Goals

What I Fortunately Learned Before My Massive Goals Crushed Me

Getting stuck in my massive goals shredded my mind.

In the past I chased down goals like a cheetah, but when I left Wall Street to do this, I was shot in my tracks.

What I called the chest feeling. The inability to sit down and work, let alone write. The painful thinking on thinking that dominated my head in those early days.

I had a dream to do something big, but I couldn’t even get myself to do it small.

It’s for this reason that I build highly systematic approaches for myself and my clients to wake up and crush our days, and I can’t emphasize enough the power of daily systems like this.

Yet it was from years of stuck thinking on massive goals that I discovered the secret is…

Stop Making It So Massive!

Our brain is the most powerful time machine we know that can imagine anything and everything at all times in every future.

One moment we’re thinking about what happened as a kid. The next we’re thinking about 30 years from now. Five seconds later that brain has jumped to what happened last weekend or what might happen next.

Forever stuck in this time machine we can become too overwhelmed by all the things we might do, and focus too little on doing what matter most now.

Instead of living in the world of the actionable, we get stuck in the world of the possible…

“But, I Don’t Know What I Want…”

If I had written a book for every time I said that, I would have written a library of books on not knowing what you want…

But I knew how to do that well enough, so instead I wrote the one book that helped me solve it!

It’s a big book. There’s plenty of stuff in there, but there’s also a very simple process that drives from front to back.

For many years I was stuck in my own head, confused, worried, frustrated, thinking all the time, What Do I Want?

But after grinding my gears on the same question for a decade, I could see it was false.

Berating myself because I didn’t know what I wanted kept me confused, but I got lucky that every day I was taking the small steps that eventually would lead me to clarity.

The brain can keep questioning forever, and, in fact, being stuck is desirous for the brain craves certainty, even if that certainty is not knowing what you want!

Yet, by continuing to take steps, as I wrote about here, even without knowing what you want, you are navigating your way there.

Continue

Captain Obvious Speaks Again

Last week’s newsletter was a tale of two heads.

One reader, who I’ll call Angry Amy, sent us a scathing email branding me Captain Obvious and giving me a mouthful for “endlessly repeating wise sounding phrases without actually saying anything useful.”

As she put it, “Everyone over the age of 15 already knows all of the mushy smart sounding ‘insight’ you just unloaded.”

She might be right.

It might be obvious to her how she transforms what she thinks into what she wants, but it wasn’t obvious to me when I found myself stuck in my work. It’s not obvious to my clients. I know from the other emails we receive it’s not obvious to many in our community. And, the same day I saw it wasn’t obvious to one of our long-term readers either.

Around the same time that Angry Amy was writing to compliment me on my wise and smart-sounding phrases, I was at lunch with a senior Wall Streeter who was showing me the other side of the coin.

Mrs. I Know I Should

Mrs. I Know I Should has been reading my newsletters for years, but she hasn’t been “doing them.”

Like many people who talk a good game on these topics, she’s got extensive knowledge of what it takes to succeed and decades of achievement behind her, yet when it comes to the things that are hard in her career, as I wrote about here, she’s much better at avoiding, than doing.

It’s not because she’s stupid; she’s highly intelligent. Or lazy; even those who’ve spent decades on Wall Street still work around the clock. Or has a lack of focus; she knows what matters.

But she’s been struggling on these hard topics in her career because, quite frankly, she hasn’t been doing the work.

About halfway through our lunch, after having said a lot of thoughtful things, she looked over at me and asked, “So, do you think it’s important to be writing this stuff down?”

Mouth hanging open I looked at her like wtf?

Right then and there I realized that although she’s been reading and thinking about these topics for years, she hadn’t even committed her thoughts to paper, let alone actions.

Nobody builds a house from a plan in their head. A football team writes out their plays. Heck, most of us write up a shopping list so we remember the milk, yet we still “try” (mostly unsuccessfully) to solve the hardest challenges of our lives, in our heads.

That’s just one reason many of us get stuck “shoulding” all over ourselves.

“Shoulding” All Over Herself

Throughout the lunch Mrs. I Know I Should kept telling me what she “should” be doing, and affirming, “I completely agree” with the approach that I laid out.

Yet when I asked her, “OK, so why aren’t you doing it?” she looked at me deer in the headlights.

I wasn’t trying to be a jerk or to shame her. I was doing my “job” (for free, as I do every time I write), trying to help her get beyond where she’s been stuck, literally, for years.

When we’re stuck in life it’s easy to beat up on ourselves, and tell ourselves what we “should” be doing, but all that matters is whether we can actually get ourselves doing those things!

Continue

Why Most People Will Never Get What They Want

I know my work is inspiring to people, but I also know that’s not enough.

Lots of people recognize that there’s more they can be doing to get what they want.

They think that if they get more focused on their goals, organized around what to do, and build a more powerful mind, that they could improve their life.

I know this because all the time people tell me, but talk doesn’t get the job done…

Easier Said Than Done

On a cold New York morning a couple of weeks back, I met a mid-thirties fellow in the elevator of my apartment building.

I was headed to see my body mechanic, who helps me stand and walk, and he was on his way to, “ugh, work.”

At least that was how he said it to me.

He looked like a banker, but I’d bet he’s a securities lawyer. After plenty of time around the two you can distinguish the sadness and fatigue in their eyes.

When he asked me what I do, I paused.

Feeling sorry for the man who had clearly spent the last 30 minutes cheerleading himself to throw on his suit and get in that elevator, I said, “I’m a consultant.”

“So, what type of consulting job enables you to be headed out in your gym gear at 9:00am?” he sarcastically quipped.

“One where I do what I want,” I replied.

With those sad eyes and a mousy depressed voice, he responded, “Easier said than done.”

Continue

New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid. Set Goals.

What Do I Want

Note: To add to this article, I just recorded this video on 5 ways to turn stupid New Year’s Resolutions into powerful goals.

People keep baiting me on the topic of New Year’s resolutions.

Perhaps because I’ve called them stupid in the past, they think I have a negative view of such resolutions…

But that’s not true—I’m fired up about any catalyst that gets people to change.

It’s not New Year’s resolutions that are stupid, only how people pretend to use them!

Phony Goals

Like a political speech, people so proudly announce their New Year’s resolutions—

I hereby proclaim that starting on January 1 (but no sooner), I will stop watching cat videos on Fakebook and go to the gym at least 6 times a day.

And just like a parent applauding their 7-year-old’s school play, we‘re expected to celebrate their “achievement” in making such a resolution.

Good on you, Timmy!

Let’s hope you’re not in the 80% of people who give up on their resolutions by the second week in February…

New Year’s “Aspirations”

Nearly all resolutions fail because they were only aspirations to begin with.

Every day of the year you can make a new resolution, but repeating it to yourself and others doesn’t make it a goal.

An aspiration is to Get In Great Shape This Year. A goal is to specifically define how you are eating better and exercising consistently.

Resolutions become goals when they are backed by action, and that’s where, by definition, most resolutions are destined to fail.

Continue

Stop Setting New Years Resolutions. Do This Instead.

Anyone who works out regularly dreads this time of year. On January 2nd, gyms around the world are going to be crowded 24/7 with people who made a New Year’s resolution to get a six-pack.

Fortunately, they’ll all be gone in two weeks.

It’s a statistical fact that over 90% of New Year’s resolutions are broken. Any practice that fails over 90% of the time should be abandoned, but people still pretend to stick to it.

There’s a better way to set goals and change your life, it just takes a little work. Let me explain.

Continue

What’s Missing From the Legend of Icarus

In his book The Icarus Deception remarkable thinker and prolific author, Seth Godin, challenges us all to fly closer to the sun.

We all know the legend of Icarus, yet on the first page of his book, Seth identifies an aspect to the story that many of us don’t know.

In a bold plan to escape the prison of King Minos, Icarus’ father, Daedalus, crafts a pair of wings for himself and his son.

With the wings attached with wax that melts under heat, Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but, of course, as the legend goes, overcome with hubris the young boy soared too high, lost his wings, and fell to his death in the sea.

Stop Flying Too Low

The lesson we are taught from this story is not to dream too big, not to fly too high, but, as Godin points out, the part of the story that is often missed is that Daedalus also cautioned his son not to fly too low, as the sea below would steal the lift from his wings, and also lead to certain death.

Yet, that’s exactly what most of us do.

Fearful of flying too high, we settle for flying too low. Fearing what it means to stand out, we conform, doing the same things as everyone else, somehow hoping for a different result.

Godin implores us to see that our careers have changed, and putting your head down and working hard is the wrong answer.

“Your ability to follow instructions,” Godin notes, “is not the secret to your success,” and inside this wonderful book he encourages us all to see our role like artists, creating, and sharing our uniqueness with the world.

Follow Your Own Instructions

Even if that’s not how you perceive your career, the lesson still holds. To create a truly remarkable career and life, you must break free of the groupthink to cultivate different ways of thinking, and take different types of actions.

While we often perceive that flying closer to the sun requires great risk, even the grandest of plans comes together through a series of small steps, that are embodied in this simple two-step exercise:

1. Dream BIG. Bigger than big. What is your version of flying high? Close your eyes and imagine what this means for you. For a few minutes, watch a mental movie of you flying all the way there. Imagine what you are doing, who you have become, and most importantly, the feeling of soaring to new heights.

2. Focus on one step: From where you are today, imagine the one step that is now in front of you. Some of you might imagine that as a big step, such as your next promotion, and others might see it simply as the actions you are taking today. Now, with all the energy of reaching new heights, see yourself taking this step.

In achieving even the tallest goals, you don’t need to think beyond this, but to merely keep taking each step as it presents itself, step by step, flying higher and higher.

I recommend doing this exercise frequently (I do it daily), continuing to drill into your mind your highest vision for your life, and reinforcing your focus on CRUSHING the step right in front of you.