As you may know, I have switched to a biweekly cadence for publishing new blogs. On my “off” weeks, I will continue sharing some Best Of Operation Melt posts from the past (with a little sprucing up). My blog has a ton of spectacular content you might never have seen before, and it is just as relevant today.
Enjoy this Best Of Operation Melt blog, and stay tuned for a new post next week.
Are you ready for a dad joke?
I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. My dad joke may be groan-worthy, but it's worth every penny you paid for it, right?
A skeleton walks into a bar and says to the bartender, "Give me a beer and a mop."
Best of Operation Melt: What If I Don’t Know What I Want?
Coach Tony: I am trying to use your Goal Success Quick Start Guide to figure out some new goals for myself – getting ahead of the dreaded New Year’s Resolutions season. I am working through the ABCD process and have completed my Wheel of Life, but I hit a brick wall with the next step. As I started brainstorming goals, I found myself writing down things I thought I should want, but I don’t really want those things. It turns out that I really have no idea what I want, and this is standing in my way. How do I create goals when I don’t know what I want?
The first step is to take a deep breath and rest easy because you are not alone in this struggle.
Many people I have known over the years, and several who I have coached, have experienced this same struggle. Heck, I have even experienced it myself. But you can overcome this temporary barrier and commit to the goals that will create the life of your dreams.
I will share two quick techniques that might help you break through this barrier.
What Are Your Anti-Goals?
A quick path to figuring out what you want often begins with what you don’t want from your life. Your anti-goals.
If you are struggling with the B (or brainstorming) stage of the ABCD technique, it may be time to flip the exercise on its head. Instead of brainstorming the 30-50 things you want to achieve, do the opposite.
Complete the same exercise, but list the things you do not want to do in your life.
Here are some examples:
- If you are single, divorced or widowed, do you want to be married (or married again)?
- Do you want to start a family?
- Do you want to get a job and climb your way up the ladder to the corner office?
- Do you want to start your own business?
- Do you want to run a marathon?
The list of possible anti-goals is virtually limitless.
Once you have listed 30-50 anti-goals, you will likely find your actual goals hidden amongst those things you don’t want from your life.
One word of caution, I only recommend this anti-goals exercise if you are genuinely stuck with your goal brainstorming effort. I say this because focusing on positives with goal-setting and affirmations is far more effective. Otherwise, you risk putting the negative version in the universe and into your brain. This might inadvertently instruct your brain to subconsciously focus on what you don’t want instead of what you do.
But, sometimes, we get stuck and need to try something a little different.
Work Backwards
Another strategy to help get you past your goal brainstorming barrier is working backward.
In my Goal Success Quick Start Guide, I walk you through an effective goal-setting process, one that’s very similar to my goals coaching approach. The process begins with the ABCD technique, and then you figure out your why and make the goal SMART. The process ends with the vision exercise, which asks you to picture your life after achieving your goal. Finally, you write a highly descriptive narrative of that time in your life, making it as vivid as possible.
When you are stuck trying to figure out what you really want in life, you can start with the vision exercise and then work backward.
Close your eyes and picture yourself living the life of your dreams. What would a day look like when you reach that point?
Picture every detail (consider using the Wheel of Life categories as a guide): where you live, the people in your life, how you spend your days, what your house looks like, what every day feels like and so forth. Then, write it down, even if just bullet points. The more descriptive and vivid the picture, the better.
Once you have your ideal life vision, you can use project management skills and complete a work breakdown exercise to reverse-engineer your goals.
- Where does your vision/ideal life differ from your current life?
- What things need to change in your life to make your vision a reality?
- What must be true to bring your vision to life?
This list of needed changes is a starting point for figuring out your goals.
Breaking down those required changes into bite-sized steps (no more than a year in duration) needed to make those changes happen. These steps can be prioritized and used as an input into your goal project charter. This will allow you to commit to your SMART goals and build a plan that works for you.
Don’t Skip the Why
One last critical tip: don’t skip the “why” exercise in the Goal Success Quick Start Guide.
This exercise will help you make sure that the goals you create are, in fact, your goals and not someone else’s vision for your life.
Each of us gets bombarded with external expectations for our lives every day. As we grow up, we are expected to get good grades and conform to social norms. As we mature, we are expected to get a good 8 to 5 job, get married and have a family. As we try to live our adult lives, we are told that we should be thinner, more attractive, more stylish and that we need to amass possessions to keep up with our friends and neighbors.
With a constant barrage of external expectations, we can start internalizing them. Before we know it, our subconscious minds have adopted these expectations from others as our own goals. Whether we really want them or not!
Through the why exercise, you can dig deep into the motivations behind each of your goals. This exercise will help you determine if your why is because of an external expectation you have internalized or if the goal is really something YOU want.
Beyond filtering out external expectations from your goals, the why exercise also serves as a significant source of motivation as you pursue your goals.
Sometimes, we high-achievers struggle to figure out what we really want from our lives. And certain personality types are at a higher risk of these struggles. But, with a few creative tweaks to the process defined in the Goal Success Quick Start Guide, we can overcome these struggles and be well on our way to living the life of our dreams.
If you need a little help digging deep into your goals, you may benefit from some coaching. I am a master life coach and a goal-setting ninja, and would be honored to help you figure out which goals will help you build the life of your dreams. Reach out and let me help you get past your barrier.
I believe in you; let me help YOU believe in you!
Meet Coach Tony
My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.
I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.
Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.
Breathe new life into your goals
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