Spoken English Video Lesson: Goals or Systems?

Do you have goals for the next year? I'm sure that you do,

but what if focusing on your goals was not the most important thing to

actually reach them? What if you focused on your systems instead?

In today's spoken English video lesson,

you'll learn about this popular business topic while you learn great new

business English expressions. Let's go. Hi,

I'm your business English coach Christina,

and welcome to Business English with Christina,

where you become better at English and better at business.

If you're interested in business, like doing business or running a business,

I'm sure that you have already thought about your goals a lot,

probably,

and you probably already know that goals are simply

what you want to achieve or what you want to do.

But systems are a little different.

Systems are how we get things done.

They are like the habits that we create so that

we can reach our goals. And this is actually a really good topic for

a spoken English video lesson because people in English speaking

communities are talking about it. I mean, James Clear,

who is one of my favorite altars, like I think I have his book,

like right over here. Um, very easy to find. One of my favorite authors,

um, actually said this about goals and systems.

You do not rise to the level of your goals.

You fall to the level of your systems. In fact,

if you head over to the blog post on this topic,

I've shared a lot more inspirational blog posts by James Clear,

so that you can read, uh, the original source material, let's say.

All right, so let's look at like concretely,

what is the difference between a system and a goal? Well,

let's say that your goal is to get a better

position or a better job in the next year. So your goal is a better

job.

So you set up or you create a system that's going to

help you accomplish that goal. You know,

maybe you decide to call or to

email three to four business contacts a week to ask

how they're doing to congratulate them on a new project. But, you know,

to reactivate your network,

let's say maybe you share an interesting article with them. This is,

you know, what we call warming up your network,

getting people to remember you and to think

kindly about you, to think about you in a good way, um,

so that if an opportunity comes, they think of you.

Another thing that you could do is maybe attend a,

like a networking event and have a system where you attend,

I don't know, two networking events every month.

So why is it more effective to create your systems than to only

focus on your goals? Well, I mean, first,

if you look at any successful person that you admire,

it's easy to see that they have goals, you know,

but goal setting is not as effective as it looks. I mean,

think about this. People who fail also set goals.

You can set as many goals as you like, but if you don't have a system,

you're not going to reach your goals. I mean,

how many times have you started the year by setting lots of really nice

goals,

but you didn't reach them because you didn't have the system in place

to get to the goal?

And there's another problem with focusing on goals or thinking only of the

goals, but not how you are actually going to achieve them. It's,

it's a short term strategy. I mean, imagine you decide, I don't know,

to lose, uh, two kilograms or two pounds, um,

by not eating for an entire weekend. I don't know if you lose two

kilograms by not eating for one weekend, but let,

let's imagine that's the situation. So yeah, you can probably do that.

But what happens if you use that strategy? Well,

you would temporarily reach your goal of losing two kilograms,

but you would probably gain the weight again on Monday when you eat all the

cake, um, because you reached your goal.

But you don't have that system or that long-term habit

in place to keep the goal, um,

achieved, let's say, to, to actually reach the goal,

but also to continue in the way that you want to continue.

I mean, for example, me, um, just to give you a personal example, uh,

one of my big goals,

I would say I set this goal back in spring of 2021,

was to be regular with LinkedIn,

like to post regularly to network with people, et cetera. And I wrote down like,

my goal is to do the, you know, I don't know, five posts a week, um,

and to contact 10 people per day or something like that. Um, great,

that was the goal, but I didn't have the system in place.

And so every week for several weeks,

I was not reaching my goal until I sat down, um,

with someone who helped me to find the system. So at Nasim,

if you're watching this video, thank you [inaudible]. Now it's in my calendar,

like physically in my calendar, um,

every day of the week,

my goal is to comment on three people's post,

to contact three people and to connect with them.

And on one day of, of the week,

my LinkedIn system is just to sit down and to plan my posts for

the following week to look for inspiration, et cetera.

And that's the system. And since I have that system in

place, I'm much more likely,

much more regular with reaching my goals. Now, do I reach the goal every week,

every day? No, no one is perfect,

but I'm definitely reaching it like 90% more than when

I didn't have that system and I only had the goal.

So going back to the problems with goals,

another problem with your goal is if you focus only on the

goal, it's a little like you're saying, oh, I'll be happy when,

like, I'll be happy when I get a new job.

I'll be happy when my business goes public.

I'll be happy when my level of English is the best in

the entire office. I don't know. But I mean, really,

do you want to put off being happy?

Do you want to delay your happiness and wait until you reach that big,

long-term goal? Or do you want to start

putting the systems in place to help you reach

that goal step by step little by little and get your happiness from

the progress that you're making towards that goal. Now,

if you're looking for a system to help you reach your goals for your business

English,

why not join me for a free live interactive workshop?

I hold them regularly once a month just for people in my community.

And if you want to get your invitation to those workshops,

sign up to my newsletter and the link is below this video.

And that would be a great first step in putting your system in place.

And my next workshop coming up on January 25th,

it's a very special workshop.

It's your chance to see what it's like inside our conversation club

with other motivated, um, fantastic, like really love,

like I love these people. Um, the, the,

the professionals in our Faster Fluency Conversation club, um,

so that you can connect with other people,

put your systems in place for practicing regularly,

and meet and exchange with professionals from all over the world,

different countries, different cultures, and have fun improving your English.

So go ahead and sign up to my newsletter so that you can get your

invitation for that special workshop. And of course, if you don't use it,

you lose it. And here's how you can use what you learned today.

Tell me what is one habit or one system that you would like

to put into place to help you reach a goal this year? And just.

Tell, tell me about it in the comments.

It's a great way to reflect on what you've learned in this lesson,

but also to practice your English.

And if you enjoyed this lesson, there are three ways that you can let me know.

First is give this lesson a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to my channel

so that I will continue making business English lessons for you.

Also,

you've got the blog post where you can go deeper into all of the lessons

in this video,

and then you can continue watching this next lesson about

understanding a real life video in English and learning

about habits and motivation. All right,

thank you so much for improving your English and your business with business

English with Christina, and I'll see you next time.