Align Your Life to Reach Big Goals
Get-It-Done Guy has tips to align your efforts behind your big goals when you’re not getting the results you want.
If you’re like me, you so often want to do huge, great things, like end world hunger, fly to the moon, or wrap the Eiffel Tower in toilet paper as a subversive statement aimed at overthrowing the status quo. But then, you don’t actually do it. And it’s not because of the security guards. It’s because of…something else. When you find yourself not stepping up to do the great things you have in mind, it’s because you haven’t aligned everything you have behind your awesome, amazing goal.
See also: How to Set the Right Goals
When I was a wee lad of just 23 or 24 years old, a man named Joe Yeager taught me an elegant way to align myself behind my goals. In order to do it, though, you need a goal. Think of a goal you haven’t been making progress on, but want to. Got one? Good. Keep it in mind as we go through this episode.
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You Need Raw Desire
They say you can’t always get what you want, and it’s true, but only because you aren’t a Kardashian. It’s also true that you won’t ever get what you don’t want.
In order to reach your goal, you need to want it. But it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you want something you really don’t. A coaching client wanted to start a world-changing social enterprise. We delved into preparations! Somehow, he kept dragging his feet. There was always a reason why he couldn’t quite start on the actions we’d outlined. “Next week, I’ll do it for sure!” he proclaimed. It never happened.
He always had a different excuse, but he always had some excuse. Being a good coach, I called him on it and he faced up to the truth: He really likes his high-paying, cushy job. He likes the city, the salary, and the status. He doesn’t want to start the non-profit enough to leave his comfy situation.
And that’s fine! Better to know up front than to work for months and self-sabotage because he’s denying his real desire, which is to have a fun, comfortable life with his family, and the fantasy of running a world-changing social enterprise. We can find other ways for him to contribute to the world that will let him keep his day job.
My friend, super coach Michael Neill, says “The more reasons you have for wanting something, the less you probably want it.” That’s because you’re trying to talk yourself into wanting it. If you truly want something, you just want it.
My client didn’t want what he thought he wanted. Now that he knows it, he’s fine with his decision. And since the decision was explicit (one of the advantages to having a coach’s outside perspective), he can change it when the time is right.
Motivate Others with Want-To, not Force-To
If you’re trying to get someone else to do something, tap into their innate motivation until they want to do it. I knew an evil boss who said to his team, “You don’t want to work this weekend? Fine. I’ll withhold all the Oreo ice cream cake if you don’t come in!” Of course, everyone worked the weekend. But not because they wanted to, because they were threatened to. That’s not “want to,” that’s “being coerced to.” Coercion might work in the short term, but true long-lasting motivation comes from a real, deep “I want to do that!”
See also: Use Your Passion to Motivate Yourself
How-To
In addition to wanting to do something, you have to know how to do it. Sometimes it’s obvious. Wrapping the bottom 6 feet of the Eiffel Tower in toilet paper? Trivial. But how about the top 100 feet?
If you don’t know how to do something, you must go learn. You need to find someone who knows how to do it. Or if it’s something that has never been done before, you need to design your own “how to,” try it out, and tweak it if it doesn’t work. You either need the specific how-to, or a general how-to that teaches you to learn something new quickly through experimentation.
See also: Learn by Creating Your Own Course
If you choose that course, remember that you’re doing trial-and-error! Many of your trials won’t work. That’s not failure; that’s part of trial-and-error. You’re making progress when you’re experimenting by learning, even if specific experiments fail.
Chance-To
Lastly, you need the actual, real-world opportunity to try your how-to and put it into practice. Often you’re blocked by competing time commitments. Identify them and consciously choose if you’ll spend your time doing great things or maintaining the status quo.
It’s not just time that hurts your chances. A coaching client was an artist who believed charging for art was “selling out.” She had lots of want-to. She took classes and knew how-to build a business. But her belief held her back, and she never gave herself the chance to commit to business.
Make sure you have the chance to pursue your dream. Make the time, find the resources, and get the access you need. It takes hours to wrap the Eiffel Tower, an awful lot of toilet paper, and the ability to evade the guards. Without having the chance-to, your diabolical plan will never see the light of day.
When you find you aren’t accomplishing your grand goals, align yourself with want-to, how-to, and chance-to. Make sure you really want to do it. Find out how to do it. And get the chance to do it. When you’re aligned behind your biggest goals, you’re far more likely to succeed!
This is Stever Robbins. Email questions to getitdone@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email.
I partner with people who are changing the world, to align their lives, their values, and their strategies around success. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
Goal image from Shutterstock
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
