What if I told you your goals have been sabotaged your entire life?
Since we were kids, we have been bombarded with the idea that goal setting is important. Most of us were likely raised with strong messaging from parents and educators that being goal oriented is vital to being a productive member of society.
Look no further than dating profiles to see women searching high and low for men who have goals. Similar to dating, when you go on a job interview, they often ask about goals. Who hasn’t heard the question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
In the military and especially in officer training, I was taught the “SMART” method. SMART is an acronym (military loves acronyms) for: Specific, Measurable, Action Oriented, Realistic, and Time Driven/Timely. Its practical advice, but I am starting to believe that at least some elements of SMART aren’t effective for personal goal setting.
SMART is great for short-term objectives. In the Air Force, an objective might be putting a bomb on a target or ensuring that all your Officer Performance Reports (OPRs) are done on time (usually the second one nowadays).
The problem with SMART and confusing objectives with goals is that you are probably going to set the bar too low. Goals are not a to-do list. They should be your major life aspirations.
I don’t see any problem with our goals being specific, measurable, and actionable. We should be specific about the things we want and be able to measure our results. To get those results we need to be action oriented every single day to achieve them.
“Realistic” is the step of this process I have the biggest issue with. “Realistic” sucks. Being realistic is average thinking to get average results. Who decides what’s realistic? Why self-impose limitations on ourselves and our results?
From childhood, we’re told we need to be realistic with our aspirations. If it wasn’t your parents, then it was a guidance counselor, a coach, or some other person of authority. This leads to average thinking and average results. If you’re serious about personal development and business, I’m guessing you desire better-than-average results. To get there, we have to elevate our expectations.
My friend Anthony Busciglio, who was mentioned in my series about the 10X Growth Conference, introduced me to a concept called the “financial thermostat”. This concept is worthy of an article all by itself, but the basic idea is that we all have a personal money thermostat that is set by the amount of income we are used to. If you have been making minimum wage your entire life, your thermostat is likely set low and your expectations are equally low. Turning that thermostat up is essential to increasing your income, because your mind needs to view making more money as both realistic and within reach.
I know that some of you are thinking that being realistic is a good thing and what I’m saying is nonsense. I’ll acknowledge that this concept is an unusual way of thinking and unconventional advice. Let’s consider some unusual people that had unrealistic goals that might agree with this unconventional philosophy.
Is it realistic for Tom Brady to think he can play in the NFL well into his 40s? Most commentators don’t seem to think so. As a Patriots fan, I think he’ll achieve that goal. Do you think it was realistic for Tom as pick #199 in the 6th round to have expectations of greatness? What about Michael Jordan? Sure, he was a great player in college, but was it realistic to believe he would become the greatest athlete to ever play professional basketball?
Maybe you’re not a sports fan. Was it realistic in 2009 that Bitcoin would be worth over $6,000 today (let alone the $19,000 it spiked to 2017)? Early adopters were thought to be crazy and Bitcoin was considered a scam (and some still think this). Was it realistic for internet entrepreneurs and developers to believe that the internet would change every aspect of modern life? I can still vividly remember people talking in the 1990s about the unlikelihood of consumers ever feeling comfortable buying items through the internet. I’m glad the naysayers were wrong.
I had a conversation with a couple friends recently that demonstrate some of the problems I see with conventional thought on goal setting. One friend, a fellow veteran, boasted about how he had amassed a 401k portfolio of over $800,000 and that he expected to be a millionaire when he retired. This is an impressive feat considering that my friend is a relatively low ranking government employee and generally only about 1% of retirement accounts ever hit $1,000,000.
My other friend, who like me, is in his mid-30s scoffed at the notion of becoming a millionaire. His comment stuck with me… “I just don’t see it as realistic for me.” That statement is exactly why he won’t get there, despite the fact that our more junior ranking friend will likely achieve that goal.
In terms of the “time driven” aspect of SMART, I’m not a fan of this either. Life doesn’t work on time tables. Setbacks happen suddenly and so does success. Even though overnight success is sometimes 20 years in the making, the actual results can be very sudden. Amassing assets that suddenly appreciate significantly or building a business that eventually “takes off” are examples of this. If your goal, like mine, is to be a multimillionaire, it’s going to be impossible to say exactly when you are going to get there.
If we look at our goals and say we have to get there by a certain time, what happens if we don’t? Wouldn’t that encourage people to scrap them entirely? Ray Kroc didn’t purchase full control of McDonalds until he was 59 years old. Colonel Sanders didn’t become a millionaire until he was 73 and sold KFC for $2,000,000. These guys are unusual in the sense that they kept striving for success when most people would have given up on their dreams.
I think our “timely” objective should be “as soon as possible” and we don’t stop working feverishly until we get there. If you set a high goal, then you can bet that you will have to work like a maniac to get there. This is a good thing. Setting a “reasonable” goal, calls for average efforts to achieve equally average results that will disappoint you in the end.
I’ve been there. Thinking back to when I was fresh out of college, my goals were to make “good” money (which I considered to be around $80,000 a year at the time), own a condo, and date good looking girls. Not exactly deep thinking there, but such was my 24 year old mindset. I did all those things and then wasn’t really happy in the end. Why? Because I set the bar incredibly low and didn’t reset the bar when I got there.
I had a similar experience with my physical fitness. In 2009, I needed to lose significant weight before going to Officer Training School. I had a clear vision in my head of where I wanted to get to and I eventually got there, losing probably 50lbs or so in the process. Seems like a big goal, but it really wasn’t. I got there, realized life was no different, and in the last 8 years my weight crept back up to where I started. When I hit my goal, I wasn’t impressed and I didn’t continue to set the bar higher.
Reflecting on those experiences, my mistake was not asking myself, “Ok, what next?” every time I hit a goal. I should have never stopped taking massive action. After all, massive action is what got me to my goals in the first place and by that point massive action was a consistent habit. When I let that habit stop, that’s when I became dissatisfied and got off track.
Nowadays, I have a new approach to goal setting. If you read this blog regularly, you know I’m a big Grant Cardone fan. At his 10X Growth Conference and in his book Be Obssessed or Be Average, I learned a method of goal setting that is working for me.
His method is simple. Every day, before bed and when you wake up, you do one simple thing. You take out a notebook or legal pad and write your goals. This doesn’t need to be organized, you don’t need to re-read them, and they can change every time you write them. The only thing I tweaked on his method is that I write down 3 things I’m grateful that day, because I believe expressing gratitude is important to goal achievement.
Every morning, I sit down with my cup of coffee and write out my goals. I won’t share them all, but let’s just say that they would sound unreasonably ambitious to most people. Essentially I want to be in amazing physical shape and a multimillionaire. I am neither of those at this time. I have more specific goals in each of those areas, but that is the basic idea.
Another important element to Cardone’s method is that you write goals in the present tense. Statements like, “I make $50,000 a month income through my business and investments” or “I own 100 rental units” are how these goals are written. You write the goals as if they have already been achieved.
This method makes the process fun instead of a chore. After a week of doing this, I looked forward to writing every morning. It’s quick, takes less than 5 minutes, and you’ll find that your goals eventually become pretty consistent without referencing anything you wrote previously. You internalize these goals and as time goes on, you tend to get more ambitious in both your efforts and your targets.
This method isn’t for everyone. If you are seeking greatness and want to elevate your mindset, this strategy might work for you. Don’t let others dictate to you what is realistic and how soon you need to get what you want. We are all the captains of our own life and you can chart whatever course you want.
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