Anyone can set a goal. A goal to lose weight. A goal to set a new personal best. Perhaps, a goal to get ahead in your career. This goal-setting process is enjoyable and easy to do. We imagine how great it would be to attain this goal and how awesome it would feel. Everyone sets goals. But why do so many people fail to reach their goals?
Perhaps it’s because the goal was too lofty – it is, after all, a goal! It’s something to shoot for and is not guaranteed. While this is true at times, I don’t think this is the primary reason.
ONE QUESTION
I believe most don’t achieve their goals because they don’t answer one question: How?
I want to run a 20 minute 5K.”
Great! How are you going to do that?
“Well, I need to increase my speed?”
Awesome! How are you going to do THAT?
And the process goes on and on.
It might take 10 questions of “How?” before you finally get to the next practical step – but this is essential for achieving our goals! Do no this stop asking how until you have a very clear next step in front of you. This breaks down our goals into small actionable steps.
In his book “Mind Gym”, Gary Mack outlines a similar process using the acronym A.C.T.
The A stands for accept your present state. Understand your strengths and weaknesses, as we discussed in the last section. C stands for create your desired state. Dwight Smith had a dream. What’s your dream? Close your eyes, and see yourself exactly the way you want to be. Write down what this desired state would look like. T stands for take action steps to get you there. Success is a journey of one step at a time. And the longest journey begins with the first step.
When we do this, we are creating our own step by step journey to reaching our goal. We place ourselves right in the middle of the story, which makes the climactic ending (namely, our goal) much more realistic.
A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE
This was the process I used in going about setting the world record for the fastest marathon while dribbling a soccer ball.
- See how fast I can dribble a mile.
- Reach out to Guinness World Records to apply for the record and get the necessary guidelines for it.
- Contact the race director to seek permission for the attempt.
And so on and so forth. And somewhere along the line, what seemed like a logistical nightmare became something that I had no doubt was going to at least be attempted.
How did it get to that point? How did it go from a goal to a reality? Ask the question. How?
