If the multitude of writers and thinkers on setting achieving goals are to be believed, success is easy. Think and it’s done. Napoleon Hill set the maximum eighty years ago that “if the mind of man can conceive it and believe it, the mind of man can achieve it.” But not so quick, Mr Hill, as someone who has set a number of goals in life, I can tell you from experience that it is not as easy as that phrase would have us believe. In fact, I don’t think I would be alone and feeling like Linus of Charlie Brown Fame sitting in a lonely Pumpkin Patch never to receive my reward from the Great Pumpkin. Actually achieving your goals is hard.
Goals are lofty things. They challenge us. They give us purpose. They make us better and I believe they are part of what makes us human. So then, how not to smack headlong into the inevitable failure with the doubt and emotional fatigue that failure brings. I believe there is a way; a way that took me years to realize. and since nobody else has given it a name I’m going to call it “Failing Forward.”
Let’s examine failure for a minute. Failure is an unfortunate part of every successful venture. Even as toddlers attempting to walk, we stand up, we fall down. We fail in our first attempt at independence, so our distaste of failure starts young. But looking deeper, failure in itself is not a bad thing. There are many positive aspects to failing. Failure teaches us what doesn’t work. It can stimulate our creative thinking now and in the future. And it can also strengthen our habit of resolve. That is if we have the resolve to succeed, no matter what the effort requires.
If we don’t, however the emotional upheaval that failure brings is a real danger. It is the emotion that stops us in our tracks, makes us weary of going on, not the failure. What’s needed then is a strategy that will allow person to fail, to fail quickly, and at the same time defeats the emotional stigma that comes with failing while opening a renewed pathway to success, and although it sounds like a contradiction, the idea here is to learn to fail successfully.
Here’s my list for doing that:
1. Don’t Set Yourself Up for Failure
The best way to avoid failure is not to have one to begin with. It starts with setting goals that are tangible and quantifiable. Success must be easily verified through any of the senses. Don’t say, “make sales calls.” Do say, “make five sales calls.” Even better set a deadline. Say, “make five sales calls today.” Better yet, “make five sales calls today in the 100 block of Slater street.” The more specific the goal, the more easily it can be achieved and the more easily success or failure can be verified.
2. Goals Need to Be Written Down (Using Vigorous Verbs)
When you write down your goals, write them down as actions. Actions need verbs to describe them. Use vigorous verbs. Lazy verbs walk; vigorous verbs run or better yet they gallop. Set the time and place and then do it!
3. Place an Emphasis On the Process
It is a law of the physical world that what you focus on expands. Therefore, in setting a goal, focus can never be misplaced. Much of self-help literature places in emphasis on results, while ignoring the process or at the very least, leaving the process up to the subconscious or super conscious mind.
At the start, results do not yet exist in the physical plane; so to the mind, focusing on results can be a fast track to frustration. If focus is placed instead on tangible and verifiable actions (the process), actions can be modified as needed, even on-the-fly. Action dictates more action; creating momentum.
Never focus on finishing an entire project. If you can do an entire project in one sitting that is fine, if not focus on starting. Focus on 30 to 50 minutes of solid work. Never finish at a natural breakpoint. If you’re working on a much larger project, give it another five or ten minutes before quitting. By “finishing down” or in the middle of something, it will be much easier to pick up the thread and to keep the momentum going.
And here’s a big one – you CAN start “crappy.”
Accept inside yourself that you can do it, even though it’s really crappy at first. Your first attempts at oil painting may be horrible when compared to the Masters. Accept that you may go through a period of time before you see any satisfying results. Picasso had his Blue Period, you can have your Crappy Period. Start anywhere in the process and then work to improve on your results. Continuous improvement is the ultimate key to success.
4. Rest and Reward Between Actions
Give yourself periods of rest and relaxation between actions. All growth, whether mental, physical, or spiritual comes in the rest phase, not during the active phase. Accept that this is not procrastination or old-fashioned being lazy. Your mind and body need time to process all that you’ve done. If you sleep on it, you will wake up with renewed vigor and fresh ideas.
If you can, reward yourself with something small for each step you take; a cup of your favorite coffee or a walk and sunshine will do. Save the big reward for making your final goal and make it something big, something memorable. This will form an anchor in your psyche that you can use on future goals.
5. List Making
Making a list clarifies and identifies tangible actions needed to succeed. And remember, there is a difference between a to-do list and a list of potential “next actions.” A to-do list is more like a list of chores, things you’ve already done once and are going to repeat, where a next action list is akin to brainstorming a set of solutions and settling on where to go next.
Writing a list also gets the actions out of your mind and down on paper where they can be organized into a cohesive plan that allows your subconscious mind to start work. Writing a list makes for an efficient use of time. You can make use of junk time. And using the Japanese idea of Kaizen or small steps also helps in keeping the momentum going.
6. The Best Way to Get Started Again and Again
The best way to get started again and again is to issue a challenge to yourself. Is there some aspect of your goal that is quantifiable? Can you work on that for just 10 to 30 minutes before quitting? Denzel Williams in the movie The Equalizer always checked his watch before engaging in an action. His challenge was not to take out the bad guys, but to see if he could take out the bad guys in 30 to 40 seconds. He therefore turned the process into a game, a game that did not focus on success or failure, but simply on the amount of time that a specific action took.
Did he succeed? You bet he did.
7. Detachment
Another big prickly point with people is detachment. Detachment is a conscious effort on the part of a person to not attach any emotional value to an event, good or bad. Ancient Chinese writers saw detachment as the highest form of success.
It took me many years to understand why. Success and failure stand as two sides of a coin. One or the other can lock you up and lock you down emotionally. As many people are stopped in their tracks by success, as they are by failure. Detachment from either will again allow you to focus on process. Accept the failure, reward the success; then simply “move on.”
8. Dwelling versus Insight and Analysis paralysis
There is a need for reflection after a loss or a success. Both successes and failures need to be analyzed; improvements pointed out and incorporated into the next actions. Journaling in the form of a narrative is an ideal way to draw insight. Remember also there is a difference between dwelling on a loss and analyzing it for insight. Dwelling is negative and will lock you up emotionally. Analysis on the other hand should be focused on what areas can be improved. Insight, intuitive or otherwise, should be acted on immediately.
9. the Killer Instinct
The Killer Instinct is a lot less sinister than it sounds. The Killer Instinct is simply the ability to bring a goal to a successful conclusion. It is a satisfying conclusion that is the end goal of all process. Sales trainers call people who do it consistently – Closers.
So by setting goals that are tangible and quantifiable by writing them down; by setting dates and acting on them in a consistent, no nonsense manner, you can succeed, and even if you fail, you can fail faster, you can fail more often and still move forward to your ultimate success.