Habit of Thought

To Goal or Not To Goal

Does setting goals really work? Leo Babauta of the zenhabits blog says the best goal is no goal. 

Brian Tracy, a successful consultant, author and speaker whose work has had much positive impact on my life, has made a great career out of teaching others to set and achieve goals.

So what's a body to do?

My take on goals is that they are useful tools when used in the right way, just like any other tool.

Most of the problems people have with the concept of goals are not with the goals themselves but are due to one or more of these items:

1. You have no goals.
2. You have too many goals.
3. What you think is a goal is really a dream or wish.
4. You phrase the goal in a negative way such as "stop smoking," which your mind has a hard time translating into action. (This creates a "vacuum" into which old bad habits easily sneak back.)
5. The goals on your plate were handed to or dumped on you by a boss, colleague, spouse, parent, child, family member, friend, neighbor, or maybe even a stranger.
6. Something suddenly seemed to be a good idea, something that you hadn't pictured wanting or needing until you saw it. (This is often driven by advertising or a new product announcement.)

Earlier this year I wrote about an alternative definition of success. The first part of that definition is

"Success is the continual achievement of your own predetermined goals..."

A predetermined goal is one you have taken time to think about and develop in relation to all of your wants and needs, not just to what is in front of you at the moment.

Well-written predetermined goals are a great filter through which you can view and manage the information, suggestions, requests, and demands that flood you every day.

They can provide the motivation you need to prevail through setbacks or failures.

Predetermined goals become the gatekeepers that keep the ruffians at bay, the road ahead clear, the resources focused, the people aligned, and the destination in sight.

And finally, there's no rule that says you can't change or even discard a predetermined goal. But as with anything that you have invested in, you are less likely to throw out a predetermined goal just because something flashier came along.

Which side of this question are you on? Why?

Great Questions: The Secret to Great Relationships

All the way through my formal schooling, knowing the right answer was the primary way to succeed. The vast majority of tests were structured with only one right answer per question. The person with the highest number of right answers got the best grade on the test. The person with the best grades across all the tests in all the subjects was ranked at the top of his or her class.

The reward system was clearly structured around knowing the right answer. The students who mastered that process reaped the rewards.

Now I've come to understand that asking good questions is magical. It reaps far more personal and professional rewards than answers ever did.

Good questioning skills may be the world's most unsung talent. Not just any questions, but really good questions.

As with any art, you often can't predict that the question you ask will be a good one until you see the outcome. The effect I hope to achieve when I ask a question is this: The person leans back in his chair with a look of wonder on his face, maybe even a pensive smile, and says, "That's a great question! I never thought of that before." Even better is when the person comes back with a great question of his own.

People are conditioned from childhood to respond to polite questions. If you ask intelligent questions with impact, almost everyone will answer you.

The other significant reason to ask good questions is to help the person you are asking. Asking well-crafted, intelligent questions causes people to think profoundly. When someone thinks more deeply than before, new ideas, new answers and new possibilities emerge.

The odd thing is, asking questions makes you look smarter than giving the answers.

It feels good to know the answer. But it feels fabulous to ask the question that leads the other person to figure out the answer for herself.

So, my questions for you are:

• What was the best question you asked someone in the last few days?
• What question could you ask a significant other, a child, a friend, a colleague, a client that would help build your relationship with them?

Lyle Corey: A Memoriam

Today I received the awful news that Lyle Corey passed away suddenly last Friday evening. In this picture, he is flanked on the left by his wife, Joanne, and on the right by Barbara Hannevig, a close family friend.

I met Lyle in Dec 2004 at the funeral of his best friend, Lars Hannevig, a.k.a. Bill Coffey, a radio personality here in Rochester, who was also a friend of mine. And now Lyle is gone too, which would be painful enough, but in the same way that Lars died. A double whammy for all of us who loved both of these fine men.

I can tell you everything that you might assume about Lyle from this picture is true. He was a devoted husband and father and a loyal, faithful friend. He was a valued person at the company where he worked, one of their leaders. He was generous, loving, and funny. His arms were always long enough to include one more friend in his circle.

He and Joanne also had had the tragedy of losing their oldest daughter in 1994. Devastated and heartbroken, Lyle and Joanne still found it within themselves to give back to the community. They arranged an annual charity golf tournament benefiting Kids Adjusting Through Support, a program of Camp Good Days and Special Times. The tournament has run for many years, donating thousands of dollars to this important program. Lars emceed the tournament (as Bill Coffey), and when he passed away, it was renamed in his honor. Lars' former colleague, Terry Clifford of WBEE (shown above right with Lyle), took over as emcee.

Lyle was taken away from us way too soon; he was only 60. No warning at all that a heart attack was on its way. As far as we all knew, he was as literally as healthy as the horses he and Joanne loved and cared for on their farm.

I try to stop the "Why??" question from circling around my brain like a loose pebble, leaving little bruises on the tender gray matter. Instead, I imagine Lars standing there in that pool of white light that people talk about seeing in near death experiences. Lars is grinning his crazy Norwegian grin, happy to welcome his dear friend to the other side, waiting with two horses for them to ride off into the sunset. May they both find peace, and may they both look in on those of us left behind from time to time, nudging us into acceptance of this latest senseless loss.

God bless and keep you, Lyle. And our deepest sympathies to Joanne, their children, and their families.

Success As Continual Achievement

Googling the word "success" produces a count of about 308,000,000 results. You'd think with that much information out there that success would not be such an elusive goal for so many.

In a previous post, I offered the definition of success that I work with. The main focus of that definition is continual achievement.

Kids get this unconsciously. They are whirlwinds of activity and experimentation, absorbing a huge amount of information even before the age of 5 about how to participate in and deal with the world around them.

They learn to sit up, crawl, walk. They learn to drink through a straw, then from a cup, and then with the lid off. They learn to ride a bike with training wheels, and then one day the wheels come off.

This continual achievement is the part most adults forget when they become adults.

For many years in the United States, the "American dream" was the commonly held goal: a house with a picket fence, 2 cars, spouse, 2.3 kids, dog, vacation once a year. Once you had all that, you had it made.

The odd thing is, once you reach the pinnacle you were aiming for and recover your breath, you start to look around and say, "What's next?" Or sometimes the pinnacle loses its appeal before you reach it, so you still ask "What's next?" Often people grab what they think is an easy solution to the uneasiness: a new spouse, a new job (or no job at all), a snazzy sports car.

Even money isn't a real answer to this question. In an article recently published by Wired Magazine, "Why Money Makes You Unhappy," the author quotes the psychologists:

"...our findings provide evidence for the provocative notion that having access to the best things in life may actually undermine one’s ability to reap enjoyment from life’s small pleasures."

Finally, another fascinating article, this time published by Slate Magazine, talks about the human need for "seeking":

"For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing."

Continual achievement's contribution to success is to always have some possible answers for "What's next?" in your pocket.

So, what's next for you?

F.E.A.R.

Seth Godin's book, Linchpin, does a great job of explaining that fear comes from the fear conditioning stored in the most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala. He calls it the lizard brain. It's job is to keep us safe.

Fear has its uses. The problem is that few of us face saber-toothed tigers, sharks, poisonous snakes, or murderous people on a regular basis. Our physical responses to fear are overkill when it comes to what scares us in this day and age.

In fact, much of our fear comes from its kissing cousin, worry. As defined in Wikipedia, "Worry is thoughts and images of a negative nature in which mental attempts are made to avoid anticipated potential threats."

"Anticipated" is the key word. We worry about what hasn't actually happened and may not happen. The fear of failure falls into this category.

We freeze, our brain turns to mush, heart rate and breathing accelerate, and our body gives us only two choices: fight or flight. In today's world, we actually have more choices than that.

The next time you feel fear or begin to worry, here are a few behaviors to replace them with:

• Learn an alternate definition of fear: False Evidence Appearing Real. Human imagination is a powerful thing, and sometimes it needs to be reined in a bit. For some, determining what the worst that can happen is and then preparing for it works well. For others, research and information is the key to reducing or eliminating fear. Talking over fears with a trusted person can bring a different point of view. Finding someone who has already done it and learning what they did also works.


• Turn the worry (negative energy) into a goal (positive energy). If you are worried about losing your job, set a goal about being prepared to search for the next one (start a blog, get involved in professional organizations or chambers of commerce, etc.). If you are worried about money, focus on the options to earn some.


• If you are feeling fear as part of a goal already in progress, write down affirmations on 3x5 cards and post them on your bathroom mirror, your kitchen table, and your nightstand to read and say out loud each time you see them.

What are you afraid of?

A $5M Growth Opportunity

Jack Welch wasn't always the CEO of General Electric. At one time in his career he managed some sort of manufacturing operation for the company.

One fateful evening there was an explosion causing substantial damage to the facility. Fortunately no one was hurt. Jack was sent by his boss to the bigger boss' home that evening to report the accident.

The Bigger Boss had Jack sit down and listened patiently as Jack reviewed what happened, described the the amount of the damage, and estimated something like $5M would be needed to make repairs.

"How soon can you get the facility back in operation?" asked Bigger Boss.

Jack was astonished. "Aren't you going to fire me?"

Big Boss replied, "Why would I do that? I just spent $5M on your education!"

----

If you were to add up the impact of your biggest mistake, your most painful failure, what would you estimate was the cost of that "lesson"?

Are you still paying for that lesson using the coins of self-recrimination, the "if onlies," or even bitterness?

The good news is that it's never too late to put that mistake on the table, get every bit of value possible out of it, and throw the rest of it away.

You'll be amazed at the room that creates in your life and work for something great to now flow in.

The Unavoidable Ingredient of Success

Failure. That's the unavoidable ingredient of success. It's the one thing everyone who succeeds knows how to do well. Nothing else matters as much, not how much money you have, how hard you work, how great your idea is, how wonderful your employees are, your level of education, your connections, your skills.

Getting used to failure is very hard. Choosing to open yourself up to failure is scary, especially in a culture that reveres success as much as this country does. Many people would rather die than fail or even attempt something that has the possibility of failure.

Yet there are millions who feel the fear and do it anyway, whatever it is. Get married, get divorced. Take a different job, quit the current job. Go on that blind date, wear a different style. Start a business, a blog (ahem...), a new career.

The opposite of failure isn't success, it's courage. And as Chris Brogan so aptly describes, overnight success isn't.

Today I had breakfast with my dear friend, Yvonne Divita of Lipsticking, Scratchings and Sniffings, and BlogPaws fame. We had a wonderful long talk, the kind that long-time friends have even when they haven't seen each other for a while. We laughed over our failures, we rejoiced over our successes, and we pushed each other to fail even more.

Now that's what I call friendship.