ONE QUESTION

How are you complicit in creating the conditions for things you say you don’t want?

ONE THING TO PONDER

It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe those lies.

ONE PERSPECTIVE

Setting Big Goals - I see it all over in my world, it’s what drew me to my profession in Real Estate.

The unlimited opportunity in this industry and many others is exciting and scary at the same time. There are few ceilings in entrepreneurship - and I love that!

I love setting big goals, striving to see what I’m capable of and what I’m able to accomplish. Yet what has become even more important to me is understanding who I want to become.

We too often focus on what we want to accomplish, what achievements we want to surpass, how much money we want to make. Yet we tend to be missing one very important and meaningful ingredient….

And that is answering the question of Who Do I Want to become?

It’s a foundational and seemingly easy question, yet if you truly take the time to write it out, it takes time and effort to craft the answer in a way that truly resonates with your soul and that will supersede your fear of judgment or failure in the pursuit of the goal you’re after.

I tend to believe we’ve started working backwards in how we pursue life and goals. We identify an outcome, a title, a $$ amount, and then assume that hitting that goal truly matters or will make us happy.

NEWS FLASH: You’ve already hit goals you said would make you happy.

When you’re tested, when your values are tested, when your commitment is tested, that is when the real decision is required.

When we set goals simply because it’s the next bigger thing to do, I believe we’ve lost our way in the pursuit of something meaningful.

It’s amazing to me how far off track we can get over a period of a decade. And before we are able to realize it, we don’t even know how we got to where we are or why we ended up there.

It’s easy to set a money goal when we are broke. The pain of not being able to afford the basics in life creates enough pain for people to be committed and do what they don’t want to do.

But in my experience, when people exceed that threshold of having what they ‘need’, motivation and commitment changes. It’s no longer driven by avoiding pain.

Yet we continue to set goals based on external things because oftentimes that has been what has propelled us forward from where we were.. I’ve seen this become the cause of a lot of unhappiness, of burnout, of quitting, and of regret.

I love this quote from James Clear-

Compete Externally and you Compare.

Compete Internally and you Improve.

I’m all about setting big goals, but don’t try to fool yourself into being motivated in perpetuity by external things. I’m asking you to trust me on this.

Setting goals without a meaningful reason is like heading out for a drive without caring where you end up. It can cause frustration and drain resources.

So if I’m not supposed to set big goals, what should I actually do?

I’m not saying to avoid striving towards big goals, I’m suggesting choosing goals that are in alignment with the person you want to grow into. It requires some internal drive rather than just an external benefit.

If you want to sell X number more homes, sell 10 more policies, make $50,000 more, sorry, you’re not likely going to hit that goal over and over if the outcome is the only upside.

And sometimes, if I’m being honest, the success you’ve reached isn’t because of your effort, it’s because of what the market gave you.

Is that harsh? Perhaps. Is it true, it most certainly can be. That’s not for me to decide, that is for you to ponder.

This is the process I recommend:

1. Get clear on who you want to become and who you strive to be

2. Identify What you want

3. Articulate Why you want what you want. This has to mean something, and if it doesn’t, follow through will suffer

4. Once those three things align, then you bring accountability (willingness) into the fold

Stop setting big goals because that is what you see everyone else doing. Their path isn’t yours.

Stop setting goals that are about living up to a persona you don’t truly care about. Trust me, people are more worried about their own shit than about paying attention to what you are doing.

Understand this, how far you can truly go is heavily predicated on alignment of your path, not the force of your will.

The level of grit, resilience, and commitment can’t be matched when your pursuit is authentic and genuine, driven by your purpose rather than by validation.

Who do you want to become? And why is that even important?

I’ll see you along the way!

Onward and upward

PODCAST

#863: The Rich Roll Podcast — Never Play It Safe: Chase Jarvis On Risk

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