Goals vs. Systems

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“A goal is a specific objective that you either achiever or don’t. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of success in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you are waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.”

A technique is a goal, you expect to learn it sometime in the future. A methodology is something you do constantly and consistently regardless of the supposed techniques involved, that is a system.

Goals are a reach-it and be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. 

Systems have no deadlines, and at any given moment you can tell if it is taking you in the right direction. Techniques as a goal have one application so when it is done it is completed even if it is not appropriate for the situation and methodologies as a system have a variety of applications not hindered or obstructed by the given moment or situation with success highly likely while techniques as goals are narrow with no ability to deviate or create as situations change. 

Systems have no limitations and are flexible to fit any situation at any time under any circumstances. Goals are specific with specific limitations and are not flexible at all. If the goal succeeds it ends and if it does not succeed, it ends so you can create another goal to end a situation. Systems are generic in nature making them a creative way to achieve any need for any situation that arises, i.e., like, but not exact, systems achieve individual inflexible goals and systems readily accept new, changed and differing goals to continue indefinitely to get things done. 

A system works consistently again and again while a goal works once and is discarded. A system works not just consistently but successfully more often than it fails and failure is not from any failure of the system but of the person using the system. 

The biggest mistake any human makes is thinking goals are a system and then blames the so-called system when it is the goal that failed. We humans, often through social conditioning and conditions, create goals while ignoring the necessary systems needed to accomplish goals. The creation of goals dominates in karate and martial arts especially for self-fense, i.e., we have a goal to earn a black belt, we have a goal to learn self-defense techniques and we have a goal to win yet we don’t recognize that to achieve all these goals we need a system to get-r-done. Sensei, commercialized programs, therefore unconsciously perceive that the goals will fail so are driven to make the goals easier and easier to achieve so they maintain attendance and income. In self-defense they leave methods out because they are systems that are not readily testable and gradable for techniques and patterns that are and live, breath and teach knowing that chances of failure in a real life situation is rare reducing the failure rate even further. 

Systems require long, diligent, consistent and constant work with sweat and blood equity along with a modicum of experiences that build on and support the systems consistently even with occasional failures natural to any good system.

Any good system with multiple methodologies that provide for any situation regardless will succeed at much higher rates of consistency over time than any goal(s). Once a goal fails, it is done; if a system fails, it is luck and viable for the next situation because systems are not tied to any one goal, situation or time. 

System: a set of interacting or interdependent components that form a whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning. Easily adjusted to work indiscriminately for the situation in that moment. A set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem. ... An organized, purposeful structure that consists of interrelated and interdependent elements (components, entities, factors, members, parts etc.).

Gaol: the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result; the destination of a journey; a point marking the end of a race.

In martial arts and karate you use that system to achieve certain goals, i.e., a certain number and type of basics; kata and kumite, then those goals are set aside to use the results, set fundamentals, etc., to achieve the synthesis of a system unique to you as an individual that will be your system of fundamental principled based multiple methodologies that break out of the restrictions of goals to achieve anything possible in the chaos of conflict and violence where goals are more an obstacle rather than inspiration of creativity that makes a system viable, functional and generic. 

Systems are the way, the path that never ends and provides exits and off-ramps at every junction, every turn and every obstacle ergo why they call martial arts and karate efforts, “The Tao or The Way” Goals at the novice level give you the tools to create the system that gets you on the path and it is the resulting system that provides the “energy” to take you the distance. 

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“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)