In Part 1 of goal setting, I told you that when you set a goal and go after it with a willingness to fail, you gain enormous wisdom, experience, understanding and self-knowledge. It’s true! Let’s continue.
Choose a Goal
Pick one of the goals that you’ve got on your list of 25 that we made (see part one of Setting and Achieving Your Goals) Simply choose one goal that you would love to put your heart and soul into, even if you are worried that you will completely fail. I know that this is super counterintuitive. So much of your brain is going to be confused about this – choosing a goal that you know you might fail at?!? I want you to notice the tendency to be confused, but still stay with me!
I’d love for you to have a business goal and a personal goal. Or sometimes I call it a “pleasure goal.” It’s like having a business plan and a pleasure plan. But the reason I say choose one is because any goal that you work on for one whole year will definitely do the job of growing you. You are really committing to growth if you can pick one goal. Don’t take a lot of time agonizing over what one you’re going to choose. Don’t indulge in indecision. Just pick one. Bonus points: often you can look at your list and pick the one that will make the rest of them kind of unnecessary or irrelevant. If you have one on your list that makes the others a bit unnecessary or irrelevant, that’s the one I’d go with. The goal may even seem impossible to you right now – and that’s okay!
If you’re having trouble doing this, then you need to ask yourself, why you’re having trouble. Do you really want to do them all? The only reason you’d want to do them all is because you want all of the feelings that accompany accomplishing your goals (we talked about this in Part 1.)
Goals that Feel Impossible
Maybe the goal that you chose feels impossible to achieve. It currently seems impossible for the person you are right now today. You may have to change that goal. Or, you may have to change yourself in order to move that goal into the realm of possibility. Now, don’t pick a goal that is truly impossible. Pick something that’s currently impossible but worth working toward because the process is worth it, and the goal is meaningful to you specifically.
I often say that the growth is in the process, not necessarily in the plan. Ask yourself what the process is that you need to take, in order to get the result. Well, there’s no way we’re going to be able to figure that out unless we know what is going to be on that result line. When you think about achieving this goal, your desired outcome should be specific. That result line should be crystal clear.
Moving from Impossible to Possible to Inevitable
Now, I want you now to write down all the reasons why you think this goal is impossible. This is your chance to hear out all the muck going on in your brain. For instance, when I chose a revenue goal for this year, I actually did think it was impossible. I thought it was impossible because I had never done it before, and I couldn’t figure out exactly what it would look like in order to do it or how it would come to fruition.
So, when you’re writing down all the reasons why it’s impossible, let your brain complain and whine and come up with all the excuses of why it can’t happen. Even tap into all the recesses of your brain, like all the things your parents told you, or all the things you learned in school about why this might be impossible or what your spouse will say.
And if you’re feeling that it’s impossible, then in that feeling line is probably the word “overwhelmed.” Your thought may be something like, “I don’t know how to do this”, which brings you to overwhelm, which then triggers some inaction. And the result of all that is that the goal is still not met. But all of that happens because you are feeling overwhelmed that you won’t reach the goal.
I’m going to use an example of tennis. I want you to remember that our thoughts create our feelings, and when you fail at something, it’s caused by the way you are thinking versus feeling. If you lost a tennis match, you might be feeling overwhelmed and miserable and possibly in pain. But I want you to recognize that when you lose a tennis match, there is no pain when you believe that you’re terrible at tennis or when you believe you would have won the match with a different type of overhead. There is pain because your thoughts have created the pain. So, when you actually lose the match, there’s no pain. It’s your thoughts about losing that are creating the pain. So, you can cause your own pain with your own thinking. The loss itself or the score does not cause the pain. Think about it: someone else could have ended a match, had the exact same score and they could feel joy. Same score, different feeling.
If the worst thing that can happen in our lives is a feeling, isn’t that amazing? Our terrible thoughts create our terrible feelings, and that’s really all it is. If you’re feeling that this goal is overwhelming or that it is impossible, I want you to recognize that this is all just coming from your thoughts. You’re going to have to completely change your thinking in order to move this goal from the realm of impossible to possible.
The Process of Achieving Your Goal
The goal is not yet met, but you’re taking action toward it because you believe it’s possible. So now you’re not feeling overwhelmed. You’re feeling might be motivated, driven, or committed because you know it’s possible. Your thought here could change to “I am someone who works towards goals because reaching them is possible.” And that’s going to create a different feeling and some different actions. The action is going to be something like you’re working toward it, you’re in the process, and then your result line shows that the goal still may not be met, but you are taking steps towards meeting it. While you’re trying to reach the goal with the result of the goal eventually being met, you must have that feeling of possibility.
Strategies
- One strategy is to think of someone who could and would accomplish this goal. Think of someone who has already accomplished it and who, if they stepped into your right life right now, could get it done. I want you to borrow their thoughts. How do they think differently?
This is what I did last year. I had to go into the thoughts of people who have created the revenue goal that I wanted to create, who have helped the number of people that I want to help. Those are some of my coaches that I look up to. I had to go borrow some of their thoughts. I went and I said, “hey, can I borrow some of your thoughts? Because you think differently than I do. And if you were me, I know this goal would become inevitable.” In order to get to the result of my goal being met, I had to get to the feeling of it being inevitable. And, I had to realize that achieving the goal is a process.
I had to come to terms with where I was in the process and I had to accept that I was really planning a journey. You’ve heard the expression, “this is a marathon, not a sprint.” So, yes, I had to love being in the marathon.
So, think about what type of person you need to become to accomplish this impossible goal? And as you embody this new version of yourself, I want you to fast forward into your future and become that person that’s finished, that future person that’s already finished who’s already accomplished the goal. I want you to channel that person because we’re going to need that person.
- The second strategy: if you haven’t been going after your goal because you’ve felt like it’s impossible, now is your time to channel that future person. Believe ahead of time that you can do it and ask that future person, that future “you,” how to do it. I want you to ask them what to do, but even before that, I want you to ask them whether or not you should decide to tackle it, decide to take it on, decide to find the support and systems and strategies you need. That future you is going to say, “yes, of course you should!” I want you to let your dreaming mind explore without doubt without shutting anything down, how to do this.
In Part 3 of Setting and Achieving Your Goals, I’ll share with you how to explore, brainstorm and plan. Do you want more help like this? You can check out coaching options on the home page of my website, or sign up for my weekly newsletter:
