Setting internal goals that I can’t hide from………

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I used to think that setting goals is easy, and achieving them is hard.  Generally.

 

I did not categorise the type of goals I set and it seemed to me that  being a “normal” or average guy, I should be more than pleased with a really low success rate.  Low success rate for average guy. That sounded like a fair deal.

 

Until I really looked at the “hard facts”. It changed the way I approach goals and their achievement.

 

Many of the goals we set are dependent on many external variables as well as being almost certainly unachievable. They are more like fantasies. In retrospect, I realise that we are drawn  to grandiose unachievable goals because then we don’t have to take full responsibility as the fantasy part almost guarantees that they will not be achieved and we have no option but to just shrug and tell ourselves it was never meant to be achieved anyway. So we are off the hook.

 

What I have discovered is that internal goals which are specific are super scary. Because there is no one or nothing to blame. They are specific and measurable, and if we make them public or accountable to someone else we ask to keep score, we are truly stuck. We have nowhere to hide and will have to deliver it.  They also have the power to transform us and change our behaviour.

 

It’s like “I will get up at 4 am everyday”.  This is a goal which is almost 100% non dependent on external factors. It’s only dependent on one being still alive and having an alarm clock. It’s 100% doable and 100% specific.   It’s scary to make this as a public commitment. Because we will have no excuse not delivering it.

 

“I will earn 1 million dollars by end of June”. That’s an easy goal to set. No problem. If I don’t achieve it, I can always blame the economy, the government, the customers…………and I am definitely not going to feel like it’s 100% me not delivering. C’mon, it’s the economy.

 

So now, I find that it’s much more scary to set internal goals which I have no excuse not to achieve. But much more transformational. It changes the way I behave. Like

 

1. Ship a blog a day : really scary but unless I am in intensive care, I can hardly find an excuse not to do it;
2. Meditate 4 am every day: unless I am having a meeting with a customer or my kids at 4 am, I will have difficulty fabricating an excuse
3. Catch people doing right 3 times a day: just have to start earlier in the morning to achieve this real fast
4. Call 4 customers a day and ask about their day………..
5. ……………………………………….

 

Now that I am focussing on achieving goals I can have full control over, and scary to commit to (because they are achievable and I have nowhere to hide!), I am finding that it takes much more effort but oh boy, I feel so much more empowered and so much less frustrated, and guess what, all the external stuff take care of themselves.  

 

The moment we deliver on our internal goals, we show up differently in the world. And guess what, all the people who used to have doubts stop having doubts, all the previously impossible to perform tasks become easier to perform, and all the seriously difficult people suddenly start smiling more at me, and hey, the external goals set themselves and achieve themselves.

 

I am curious, does this have something to do with changing ourselves before trying to change the world?