Don't Pull Up The Seeds When You've Just Sown Them
Why is it that 95% of people who set themselves goals fail to
reach them? In one word: impatience.
The most important and difficult stage of goal-building is the
immediate stage after you set your goals. In the first stage,
there's a brief blip of euphoria. But this soon passes and then
you hit the arid plateau of learning. It's in this phase that
most people lose their way and give up.
But this is the phase when you have to hang in there despite
appearances. Otherwise, it's like digging up the seeds a week
after sowing them. So, here, for those who need a roadmap
through the arid plains of goal-building, is a 6-step guide to
managing your impatience and keeping your plans on track.
1. Have Plenty of Motivation Reminders. One of the cruel
tricks that life plays on us is to make goal-setting easy and
goal-building hard. This is no more true than in the opening
phases of working towards a new goal. When we choose a new goal
that seems within our reach, we are full of excitement and
anticipation. It's like the start of a marathon when everyone
cheers us over the start line. But the cheers soon become a
distant memory when we move into the second phase, the hard
slog. It's in this phase that we need to have a ready supply of
motivation reminders to keep us going. Here's one I often use.
It's from Ray Kroc, founder of the global restaurant chain
McDonald's. Kroc was an amazing entrepreneur. He says that it is
in the early stages of working towards a new goal that you learn
the most: "When you're green, you grow. When you're ripe, you
rot."
2. Be A Fly, Not A Bee. The chief problem with the early
stages of goal-building is that you can never be sure of the
right way forward, particularly if you are breaking new ground.
You try something and it doesn't work. You try again and it
doesn't work again. And again. And again. That's tough. But it's
essential. Because you're learning. Karl Weick says that in this
situation it is much better to be a fly than a bee. When you
place a fly and a bee in an upturned jam jar, the bee will head
straight for the light and repeatedly buzz against the bottom of
the glass. The fly on the other hand will dive frantically
around the jar exploring every corner until he finds a way out.
That's the example to follow when you want to succeed: be a fly,
not a bee.
3. Accept The Struggle. Those who are eager to succeed
often treat the second phase of goal-building as an unnecessary
waste of time. They would prefer to skip it and jump to the next
phase of success. But this is to misunderstand the whole point
of the second phase. It's there to toughen you up. You may have
heard the story of "The Man and the Butterfly" about the man who
saw a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. To help it
out, the man cut a bigger hole in the cocoon and pulled the
butterfly through. However, instead of flying away, the
butterfly was unable to fly. Its body was too swollen. What the
man did not understand was that the butterfly's struggle to
emerge through the hole forces fluid from its body to its wings
and thus makes them strong and ready to carry its weight. Like
the butterfly, we need to struggle to succeed.
4. Be Objective. In stage two of goal-building, it's
valuable to stand back and distance ourselves from what's going
on. We need to be tripeds not bipeds. Bipeds are people who see
only themselves and others. Risk-taking is a do-or-die
undertaking. Progress is either a triumph or disaster. Life is
black and white, winning or losing. Tripeds, on the other hand,
can distance themselves from their situation by finding a third
position where they can observe things with objectivity. Life
isn't either-or any more. It has depth, colour, and many angles.
5. Don't Judge Yourself. Our win-lose culture puts great
pressure on us to consider ourselves at any moment in life as
either winners or losers. This means that failure is a bad thing
and winning is everything. One of the most quoted expressions in
our modern culture is: "Failure is not an option". But this is
to misunderstand the real nature of success. We need to fail in
order to succeed. And we need to fail big-time in order to
succeed big-time. Practically every successful entrepreneur,
from Thomas Edison to Walt Disney, experienced failure many
times over. But they didn't judge themselves. They interpreted
failure as "not succeeding yet" and saw it as just one more step
on the road to success.
6. Manage Your Morale. Of course, it's not always much
fun to be stuck in the hard slog phase of goal-building.
Nobody's cheering any more. You have nothing to show for your
efforts. And the dream still feels as far away as ever. That's
when you have to manage your morale. That means managing your
stress, keeping things light, and working on the things you
can't see: your thinking patterns, your emotions, and your
spirit. And, like the fluid in the butterfly, these may just be
the things that will make you fly. "I can say: "I am terribly
frightened and fear is terrible and it makes me uncomfortable,
so I won't do it." Or I could say: "Get used to being
uncomfortable." It is uncomfortable doing something risky. But
so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable?"
(Barbra Streisand)
We human beings are very similar to the plant world. We grow
best when we work with Nature and time. Don't be in too much of
a hurry to achieve your goals. If you hold on with faith,
certainty, and determination, you'll get there in due course
when the time is right.