Setting powerful goals
I often ask people about their goals and the common response I get is either that the goal is non-existent or I get a goal that’s ambiguous, unclear and without much detail.
Most of the time these aren’t goals but merely dreams. What’s the difference? A goal is like a dream but it’s written down.
One exercise I love is the 10-year rewind, and you can read more about it here in most post on creating your world.
This exercise, where you look back at where you were and who you were 10 years ago and look at what you’ve done, achieved and accomplished since then is great to put you in the right frame of mind for setting powerful goals for the next 10 years. I’d highly recommend you take 10 minutes and do this exercise.
Next, I’d like to take you through my favourite poem by Robert Frost.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I learnt this poem at school and it’s the only poem I remember from my school days since it’s the only one that really resonated with me. It really represents my personal ethos for living life, taking the road less traveled by. The reason I’m including this here today, is because I want you to have this in your mind when setting your goals.
These are your goals and they represent your path. Not anybody elses (negation acknowledged).
I also want you to be unreasonable. We love being unreasonable at Agoge Project. If you’re reading this or if you are on my course it is because you don’t want to be average. You don’t want to be mediocre. (negation acknowledged)
Think about all those people who inspire you. Did they have reasonable goals? Or did they have unreasonable goals?
When setting goals, we want you to get into the right frame of mind and tune into what your heart wants. What do you really want? What makes your skin tingle when you think about it.
If we set reasonable goals, these often reflect a reasonable life. A path that is expected. And this often times conflicts with the path you actually want to go down. Then what happens is, you oftentimes hit those goals AND you still feel unfulfilled. Or the opposite happens and you avoid hitting the goal and avoid taking action because deep down it’s not where you want to go. And you end up doing some form of self-sabotage.
Here at Agoge Project, we’re huge on taking action. Taking responsibility and that’s why it’s critical to get unreasonable with your goals and aim at what you truly want.
I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve set goals. Most people set goals for themselves however they usually end up being an uphill battle. The reason for this is that we set these goals without a plan to change our story or our identity.
That just sets you up for failure and you’ll end up like the poor guy in the picture, that the greek mythology buffs amongst you (yes, my company is called agoge project so I will be using a variety of greek myths) the poor guy in the picture is Sisyphus who spends eternity rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of hades. And that’s what most people’s goals end up looking like.
Even crazier is that most of the time, we call our dreams goals but they aren’t really goals because we didn’t write them down. As I already mentioned, the difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal is written down. So the first thing we’re going to do is start writing this stuff down.
If you’ve read my post on creating your world, you’ve already started doing this. You wrote down your 10-year vision and now we’re going to build on that and break it down further making it even more granular.
Then once you’ve got that goal, you’re going to make short statements that are known as mantras. Then as we take on these mantras, it helps cultivate a new identity and when that new identity comes online, our new behaviours come online.
You’ll be amazed at how this happens. I’ve been super surprised by my own behaviours and then I remember that I’ve been changing my identity and that’s just how it is now. Of course that’s a behaviour of mine.
And you’ll find that the more you do this process, the easier and quicker the change comes and what used to take 90 days will now start happening much much quicker.
A really important factor to consider when setting goals is the language you use. If you’re unfamiliar with what I’m referring to, then check out this post on survival vs creation language and this post on the power of language. When you’re setting your 10-year vision and your goals and mantras, I really want you to be in that creation mindset. You may look over your 10 year vision and find some negations in there. And you want to flip that into affirmations getting away from any survival language.
And you may find that you have 5 negations in there and that one affirmation is enough to cover them all. And vice versa, you may need 5 affirmations to cover 1 negation.
Another crucial bit to look at is removing soft talk. You know this is showing up in your language and it may be showing up in your writing. Make sure your goal is made up of solid talk. To recap, solid talk is the use of clear, direct and powerful language to effectively communicate your thoughts.
Next I want you to follow this up with, BECAUSE … and this is for creating sustainable purpose-driven objectives. This ‘because’ will fuel you towards reaching your goal and you may find that when your write the ‘because’ that it’s not a very good reason at all. And it’s time to go back and change those goals.
We all to often set goals that are not our goals in the first place. I mentioned this already and it’s worth stating again. I know that I’m certainly guilty of setting goals that were actually my parents’ goals, or my bosses’ goals, or the goals of my professors.
So when you write it down and you get that ‘because’ in there, then this really highlights if the goal is yours and you’ll get tuned into how it feels when you write it down.
Now we’re going to get into your mantras. Mantras are super powerful. We know this because humans have been successfully using mantras for 1000s of years and I’ve definitely seen great success since I’ve started using them.
Mantras are originally from Hinduism or Buddhism and are a word or sound repeated to a concentration in meditation, also a statement or slogan repeated frequently.
In terms of your mindset, I’m a huge fan of these since they are programming the subconscious mind, both shaping the mind and focusing the mind on what it is that we do want. Up until this point, your mind has likely run wild and been very disorganised. One of the things we’re going to be doing is shaping that mind, creating a lot more organisation, and a lot more focus, which then creates a lot more focused action. There are a lot of ways to create mantras, that I’m aware of and we’re going to use two types of mantras here.
The first one being specific outcomes, and the second one is identity shaping mantras.
Now, the specific outcomes what we’re going to do sound a lot like this: by this date, (dot dot dot). So by 1 August 2021, I (boom boom boom) accomplished a very specific and measurable thing. Now, this is measurable and inarguable. That means that if I were to ask my friends or if I would ask business partners or if I were to ask my family: “So hey, did I accomplish this thing?” Everybody would be in agreement. It’s very specific. There’s a by then date that is measurable, specific and inarguable.
Now the other type of mantra that we’re going to be creating is identity shaping.
Now this one can be arguable and is a story that you live into. This is the person you are becoming, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s true when you’re saying but we have methods; we’re going to use breathing. When you use techniques that as you start saying it, and we get your body to believe it we get that embedded in your subconscious. It starts becoming true really fast. So to use the breathing I want you to say your mantras out loud daily and follow each one with a really deep breath.
Now, the identity shaping mantra as well sounds like this: “I am a mindset coach, I am healthy. I have finesse. I am wealthy. I am happy.” These are all things, these are all I am statements. These can also be ‘I do’ statements such as “I have a morning routine”, or “I complete my morning routine every day” or “I complete my morning routine on most days.” “I have great relationships with my clients.” These are all examples of identity shaping statements; I am’s, and I do’s.
Now what we have here is phase two of our goal-setting process.
What we like to do is set goals for 3 years that are in support of your 10-year vision. Three years are really great so we use three years and then 1 year.
The reason for this is that studies indicate that we tend to underestimate what we can accomplish in three years and overestimate what we can accomplish in one year.
This can all seem quite daunting and it is.
Over time you’ll get better at this and you’ll start to be dialed in and get more accuracy on what you can achieve. And hey, if you don’t get your goal setting right the first time. That’s great. Fail forward. You can always go again. And what I suggest is that you do it every 90 days but if next week you decide to change this, it’s not a big deal so go ahead and change it.
So you set up your three-year deliverable and then your one year. And we come back to this every 90 days cause you may find your one year is actually a three year or that something else impacts it. And they are all connected so you need to shift it around.
And once you’ve got your 1 year deliverable you’re going to set up your 90-day sprint.
These are your quarterly habits. This is what you’re going to get done in the next 90 days. It’s your 90-day action plan.
This is what you’re going to accomplish in the next 12 weeks that is in support of that one-year goal, which is in support of the 3-year deliverable, which supports the 10-year vision.
And again. You can change this. If it’s not going in the right direction. Take note, and change it to an action that does.
And it’s only 90 days and keep it to 1, 2 or 3 at a time. Nothing crazy. You’ll be doing this and you’ll be doing the identity shift and this all works together in synergy and some things will happen really fast and others may be difficult and take longer. That’s ok. To help this, I want you to create three lists.
Take some time, and do this every 90 days too. To look at these three lists. Start, stop and continue. These are things you want to start doing. And this is business, personal or whatever. All the things you want to stop doing. And then all the things you want to continue doing. Now this is super valuable especially the continue list since it tracks all the things that you do and you can go back over that list and see maybe things that you need to stop doing, BUT you can delegate them to someone else and it’s a great way of finding what you enjoy doing and what isn’t giving you value at the moment and you can either stop or hand over.
In summary
First step: 10-year vision
Second step: add ‘because’ statements
Third step: adjust for accuracy and specificity.
Four: create short statements,
Five, three year. one year and 90-day objectives.
And one of the things I do with these three year and one year 90-day goals is to create statements for those as well. So you’re going to end up with a tonne of statements here. And then finally, do your start, stop continue list. And there you have it. You’ve set goals you set a plan, and you know what you’re going to do in the next 90 days to execute well.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
