It’s the start of something new and I am willing to bet that if you haven’t already been introduced to an opportunity to do or re-do your SMART goals, you’re about to be. For those of you who are unfamiliar, SMART goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-sensitive goals. I think they’re awesome for getting things done. They provide a great framework to help people be intentional and focused. So if what you need the most right now is something to keep you on track, you’ve found it. You can stop reading. The SMART system is your system. I don’t love the SMART goal system. For me, it’s a matter of principle and semantics. I think SMART goals is a misnomer and calling it a goal-setting system rubs me the wrong way. The SMART system isn’t really about goals as much as it’s about tasks or targets. As I’ve said, if you’re looking to hit targets and get tasks done, the SMART system is great for you. But if you’re looking at running down a goal—as serious goal— I don’t think the SMART system gives you enough to create the kind of change you need to get where you want to go. Here’s my case in point: Let’s say your goal is to win a college championship. You can break that down in a SMART goal. You can get specific, find ways to measure it, create actionable processes, get realistic and set deadlines and checkpoints. The plan can be really well laid out, but what if you don’t have the leaders, the courage, the determination, the will, the drive, etc. to make it happen? Big goals like that don’t just need a good plan, they need a solid purpose. Big goals like that aren’t just a task, they’re a quest. The word quest and question share the same root, which roughly translates to ‘seek out.’ A big goal is going to ask more of you. It will beg the question as to whether you have what it takes. It will prompt you to ‘seek-out’ who you are today and who you need to become. It demands discovery. And the things we discover about ourselves are rarely just about coming to awareness of who we’ve always been; rather, it’s about discovering the potential of who we are meant to be. It’s the experience of transformation. It’s what makes a good story good. The main character sets out on a quest and through the story his/her character develops and transforms. The SMART system will help you rack up accomplishments, and for some people it is maybe even enough of a framework to lead to changes in their life. But by design the SMART system is concerned with getting things done. I find that people don’t get excited about tasks, they get excited about change. I’ve yet to read a book or watch a movie where the point of the story is that someone plans to do something and they get it done. Tasks and targets do not a good story make! And unfortunately, when a goal is reduced down to being nothing more than something that is specific, measurable, realistic and has a deadline it feels more like a task. And I’ll say it again but differently, I’m not sure that “getting things done” is really the point of setting goals. Goal setting is about transformation. Consider this: Maybe someone has a goal to run a marathon in a certain time. That goal has an outcome to it, but behind the goal there must be some deeper desire to experience change and transformation. If you had everything you needed to run a marathon, it wouldn’t be a strong goal. It wouldn’t stretch you. You could just do it. If no change is necessary, it’s not a goal; the same way that making breakfast or tying my shoes isn’t a goal. At one point I had to learn to do those things and something in me had to grow to be able to do those things. At that point in my life, tying my shoes by myself and making my own breakfast was a suitable goal. Goals require growth. We set goals because they force us to become the kinds of people we need to be to accomplish the goal. So then if that’s the heart of a goal, it doesn’t make much sense to me to hone in on the specifics of the task and outcome as much as it does to think about personal transformation. Who will I become if I accomplish my goals? How will my life change? What changes if I change? So I propose a different system for goals this year: CHANGE. This acronym breaks down in 6 key changes you’ll need to make if you are going to be successful in accomplishing your goal; and they are also 6 changes you’ll see in your life if your goal successfully accomplishes a change in you. Goals work on you just as much as you work on your goal. So here are the 6 keys to change:
Change your CONTEXT
Change your HABITS
Change your ATTITUDE
Change your sense of NORMAL
Change your source of GRATIFICATION
Change your EXPECTATIONS
if you’d like to follow this article along with a fillable worksheet on CHANGE goals, click the link below. This document is taken from the UFV Cascades Student Athlete Wellness Journal, and it references content from within that document. These references don’t bear tremendous impact on the usability of this worksheet.
6 KEYS TO CHANGE
CONTEXT
What you experience can’t always be controlled, but what can be controlled is what context you put yourself in. What options do you have available based on the context you are in? What circumstances should you avoid because they lead to bad decisions? What circumstances should you experience more regularly because they promote better outcomes? How much time in particular contexts makes it possible or impossible to make good choices? Who do you spend the most time with and what is their influence on the options and choices you can act on? A lot of what we experience comes down to what choices we make around the context and setting our experiences can occur in. By changing our context we change the options. Ie. If I really want to lose weight I shouldn’t spend every lunch hour in fast-food restaurants hanging out with friends who normalize eating unhealthy food. That may seem obvious, but apply the same thinking to the actual changes you can control in your own contexts that would make pursuing your goal that much easier. These changes in context are small decisions that begin to make a big change in who we can become because of the options we choose to have available to us.
HABITS
We often mistakenly describe who we are by what we do. We, as individuals, are not only the things we do, though the things we do are very much a player in who we are. On of the greatest ways to influence who we are and who we become is by changing what we do. It’s about leveraging that inclination in our minds to reduce down who we are to the things we do. Leveraging that inclination allows us to focus on the easier task of changing our habits. I won’t say I am a soccer player if I never play soccer. I won’t say I’m a runner if I only do it once. But it’s the consistency at which we do the things we do that build out our “who.” If we want to experience change and transformation it starts with making small habitual changes that provide us with evidence that we are the something we hope to be. I’m not a runner if I run a marathon once a decade but don’t run any other time. I’m not a soccer player if I’ve played one or two pick up games in my life. But even if I have never run a marathon, if I choose to run for 5 minutes a day, even just 3 days a week, that’s pretty consistent evidence that I am a runner. I don’t have to be a great runner to start believing that running is something I do. I just have to show up. I don’t have to play elite soccer to be a soccer player, but I might join a recreation league that requires me to play even just once per week. It’s the consistency that allows me to identify with being a soccer player. So if our goal is transformation we need to change the way we see ourselves and since I’m inclined to determine who I am by what I do, I need to change the things I do. It makes sense to intentionally implement small behaviors that create a portfolio of evidence toward that end. James Clear uses language like “casting votes” with our actions. You get to vote on who you want to be and the vote doesn’t have to be unanimous, just a majority. If your actions consistently cast a vote in favor of the person you want to be then you are that person. If you are that person, you can begin expanding on what that means for you. I like setting “I am” goals because they force me to think about what might have to be true about me if I am going to declare some bold about who I am. Maybe I create the kind of habits that allow me to find the confidence to say “I am a runner.” Well if I say that, then what else should be true? My training attire should match; my eating should support what I identify with; my friend groups might change. If I am a runner I do what runners do. That works the other direction too. If I want to say that I am something then I can make small changes in the things I do that better complement the things I would like to do more of to become the person I imagine would do those things. If I want to be a soccer player, I should buy some cleats. I should go to a field and put those cleats on. I should run in those cleats. So far I’ve done nothing with a ball, yet I’m creating actions that make it easier for me to follow through on other actions that will allow me to feel more like a soccer player. Small actions that agree with bigger ones continually cast votes towards the person I would like to be. I won’t wear cleats in every setting and I won’t do everything a soccer player does; but I can begin to work toward casting enough votes with my actions to make it evident to myself that I am the person I am striving to be.
ATTITUDE
Even despite efforts to change your context and your habits, you’ll happen upon situations you can’t fully control. Sure, by making good choices and bold changes you can control a great degree of what you might experience, but not everything that can be experienced is within your control. We can’t control the weather, we can’t control how other people might act, we can’t control the unexpected, we can’t control certain setbacks, and so much more. In the instances we can’t control we can always maintain control of at least one thing— our attitude. I know that’s cliche, but how we choose to perceive and respond to our circumstances is only out of our control if we are unintentional about our attitude. If you don’t choose your attitude then you might have a great attitude when things are going great, but then you might have a horrible one when things are going bad. Our attitudes, or perceptions and reactions, are based on how we see the world. Follow down to the root of every attitude we have and you discover a belief. For example, if my attitude becomes negative in adversity it’s because deep down I believe I deserve better than what I’m experiencing. That’s not a bad belief, but having this belief with a bad attitude in the face of an already challenging experience doesn’t help. If you really believe you deserve the best in all situations then what type of attitude can you adopt to ensure you get the best in each situation? Maybe you choose to see opportunity instead of obstacles. That change in attitude allows you to capitalize on the belief that you deserve the best by seeing adversity as a chance to grow and invest in yourself. When you see things with this kind of attitude your response to adversity is to persevere, endure, persist and overcome for the sake of personal growth. You can do this because you believe you deserve better and in light of a situation that may be out of your control you can, in the very least, choose to use the situation to make yourself better. Adversity might be an obstacle that keeps you from progressing toward a desired outcome, but it doesn’t have to keep you from progress altogether. This is what it can look like to work to change your attitude. Change in attitude takes intention and effort and this series of steps might help. Imagine as many obstacles and outcomes that you can. How would those ends make you feel? How do you perceive them now? The way we perceive things is a good starting point to understanding what we believe. Maybe we see certain obstacles as hopeless. Maybe we see some outcomes as ultimate. Those are big perceptions about our circumstances. But asking ourselves why we see things that way gets to what we believe about the situation and ourselves. Maybe we think certain things are hopeless because we have allowed ourselves to believe that we can’t make anything good of that situation. Maybe we make other particular things ultimate in our minds because we allow ourselves to believe we can only experience fulfilment if we experience those particular outcomes. As the beliefs start to shake out of our personal reflections, challenge them: What is the exception to my belief? For example, what good could I possibly make out of a seemingly hopeless situation? Maybe I could become more resilient, maybe my efforts could be an inspiration to others, maybe I learn to lean on others to support me. All of those exceptions are viable options to uproot a belief that doesn’t have to define your attitude. With those exceptions you can create affirmations that reinforce what you believe and how you see situations. Maybe some of those affirmations look like, “all tough situations are opportunities for me to grow,” and “people want to help me overcome and I get to invite people into my success.” The dangers in unattended attitudes is that they are based off of perceptions and beliefs that seem like absolutes. If I believe that an outcome is an ultimate for me and maybe the only way I could experience fulfilment, that’s dangerous. It’s not dangerous to strive for big and exciting goals, but it is dangerous to believe that attaining those goals are they ONLY way to happiness. Unattended attitudes tend to lean toward the absolute because they don’t consider the breadth of possibilities. So do the work. How do you see all possible outcomes? Why do you see it that way? What must you believe in order to see it that way? What are the exceptions or alternatives to that belief that can help you build a better attitude? How can you rephrase those exceptions and alternatives into affirmations? Once you have affirmations, you need to practice repeating them so that they can become more ingrained. If you start to believe those affirmations then you’ll be better able to see different situations differently; and if you can see things from a broader perspective you can respond in a more nuanced way. It’s this type of intentionality that allows you to be better than defaulting to whatever attitude your impulse commands. With alternative points of view and the choice to believe, see and respond differently we can change our attitude to better suit the situation. A better suited attitude allows us to be our best in all situations.
NORMAL
this concept is loosely related to every other area you need to change, but it’s worth diving into as an entity of its own. You need a new normal. Not just a new context or new habits or new attitudes— those changes won’t feel comfortable right away because they aren’t the norm for you. The way we see ‘normal’ comes from two major influences in our lives; the first is social influence, and the second is the influence of the status quo. Social influence is extremely powerful. We are unlikely to deviate from the norm if it is going to disrupt the way people see and accept us. We have a strong drive to belong. This means that most of the things that we do or experience falls within generally acceptable behaviour. Even things that seem like particularities or preferences that make us unique fall within the scope of normative behaviour. Not everyone likes coffee, but if you do, it’s still normal. Not every coffee drinker likes their coffee black, but if you do it’s still normal. Not everyone takes vinegar in their coffee, but if you do, that’s not normal. Certain particularities are still socially acceptable, while others fall well outside the norm. So as we’re looking at changing a lot of what we think and what we do, it may not feel normal at first but we have to remind ourselves that it may still fall within the scope of what’s socially acceptable. As an example, it may not feel normal to train in a way that makes you feel sore all the time; but to some people that is normal. It may seem extreme to train to lift hundreds and thousands of pounds; but to a small set of people, that’s normal. Your new normal might not feel normal just yet, but you’ll see that as you begin changing your context, habits and attitude more, you’ll start being surrounded by like individuals. If you’re struggling with your new normal, you might just need to find a community of people who have chosen the same version of normal as you. I think crossfitters, extreme marathoners, and adrenaline junkies are crazy; but each of these groups have a thriving community of people who have normalized each respective lifestyle. The second major influence on what we experience as normal is the influence of the status quo. More simply put, this is the systems and routine that help to keep things simple and frictionless. We are heavily influence by behaviours that easiest to go “auto-pilot” on. As an example, some people find it easiest to commute 5-15 minutes to work. For others they are used to doing 60-90minutes each day. For some industries driving is a multi-day venture. Normal daily driving for me is about 20-40minutes. That amount of commute time fits well with the rest of my routine and lifestyle. If I had to drive an hour or more everyday, It would change the time I wake up and the way I prepare before going to bed and what kinds of things I might eat during the day. This is just an example but we often default to the things that aren’t going to disrupt our routine. You won’t be able to make lasting change if it means that the changes you are making are going to disrupt how efficiently you move through life. The moment you create a bit of friction with change, you need to adapt many things to accommodate that new experience. The reason people have a hard time sticking to a training schedule is because they don’t change anything else in their routine. The added activity rubs against the efficiencies of life and make it hard for the new thing to become a normal thing. So as you change many other aspects of your life, it would be wise to consider what your normal is now. What would need to change to make sure your routine doesn’t get too disrupted. If you must disrupt your routine, how long do you think it will take for that change to feel like it’s normal to you? How long has it taken in the past? If you have a timeline for how long it takes for high-friction changes to feel like normal you can look at setting a small timeline or checkpoints to follow. Another way to avoid friction altogether is to sacrifice something in the routine that doesn’t mean much to you. Maybe you watch a few hours of TV every night. If your goal is to read more, could you spend one of those hours reading instead? That’s a relatively frictionless change. Or maybe you have a regular time you go to the restroom in the morning. Could you read a few pages on the toilet instead of scrolling on your phone? Maybe you commute for 30 minutes or more. Instead of getting books to read, could you listen to audiobooks on your commute in place of listening to the radio? Making something your new normal is more than just the changes; it’s changing whatever else needs to change to make it so that the new normal is as frictionless as possible for you.
But maybe your new normal, or the change that you are interested in pursuing, is so different that it would almost be impossible for it to feel normal. What if you are an Arizonan trying to become an Olympic gold medalist in something like luge. I don’t imagine there are too many people in your area pursuing the same thing, so there’s no strong way to make it socially normal for you. And I can’t imagine that something so immense and extreme would be anything but disruptive to the status quo of your daily life. If you’re pursuing an extreme goal and looking for extreme life transformation then it should go without saying that you should probably expect that your new normal is going to be extremely uncomfortable. For people who are looking for extreme change your new normal is simply this: get comfortable being uncomfortable. Your normal will be to always exist on the fringes of what it means to be normal. And if you can adopt that your version of normal won’t be normal to just about everyone else, then you can find routine and comfort in constantly pushing beyond normal. This isn’t to say that you don’t need norms, everyone needs something to make them feel like what they’re doing is normal. What becomes normal to the extreme is being the exception to the norm. It’s why we call the exceptional, exceptional— they are the exception. If the pursuit of being an exception can become normalized for you then that is your new normal. Many who pursue this describe it as lonely, and that must be true because so few get to be the exception. That’s a sacrifice that the exceptional have to choose for themselves.
No matter the change or transformation, you will have to change your normal. You cannot experience change without changing your normal. If you don’t change your normal, you will always default back to what feels normal to you— the same people, the same groups, the same routines, the same life. Change your normal.
GRATIFICATION
we ascribe value to our experiences based on how much we enjoy them. Accomplishment seems to be this paramount ideal when it comes to gratification. Another is pleasure— if it feels good, do it. The issue that arises when it comes to what we feel gratified by is that just like our goals we often over-emphasize experiences and outcomes and under-emphasize the process and change. People who are only gratified by what they can experience in the moment and what they might experience in the future don’t have the positive reinforcement to sustain them through the process, when things aren’t fun, or when the going gets tough. I want to spend more time on why accomplishment as a source of gratification doesn’t always work. People think that accomplishment will be gratifying because of how much effort and investment goes into realizing a goal. They have an investment mindset that makes them think that by paying the price now, I’ll be that much more gratified later. Sometimes this is the case, but because so much hinges on the moment of accomplishment we often miss the other potentially gratifying aspects of pursuing our goal. At the point of realization many people will tell you they were happy and relieved to be done, but a little underwhelmed. It’s why these types of people will accomplish a goal and then set another goals to chase. They are constantly chasing the feeling accomplishment and constantly ending up somewhat let down or disappointed. People who are very driven in the financial world or the athletics world will tell you that after chasing down every possible accomplishment they still feel like something’s missing. I believe that something is a more genuine gratification. But before we talk about that, let’s explore the opposite end of the spectrum. Some people are so driven for a future gratification that they grind through task after task and day after day to get it. Other people don’t see the point in delayed gratification and, instead, live for the now. If it feels good, do it. People who live this way describe themselves as generally happy people. In comparison to those who delay gratification, I’d imagine that these people are happier on more occasions simply because they experience gratification on a more regular basis. So you should expect that people who live in the moment would be ultimately more gratified, but that’s not what you find. People who live for the moment don’t often put themselves in positions to prepare for the future. It’s hard to sustain consistent gratification if you don’t cultivate opportunities for it to occur. For example, you might eat donuts everyday and love life because donuts are delicious— but one day you’ll be so overweight and unhealthy that you can’t really enjoy anything else. There are consequences to only living in the now. Another side effect of now-living is that it doesn’t demand much personal growth and transformation. The person you are in your twenties is maybe not the same person you should be in your forties as a parent, or mentor, or co-worker. Moreover, we are all designed to feel like we are a part of a story or a mission or a purpose. If your life is all about living in the moment, and you never experience growth or change, the story can’t develop— the plot can’t thicken. Purpose requires a balance of problems, passion, possibility, potential, and personal growth. Therefore, now-livers might feel generally happy more often than later-livers, but they might not be as fulfilled. It’s because there is no depth to what gratified them. There is nothing of personal value and worth because immediate gratification costs very little of you. You invest very little and so the value of what you get isn’t worth very much.
Genuine gratification is a combination of the two, and it is a major change that must occur if you want to experience meaningful and fulfilling transformation in your life. Genuine gratification understands the principle of investing in your future, but adopts the concept of enjoying the present. This is because genuine gratification isn’t just about immediate or delayed gratification, it’s about being gratified by the process and by ones progress. Think of what it’s like to carve a sculpture. Sure, the end product is going to be very gratifying, and maybe even the act of doing art is cathartically gratifying— but what really feels rewarding is the process of watching your hard work take shape. It’s not easy work to carve something, so the actions in any other context might not be very enjoyable. Yet we enjoy those actions while doing art. And the product after only an hour or so of carving isn’t much to celebrate when compared with other finished works, and yet we get excited about the progress. Like a carving, major life transformations and goals take time, discipline, effort, struggle, pain, disappointment, frustration, breakthrough, overcoming, progress, etc. If you are only gratified by the outcome you’ll miss the opportunities to experience gratification for the ways you are growing and changing. If you are only gratified by the good moments, you’ll miss the chance to experience how adversity can turn you into the type of person who solves problems, explores their potential, uncovers possibility, deepens their passion and experiences purpose. It’s not about the consistency of good moments, or the hope of one great moment that will gratify you— it’s the growth. Who are you becoming. What is that evolving person able to do that they weren’t able to do before. Our value isn’t in our experiences or our accomplishments, it’s in our self worth. That value only increases in as much as we learn to appreciate its value by investing into it. The big change you need to make if you’re going to experience meaningful transformation is learning to seek gratification in the process and the progress and not just in the present or the product.
EXPECTATIONS
the final area of change that will create meaningful transformation is changing your expectations. When we talk about changing expectations we can very easily conflate the concept with “lowering our expectations,” which isn’t at all what I’m arguing for here. The idea of lowering your expectations is to dull down the hopes you have associated with the outcomes you’re pursuing so that you aren’t as disappointed by underwhelming results, or, conversely, so that you are pleasantly surprised by results that exceed your lowered expectations. This type of change in your expectations is more of a mind-trick than a change. Maybe it’s useful for some people, so I’m not undermining the value it has for some. But when I talk about changing expectations, I mean reconsidering what your expectations should be entirely, or further qualifying the expectations you already have. So what do you expect if you accomplish your goal? Many people expect that they will be happier or more satisfied. Some expect that they’ll have a greater sense of self-worth. My interest is in what you expect will change. If you accomplish the goal, how will your life change? If your answer is still “I’ll be happier, more satisfied, have a greater sense of self-worth,” then what will those changes in your life mean for you? How does that impact what comes next? What kind of person are you able to be if you have happiness and self-worth? You see I’m challenging you to change your expectations so that you come to expect change. If your goal is to run a marathon what will have changed? Will you be healthier? Does it mean that running will be cemented as a new hobby for you? If that’s the case what would you do differently if you were healthier? Who might you spend more time with as a runner? Where else would you want to try running? What changes? If you want to experience meaningful transformation in your story then you need to understand how you expect your story to change as you do. These changes won’t happen just because you accomplish your goal, they happen all along the way because transformation happens progressively over time. As you change your context more and more you should expect that your story will start to change. It has to. The setting and characters are changing. As you change your habits the way you and other people see you starts to change. That’s a change in the main character of your story, how that character exists in his or her story, and how the other characters in the story interact with them. As you change your attitude you change your perceptions and beliefs. There is a famous idea from Wayne Dyer that goes, “if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” A change in the way you choose to see your world changes the world in which you see, and by consequence, changes the story of how you exist in that world. As you change your sense of normal, and as you change your source of gratification your whole story changes with you. And by the time you’ve changed all these things you’ve created context, habits, attitudes, norms, and sources of gratification that allow you to attain your goal. The changes you make allow you to reach your goal and the reaching for your goal has also created all these changes. So if so much change must occur to accomplish a goal, and if so much change has occurred in accomplishing a goal, what are your expectations for this transformed life? How does that changed person interact with others? How does that changed person pursue a career? How does that changed person parent? How does that changed person leave a legacy? Maybe you’ve given enough thought to your expectations that you’re already expecting change and not just an outcome. If that’s so, how can you better qualify the changes you expect to make? How can you be more specific? How broadly will those changes effect your life? How deeply will those changes alter the way you live? The better you qualify your expectations the more focus, breadth and depth you can commit to your goal. Think about someone who only expects to accomplish their goal, or only expects to be satisfied if they accomplish their goal. That level of expectation might motivate them to get the task done. Now think of someone who expects to be transformed by their goal and whose story gets to be forever changed because they get to be a better version of themselves. That level of expectation changes you entirely; it motivates your existence. Change your expectations so that you come to expect that the best version of yourself will continually come forward. Expect your story to be more than just a series of accomplishments. Expect that it will be a story where you grow through adversity and success alike and become the character of a story marked by well developed relationships and experiences. Imagine a life with a legacy of going beyond mere accomplishments and into a very admirable and accomplished life. Change your expectations so that you come to expect change.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Change your CONTEXT
Change your HABITS
Change your ATTITUDE
Change your sense of NORMAL
Change your source of GRATIFICATION
Change your EXPECTATIONS
At the outset I made an argument for a shift the the system we use to navigate our goals. I argued that CHANGE is what we really need and what we should really expect. I argued that our goals do as much work on us as we do on our goals. If you change your context, habits, attitude, sense of normal, source of gratification and expectations then those changes will beget further changes. There’s an exercise I learned that I like to do with a number of my athletes and clients; I’d like to close by doing it with you:
As you read this, imagine a life changing goal you have. Take a bit of time. Imagine something big, something that would radically change your story. Now imagine someone you really trust, someone whose word means a lot to you. Now imagine that a future version of that person came back in time from a future just beyond the goal you have. They’re excited to see you and exclaim something like, “You did it! You did everything you hoped you would do!” And then they tell you all about how successful you were and how everything changed. As you imagine the words they share with you, you start to wonder more and more what it would be like to experience the kind of change that realizing your goal would create. You imagine all the ways you will have grown as a result of reaching that goal. And you don’t have to imagine very hard, your trusted friend describes all the amazing ways you’ve grown because of this goal and because of the things you needed to do to reach this goal. It’s time for your friend to head back to the future. After this crazy event you have nothing but confidence that you will actually accomplish your goal. Because you’re more confident about the outcome you feel a lot more comfortable taking chances on the process. When you fail along the way, it’s not that big a deal because you know how things work out in the end. As you experience small successes on the way, you don’t get overly excited because you expect progress. You make decisions and changes in your life that would normally have put you well outside your comfort zone because you know that those choices align better with the picture of what you are growing toward. You connect with the kinds of people who will help you realize your goal. You inspire them with your confidence. You know how things are going to go, so when you invite people into your process they believe you and support you. You start to shift your context to align with the expected outcome. You adopt habits that you imagine someone who has completed the goal would have. Your attitude about the highs and lows stabilize because you have a bold perspective upheld by a strong belief about how things will shake out for you. Your old normal fades away to make room for the normal. You get your gratification from seeing the progress you’re making because you know that every step is getting you closer to a determined eventuality. And of course you expect change— you can’t help thinking about it. You think about what your friend told you. You think about all the growth they described and how much your life will change by reaching your goal. You expect change so as change happens in your life you embrace it. And one day you finally reach your goal, just like your friend said you would. You reach your goal and you experience the change and the growth and the difference exactly how your friend described it, and even beyond what you could have imagined. And you look back on the process and you’re left with a very curious thought. Was it all just destiny, or the wealth of little changes that lead to where you are in that moment. If you had never known for sure that you would reach your goal, would you have changed enough to experience the transformational realization of this event? Was it knowing that you could change, was it knowing what change might be like, was it the confidence you had in embracing change that created the change in the first place? Was it all of the changes you made knowing that change was inevitable, that in fact made the change inevitable? And as you dwell on that I’ll leave you with this challenge:
You are about to embark on something new. It’s not just a task, because if it were you could just do it and move on. No, this thing you are about to begin is more of a quest. And the question being asked of you is will you CHANGE and become who you need to become in order reach the destiny you hope to reach. And if you knew you could reach your goal and become that person, what would you CHANGE today?
T H E O R E M 