I just finished a session with a client who’s been struggling with feelings of failure and frustration because his successes aren’t coming “on time.” His business grew by more than 50% in February, but it didn’t happen last November.
Has that ever happened to you? You aimed to achieve a “SMART” goal, and when it didn’t quite happen the way you planned you still felt like a failure?
I’m going to be bold and tell you… that’s why you need to PITCH all your SMART goals.
This SMART goals concept is a hold-over from corporate life that entrepreneurs need to ditch. They ARE NOT helping you.
Allow me to explain…
The Problem with SMART Goals
SMART Goals have been around since the 1980’s as an acronym intended to make sure that a company’s goals are always “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, & Time-Based.” When you’re a large corporation and you have a massive flow of revenue and bank of capital that you can use to prioritize and push projects forward to meet certain deadlines, then “SMART” goals make a lot of sense. If something is harder or taking longer than you expected, then you can re-prioritize to throw more money or human resources at the goal to get it done.
But, most entrepreneurs I know don’t have unlimited money or team members to throw at a project that’s stalling. So, what needs to give? Time.
How many times have you set up a goal for yourself to accomplish X by Y date. What happens if that doesn’t occur? I know in my early days as an entrepreneur I did a LOT of that because … well, “that’s how it’s done” right?
Then, even when you do achieve the outcome but not “on schedule” the success feels somehow less… tainted, disappointing.
Stop stealing your successes!!! You worked hard. You accomplished your desired outcome! Does it really matter if it happened in 3 months, 12 months, or 2 years?
Here’s the real question you want to ask yourself: Are you giving it your FULL commitment? Are you working as hard as you reasonably can to move forward? THAT’S what matters.
If the answer to those questions is no or not really. Then THAT is where you need to reflect and improve, not fret over a specific date on the calendar.
Why I’ve removed “Goals” from my Vocabulary
The concept of having a “goal” bounded by time has become too tangled up together. Often my clients really struggle with letting go of goals & timelines in the beginning. That was certainly a big part of the conversation with my client earlier today.
However, what I help them (and you) to do is reframe their understanding of the purpose of that old “goal.” Its job was to give you focus and motivation to achieve a specific outcome in your life or business. Its job is to drive you forward.
What if you could have that focus and that drive while you let go of the patterns of self-sabotage, frustration, and disappointment?
What you really need is what I call a “Vivid Future Accomplishment” (VFA). I cover this topic in greater depth in my course: The Freedom Evolution including how to “install” them on your personal timeline and make them so compelling that they pull you toward them. However, let’s cover the core concept here today.
A Vivid Future Accomplishment is a specifically defined outcome that you’re committed to achieve. You will give consistent, dedicated effort to bringing that accomplishment into your reality as directly as humanly possible… regardless of how long it takes.
Do you remember the old story about Thomas Edison trying to invent the lightbulb? The reporter asks him, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Then, Edison replied “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
That is how we need to approach our Vivid Future Accomplishments, with a spirit of learning, improving, and commitment. What if Edison had given up after 500 times? He would have been half-way there, but still without a light bulb. What if he gave up after 990 times? He would have been 99% of the way there.
The problem is that we can’t know how many tries a particular success will take. It may be 1, 2, or 3, or it may be 10 with constant refinement and re-evaluation in the middle. Is the success any less amazing if it does take 10 tries? If writing your book takes 2 years rather than 2 months does that mean that it was a failure? If you have to submit it to 25 or more agents and publishers before someone agrees to take it on, does that make it less powerful? Ask J.K. Rowling about that one.
The answer is, obviously, NO.
So, stop stealing your celebrations and start focusing on consistent, committed action toward the outcomes that matter to you and your business.
Next Actions
Do you have a goal right now? What if you did one step, one task every day, to move you closer to achieving it?
If you can do more, then great. But, do at least one. That consistent progress is what will guarantee you create your outcome. As has been brilliantly said,
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Consistent progress at a sustainable pace… that’s the recipe for amazing success.
If you want to figure out how to get this sustainable progress into your daily life, then you might want to pick up a copy of “Your Five-Minute Daily Plan” eGuide.
This 4-page eGuide will walk you through the 3 steps you can do each day to:
- Ensure you always know your priorities.
- End the entrepreneur’s guilt of “I should be working and doing more.”
- Discover the one simple habit to become someone who ”consistently gets things done.”
