrew Carnegie had said, "If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes."
If we wish to have our goal achieved with a successful ending in a reasonable time frame, then, Mr. Stephen A. Brennan, had quoted correctly in this context and said, "Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."
