Future Guardian,
I'm sure you've heard this anecdote about Thomas Edison,
In the context of accomplishing your goals.
Because it's so common to set a goal and then fail along the way, we have collectively as a society created an atmosphere of glorifying failure.
At least, in the entrepreneurial space, where grand catastrophic failure is a regular occurrence.
But in life in general, it's impossible to live and grow and learn without experiencing the thing we see as "failure" along the way.
And so,
When one laments failing to achieve a goal,
The anecdote goes something like this:
"Edison didn't fail 10,000 times to make a light bulb, he found 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb."
What a delightful spin.
It makes failure sound like success!
I didn't fail, I succeeded at finding all the ways to not reach my goal! And if I just do that enough, perhaps 9,999 more times, I too will achieve my goal.
A wonderful bit of manipulative mindset coaching designed to keep you head down moving toward that goal you have set.
But I think,
That's all a load of garbage.
Because the shift in perspective to be had is not that failure teaches us what doesn't work, it's that doing reveals new paths which give us greater clarity in what matters.
Learning what doesn't work is just one data point, amongst other data points which are as useful if not more so.
I feel like that frame actually reinforces the idea that you stick with your stated goals and outcomes. Failure supposedly shows you all the different ways that you can't achieve that outcome, but this perspective keeps you looking at the specific goal as the thing you need to keep going toward.
But,
What if the "failures" you have aren't road blocks telling you which way you shouldn't go, but rather are signposts alerting you to new information that might change everything for the better?
The challenge I have in communicating this idea is that,
If your approach and perspective hinge around sticking to the specific defined outcome you are shooting for, then you probably won't see clearly what I'm saying.
We've a bit of a chicken and egg situation.
I'm going to attempt to speak to the dynamic most of us adopt, which society reinforces, and which looks like the best way to get what we want, but which actually results in blinders narrowing our vision which we are unable to see.
Sound good?
I'm going to speak to you as a goal focused, outcome driven individual. Someone who sets their mind to a specific thing they want to achieve (or think they want to achieve).
Because it's likely in that mindset you are blind to reality, and it's keeping you from getting what you really want or need, *even if you achieve the goal you set yourself out to achieve.*
The way we tend to think about goal setting and achievement ...
It's all backwards.
Let's start with that end goal.
If you've been reading much of the lessons we share on TGA, it's likely you've seen us talk about the importance of knowing exactly where you're going.1
You need to know what you want so that you can craft a path to get there.
And this closely mirrors the common advice of setting clear goals and heading to them.
But, the reason we want start with an end goal in mind is mostly likely not the reason you think.
What does starting with the end goal allow us to do?
In conventional advice, this gives us something to move toward. We can state an outcome we're after, and then start making moves that are either part of making that outcome happen or seem likely to make that outcome happen.
Makes sense right?
I'll show you in a moment why that ends up not working out.
The reason in TGA we start with the end goal is going to sound similar, but you'll see the key difference here.
In TGA we start with the end goal because we want to map out the most likely path which will take us to that end goal. We backwards engineer from the end to where we are now. (It's also important to understand where we are now)
That's the whole 'google maps' analogy. You can't have directions to your destination if you don't have a specific destination and/or you don't have a specific starting point.
And so far it sounds very similar to the conventional advice.
But there's one more important step.
Because the real reason we map out the path towards what we want is that we're searching for the very next step to take.
And we want that step to be most likely to take us towards our desired outcome.
HOWEVER
And ... This is important, it's the part most conventional advice fails to acknowledge ...
Each step you take reveals new options and paths, and as you continue to take steps on the path, the amount of options that reveal themselves becomes so enormous to comprehend you just can't predict what the right set of steps is going to be from the outset.
On TOP of that,
What also tends to happen - unless you really know yourself deeply to the core and have absolute certainty about everything you want in life (hint: no one fits this category) - is that each step you take also reveals new information about yourself and your desired goal. It reveals important related data which can easily change the end result you're after, if you are paying attention.
The real purpose of starting with the end in mind is not so that you achieve that specific goal.
It's so that you get moving in the best direction possible in order to reveal what you really need to know about yourself and what you want.
This is because of one simple truth:
Life is moving.
It's never static.
This is actually really hard to fully comprehend because from our day to day perception life appears to be the way it is and you can't really actively see it changing (unless you've got some wild stuff happening) - but the significant changes in life tend to happen over time as you do things.
We adapt very well to change and so life just feels like the way it is.
I observed this lesson in my son's Taekwondo class the other day, which has a wide range of ages of people from kid to adult. The younger kids tend to want to do the exciting stuff and are just learning about focus and discipline.
The instructor was starting a lesson on front snap kick, which is a foundational kick movement. One of the younger kids was like "I want to learn something new! can we do something more fun?"
It's easy to go through the standard movements of whatever it is you are doing, whether it's a practice like Taekwondo or even just everyday life and not feel like you are learning anything, to not feel like things are changing. Reasons for wanting that feeling aside (dopamine) ...
I observed that while you are in the midst of the thing you are doing, you WON'T feel like you are learning, especially if it's something you already have intellectual knowledge about.
Because learning2 is this process (distilled):
Observe, Do, Observe, Repeat
You get information. You put that information into action in the field (Engage the Field3). You observe what happened. And then you repeat.
But you haven't learned until you demonstrate a different behavior in the same situation.
And it takes time to demonstrate different behavior in the same situation.
(Hold this thought for a moment)
Take the front snap kick. It's easy to see the demonstration and intellectually "know" how to do a front snap kick. Then you put it into practice and you do it "wrong." While you are Engaging the Field with that idea, you haven't learned, but you are in the process.
It takes repeated exposure to the field to fully learn a concept.
And all the while it won't feel like anything because it's only as you look back in retrospect to your former self that you can suddenly say "oh, I really learned a front snap kick," when you are down the road "learning" other things on top of that.
Hopefully that made sense because what I want to illustrate is that life is very similar.
When you set a goal to achieve and you head toward that it's very easy to measure yourself up against the feeling of having achieved or learning something new.
But life is not "oh here I got what I wanted."
Life is the path toward the thing.
And in the complexity of life it's what's revealed from moving toward the goal which is what you're really after - even though most of us don't realize it.
The added layer to this is that the information which reveals itself to you in time which may critically alter the specificity of the goal you have set,
Is the stuff you figure out from observing your new different behavior in the same situation. In other words you have to go through the learning cycle completely, possibly multiple times, and THEN observe on the new dynamic.
That's a lot of self clarity and perspective you have to willingly engage in.
The problem most of us face is holding a dogmatic view of a predetermined goal or outcome.
We can call this …
Dogmatic Blinders
Dogmatism is dangerous because of the rigidity. The unwillingness to accept alternative to the singular defined truth that you hold to.
In a world where life is ever changing and moving around you, holding dogmatic views only cements you in place and makes it very hard to interact, to have relationships, to find joy and achieve the things you desire.
Dogmatism walls you off from adaptation to new understanding.
Just even consider the learning process itself, which is a matter of taking new ideas, putting them into action, observing what happens and using that information to alter your behavior and continue to put new ideas into place.
If you approach learning with a dogmatic view that the outcome has to be a certain way, if the outcome DOESN'T fit your expectation, you simply can't learn and grow because you've put that barrier in place.
When the outcome in the learning process differs from your expectation and you hold to the dogmatic view then you will reject it as failure and incorrect.
Sounds like a weird way to learn right?
It's like,
Let's say I want to make a little elementary school science volcano experiment. I paper mâché the volcano, and set up my materials to create the "eruption."
Now,
Let's say I'm dogmatic about this and expect that when I add the vinegar to the baking soda, the volcano will erupt, and I've got a vision for how that works.
Then lets say I add the baking soda and the vinegar, and nothing happens.
In the dogmatic view, I hold my expectation as absolute and come to the conclusion that the experiment as actually a load of crap and everyone's lied to me.
In reality, I accidentally added water instead of vinegar.
Sounds really silly right?
But that's Dogmatism for you.
In the process of learning (which is the scientific method of experimentation), when the outcome doesn't match the expectation you don't reject the outcome as failure and move on to a different experiment you ask yourself "what happened and why?" Make more hypothesis, and continue.
Dogmatism doesn't allow you to see outside the box you have predefined going into a scenario.
Now,
Most of us are not that myopic as to constrain a simple science experiment with a dogmatic view, but there are similarities to this in real life.
Life being more complicated because we don't see it as a scientific experiment and there are many moving components we can't actually fully understand. We also don't see learning and growth as a process of movement and evolution - rather we often see it as a check, a test, on whether we are right or wrong.
Dogmatism slips into our perspective and goals in life, likely because the collective nature of our society makes black and white thinking simpler and easier to control.
Our job is to chip that perspective away from ourselves so that we can grow into who we truly are. And get what we want in life.
What we want in life ...
Can often be tricky to figure out.
I think most of us start down the path of life guessing as we go.
I can remember approaching college and the message was "you don't need to know what you want to do or be, just figure it out as you go" - which at the time, and for a long time, felt trite, but there's truth in the message. The real problem is there's no structure or teaching for figuring out what YOU really want to do or be in this world in a way that allows you to live and support all your goals, interests and people along the way.
We're told "figure it out as you go" and then we dismiss it in favor of "set specific goal and achieve or fail" because there's certainty in a definition.
(Surprise surprise, the best way forward is uncertainty)4
We're left to flounder around, randomly finding things that interest us and then hoping that as we work through life with those interests, we're able to make a living out of it.
It's obviously not enough to go forward recklessly and hope. There is a purpose to goals. Yet because we aren't naturally born with the tools, nor taught the tools, for navigating goals, ourselves, our interests, and the steps we take ...
For most people it remains a dream to have a life where you get to just do the things you really want to be doing, to make a living out of the thing they enjoy doing most, to have all the other things in life and be happy no matter what.
It is important to not only know what you want, but balance that with the understanding that as you move forward you will change, the river will change, and you will most likely find (if you maintain awareness and openness) that there are outcomes which don't match your initial specificity but which fit your desires, interests, goals, and self much better.
Just as an example,
Here's a dynamic I experienced, which I've seen in others, and which makes it all the more challenging when you are dogmatic about the specificity of your outcome.
Because when it comes to setting the goal of what you want, you have to start with what you THINK you want, and what you think you want is based in the life you are currently living.
If you are setting a goal for yourself that allows you to live a life you really want around things you enjoy most, in the context of the life you are currently living, the thing you currently enjoy doing most may not be the thing you enjoy doing most when you achieve a life where all you get to do is the thing you currently enjoy doing most.
That's a confusing sentence, but think of it this way.
When you're stuck in a job dreaming of doing something different, the things you do the most in that circumstance are most likely things that represent an escape from where you are now rather than a life you want to be in.
Just think of any person you may know (perhaps yourself), who has chosen a hobby they enjoy as a new path to take and make a living with only to discover that when it becomes the thing they're making a living with they can no longer stomach doing it.
I've done that few times.
Easier to see with creative endeavors - my first business was in photography. Because I loved photography so I thought I'd make a living doing portraits and weddings. When it became all I did, I started not liking photography at all.
I thought I was motivated to move forward into this great new life, but that wasn't why I was moving in that direction - I was moving away from what I didn't want.
It's easy to get into that situation where it seems like you're motivated to move forward by a thing you think you want, when in reality you're being motivated by a thing you're running away from ... and when you finally escape that thing, you end up in a listless sort of "well this isn't the right thing either" state.
It's easy to see this with money - it's basically a trope, that if you chase more and more money you'll just keep feeling more and more empty. And the people who chase money and have a lot of it are some of the most unhappy people in life.
Part of it is really knowing yourself and what you want in life,
But as we can see, it's difficult (impossible) to know yourself and what you want before you make any moves. So you have to move forward with assumptions and uncertainty.
You have start with a goal - "this is the thing, I'm going to head this way and make THIS idea/dream happen."
You have to say "what I really want is to open a miniature local version of REI where I sell only the best outdoor adventure gear and where I teach people the ins and outs of backpacking, camping, rafting, etc" -- and that sounds like a good idea to you because you love backpacking and this way you can make a living from what you love.
But if you really want to find whatever it is which resonates most with you, brings you happiness, is the thing you can do in life which makes all the rest of your life come together for the better ... you also must let go of the outcome.
Because at some point you may realize that you actually hate running a retail store and the thing you really want to be doing is something else entirely.
This is the danger of dogmatism when it comes to goals and figuring out how best to live our life to not only get the things we want, but to also live fully and happy while doing so.
The way to get what you want in life is to start with SOME goal to establish a next step,
And then you have to do the thing.
And if you are dogmatic about the specificity of the outcome, you'll most likely end up stuck and not get what you really want. But if you allow the steps you take to alter the details of your long term goals, you can find yourself where you really want and need to be.
And by the way,
This doesn't even have to be something as big and life defining as the career path you choose.
It can be as simple as plans you make for a family vacation. You might make a very focused plan, with all the stops and details in place for every hour of every day, but then when you're ON the vacation, it never unfurls the way you planned it.
Of course, if you're dead set on the specific plan, it can be frustrating to not stick to it - and there's nothing quite as dissatisfying as a frustrating vacation.
It can be as simple as the workflow of your week. If you start your Monday with a list of every single task you'll accomplish on each day of the week, and then by the end of Monday when you're slightly off, your Tuesday starts off rough, no doubt by Wednesday you're pulling your hair out because you just can't make your plan work.
The dogmatic human mindset rigidity tells us we suck at productivity. The non-dogmatic adaptive Champion's Mind5 adapts from the very first moment, accepting that if we want to have a successful productive week we can't be rigid in how that is going to look because there's so much out of our control, our job isn't to stick to the plan, it's to keep moving forward as new information is revealed.
I could go on and on.
If you determine ahead of time exactly what things are going to look like, then it's very unlikely that will happen ...
Whether that's your life goals, your vacation plans, your weekly schedule, taekwondo practice, a date, or even how a meal turns out when you're cooking.
How do we deal with this?
The answer is simple, and I've woven it through everything you've read thus far.
You've got to let go.
The goal is important.
But it's ONLY important for determining the next step that you take. Because we want as much as possible for the next step to lead is in the right direction, to increase the likelihood that we get what we want in life.
But after that step, all bets are off.
You've got to have present awareness of what's going on. As you go through the learning process you must reflect on what has happened. You must slow down and observe and think and then make sure the next step you take after that is still the next best step to take.
As you move forward in life with this it will often feel like nothing while you are doing it.
Like learning.
You don't feel like you're really learning when you're learning because you need the hindsight of observing yourself having consistently different behavior in the same situation in order to know that you have really learned.
The truth you are looking to discover when it comes to finding the real goal that matters is something that emerges through your actions and your steps.
If you're aware.
If you're present.
If you let go of the initial outcome you make.
So,
Make all of your plans. Make them detailed. Find the path. Figure out your next best step ...
And then let go of it all. Crumple it up, throw it away, burn it.
Take the step.
And then do it all over again.
That's how you shed the dogmatism inherent in your human mindset, and how you embrace the magic of uncertainty that allows the really new important stuff to emerge in your life.
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.6
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