Peter Fletcher

What Jack and the Beanstalk can teach you about the value of achieving goals

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Disneyland Paris Jack and the Beanstalk castle

What’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story? Image: Jeremy Thompson http://www.flickr.com/photos/32916425@N04/4480849415/

What’s the value of achieving a goal? If your goal is to walk across the road the answer is probably nothing. 

But big, stretch goals are different.

Stretch goals challenge us. They pull us out of our comfort zone and scream at us like a sergeant major. 

“Get your lazy arse out of bed and move! Now!”

They motivate us to do more.

Achieving a goal can feel amazing. That new car smell, the feel of leather seats, the admiring glances of other motorists. 

Those things are great, but they’re not the true value of achieving a goal.

The true value of achieving goals can be learned from reading Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jack’s story is all about overcoming obstacles.

In the fable, Jack’s life was going along fine. One day the little tripper decides to climb a beanstalk. He knocks  off some treasure from the man-eating giant who chases him down the beanstalk. But Jack’s too quick. Through a super human effort he chops down the beanstalk, kills the giant and saves himself and his family.

They all live happily ever after. The end.

Of course, Jack gets to be rich from all the loot he flogged from the giant so he gets to take care of his family. But the real win is his personal transformation. Now he’s the family provider and heroic protector.

He da man!

The story arc of Jack and the Beanstalk is repeated time and again in fables and fairy tales and stories told around kitchen tables and in books and movies.

Think about it. Forrest Gump, all the Rocky movies, The Da Vinci Code: they all use a similar story arc.

And guess what!

You’ll use the same story arc when you tell people about how you achieved a stretch goal.

It’ll go something like this: My life was going along fine, then I got a calling to achieve something great. At the start I was doing OK but then I was met with impossible obstacles. Just when I thought I’d made it I got knocked down again. And again. And again. But I persisted. After one last Herculean effort I succeeded.

I achieved my goal. I’m a winner!

And right there is the true value of achieving a big goal.

You see, achieving a goal is nothing in itself. What’s important – the real value – is the story that achieving a goal allows you to tell about your struggles to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 

It’s that story from your past that shapes your present and your future. It’s a story that will help you shape a new you.

So what’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story?

Some tough love that’s stoked the fire inside me

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A fire in a dumpster

Sometimes feedback can seem harsh but it  turns out to be what’s needed to stir up the fire within. Image: Ben Watts http://www.flickr.com/photos/benwatts/4087289013/

If you’ve read this blog at all this year you’ll know that I’ve set myself a challenge to write a blog post every day for 2014. It’s the end of February and I’m already tired from the effort. Instead of curling up on the couch with a good book, I tap away at this keyboard forcing out words that feel as dry as the Gibson Desert.

But I’m nothing if not an optimist.

So I get to thinking, if I’m going to write something every day, why not write a book!?

In round terms I’m writing 500 words each day so by the end of the year I’ll have written over 180,ooo words. That’s enough words for a couple of books and have a third in the pipeline.

But I kind of get the impression that my writing really isn’t up to scratch to get published.

I’m especially aware that my posts have no theme. One day I’ll write about goal setting, the next about dealing with negative people, and then I’ll write something introspective…like this post.

I decide I need some help so I decide to employ a writing coach.

I make a call and explain my idea. He says that he usually assesses manuscripts and helps writers make their work better. Helping someone write a daily blog post isn’t really his thing.

But, he says, he’ll give it a go. I give him the address and wait about a week.

An email arrives. It goes as follows.

From reading some of your blogs it’s obvious that you are both adventurous and a very successful entrepreneur.

Nice, I like this guy…so far.

But at first glance, it is difficult to know what this blog is really about. What is its soul centre?

Yes, I know that. That’s why I called. I can’t work out what it’s about myself.

You like to share enthusiastically about yourself — your favourite music, books etc. And you write very well in the blog format (never a paragraph of more than three lines). But there’s very little depth to anything you share: why do you like something … what does it mean to you, what effect has it had on you?

Now we’re starting to get–well, not personal but–serious. He’s right though, I don’t let on about what stuff means to me. I don’t tell people what effect it has on me. He’s onto something here.

Frankly, there is nothing new or unique or truly insightful about anything I have read so far. There are no meaningful insights that an assiduous reader of blogs could not read somewhere else. This does not make for prime material for a book; not unless you take fifty thousand words of blog copy you have already written and construct it into an ebook for selling on Kindle/Amazon.

So what is your objective in publishing a book? To further which business? Real estate or business coaching or to tell your story? Do you have a good story to tell?

Bear in mind that, though your blog is interesting and eminently readable, the fundamental question in this business is… would people be prepared to pay to read this? That is the bottom line of all writing.

It’s nice to know that it’s “eminently readable” but the hard truth is that no-one would pay for it. Still, I’m not sure about his definition of the bottom line. My best writing was the book I wrote for Rita for our 20th wedding anniversary. The bottom line there was to shed tears of joy together as she ‘discovered’ it in a shop window. You couldn’t write me a cheque big enough to replace that moment.

That said, I take his point–if you’re going to write a book for commercial purposes then it better be good enough for the punters to want to fork out the dough.

So what, if anything, would you like me to do exactly? I cannot choose what you should write; only you can do that and that choice comes out of the heart far more than it comes out of the head.

And there’s the problem, right there. He can’t choose what I should write and neither can I. It’s as though I’ve got something inside me that wants to burst free but when I open my mouth there’s nothing. No sound, no words. Just blankness.

To get me through the blogging challenge I write that which catches my eye, something that makes me curious.

The best books are those about the writer’s journey: a story about yourself—your life, how you got to where you are now – the hard lessons you learned along the way.

So I respond via email.

“Identifying a theme is precisely why I’d like to work with you. I struggle with deciding what it is that I want to write until I’ve actually written it. In many ways the writing helps me clarify my views.

“A prime example is this post about the ethics of shark culling. It wasn’t until I’d written this post that I’d formed the view that it was a political stunt.
“My goal is to self-publish a book for two reasons: self-satisfaction and self-promotion. A book would give me a body of work I’m proud of and it would also give me the opportunity to promote myself as an author.”
It struck me as a reasonable proposition. If I’m a published author I’ll get more speaking gigs. Speaking gigs pay well. Happy days.
Then the response came back.

This time around I got into The Ethics of Shark Culling which was okay but pretty bland and much the same as other articles on the general topic of the preservation of species. From there I went to Tell Me: What do You Stand For? which didn’t really say anything fresh or new and then to Five Ordinary People who Inspire Me which was much better and had some bite and more of a unique point of view (POV).  That’s the area in my view you should be pursuing rather than (frankly ) Mickey Mouse philosophy.  Your background may be a fertile area for recounting stories which can develop the moralities to which you aspire. Most great lessons are imparted through story — called parables in the holy books. [Hyperlinks added]

Well, it’s nice to know at least one of the three were on the right track. Mickey Mouse philosophies? Ouch. I’m not sure what that term means exactly, but I think it means a philosophy that’s pretty close to worthless.

He continues.

Turning to your last paragraph. As you are a guy who clearly espouses ethical standards, I’ll tell you the truth. Your reasons for wanting to publish a book are pretty shallow. No writer is ever fully satisfied with what they have written: there are no ‘good’ writers – there are lots of bad ones while the rest of us are trying to get better. And as for self-promotion – that’s a ‘How To’ Manual.

And double ouch. Not only are my philosophies close to worthless, I’m now shallow. On the self-promotion thing, I suspect he’s right. And that’s what I was thinking of writing – a ‘How To’ Manual – something that someone could read and learn something from.

But, being proud of a book is something all together different, he claims.

In order to be proud of a book it has to be a good book and no writer ever produced a good book easily. A good book is analogous to raising a child of whom you are genuinely proud: you don’t do it over night; it takes a lot of effort and you suffer a lot in the process. And one book is not a ‘body of work’; an oeuvre is three or more.

OK, so I’ve never raised a kid so I don’t know how hard that is…but I get the idea. It’s hard work. Still, this guy isn’t finished.

The self-promotion angle is, frankly, the kind of thing that hustlers and corner-creepers indulge in. You have plenty of people like that in your business… and so do we. You write a book because you have something to say; something burning inside and you want as many people as possible to read it. That’s what drives you to rewrite it four or maybe five times.

And there it is – same problem, different words. And can I say it again. I don’t know what it is I want to write. Yep, I get the whole burning thing, I really do, but no amount of fire in my guts is going to make words come out. Maybe some black, acrid smoke, but no words.

If you are going to write a book, Peter, I would exhort you to do it for the right reason. If it’s good enough it will get past the gatekeepers in publishing (of which there are many) and be published by a publishing house. Then you can genuinely call yourself an author and be proud.

Yep, I’d love to be proud, I’d love to write a book but I’d also love to pass the first step–knowing what it is I want to say.

And if you’ve read this far, please don’t leave a comment about how nasty the guy was. If there’s a fire inside I’ve just had someone stoke the embers. Sure, he used a pitch fork to do it but it had the right effect.

Now, to bed.

Why being an ostrich is stopping you from achieving your goals

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An ostrich

When it comes to goal setting don’t be an ostrich and put your head in the sand. Image: Aidan http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanwojtas/

Last year I had a goal of writing a book. It was going to 70,ooo words. That worked out to just under 1,000 words per day if I was going to finish within 3 months.

As it turned out it was a hopelessly ambitious goal. I lasted about a week. OK, maybe it was a bit longer but it was less than a month.

The funny thing (actually it wasn’t that funny but let’s call it that) was that after I skipped the first few days I stopped measuring my progress. It wasn’t a deliberate strategy but it allowed me to avoid the ugly truth that things weren’t working out.

As it turns out my behaviour is called the Ostrich Syndrome (PDF), which is when someone sticks their head in the sand and hopes a problem will go away.

People who are enjoying a goal and staying on track find it easy to keep track of their progress. But those who start to slip behind are much more likely to stop measuring.

Think about it. Have you ever embarked on a weight loss campaign and become disheartened when the scales tipped the wrong way? If it wasn’t weight loss it was prospecting calls or something else that would take effort to achieve.

Either way, chances are you’ve said yes. And the reality is that soon after the initial setback you’ve stopped looking at the scales, or counting the number of words written or calls made.

But the problem with avoiding bad news is that it denies us from the very feedback we need to improve. Negative feedback is the very thing we need to adjust course and stay on track.

According to Ilan Mochari there are three problems that flow from not tracking your progress. They are:

  1. You’ll become scared to leave your comfort zone. That’s fine if you want to stay at your current weight or income level but if you want to achieve something worthwhile you’ll need to step into the uncertainty.
  2. You won’t achieve your goals. Mochari quotes research that proves a direct connection between goal achievement and monitoring progress. So as frightening as it may be it’s important to start getting feedback early.
  3. You won’t learn. Getting feedback about how your going is the perfect tool to learn about what’s working and what’s not. Both give you what you need to know how far to trim the sail.

There are plenty of ways to overcome the ostrich effect. But I’ll leave it up to you to share how you overcome  it in the comments below.

 

Failing is only failure if you fail to learn

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Runner in pain during a race

Whenever we set goals, especially big ones, we expose ourselves to the risk of failing. When we fail to achieve a goal the tendency is to see ourselves as failures.

But that’s not the case.

When we fail to achieve a goal we’re provided with an opportunity to learn what doesn’t work and what we could be doing better.

In 2013 I set a goal of doing 50 consecutive chin-ups by my 50th birthday. I had around 8 months to get the job done. Although I knew it would be hard I was willing to train hard.

I set up a chin-up bar in a doorway of our house. The toll for passing through that doorway was 3 chin-ups. I did chin-ups at Jacobs Ladder. I did weighted chin-ups, used exercise bands, and bought Fat Grips to increase my grip strength.

But progress was slow.

By the end of June I knew I wasn’t going to make it. My best effort was 12. 50 was just too far away.

I quit.

What did I learn from this failure?

Simply, I learned that the goal wasn’t realistic. Sure it was a stretch – I got that part right – but the number didn’t relate to the number I’d achieved previously.

The mistake I made is a mistake a lot of sales people make when they set targets. They listen to a motivational sales guru and commit to achieving twice the number of sales they did in the previous year.

Just like my chin-up challenge these targets are often unrealistic.

But there’s a better way of achieving goals and it’s based on a marathon training programme.

One of the key principals of training for long distance events is to not step up your training too quickly. That means not increasing your weekly training by more than 10% from the previous week.

This graduated step up in intensity reduces the likelihood of sustaining an overuse injury. It also gives the athlete a series of small wins. These have a cumulative effect of building a fitness base and of giving the athlete the confidence to attempt the next step in their programme.

Applying this principal to sales targets, think of your sales activity like an athlete does their training. In the same way an athlete gradually increases their training load, increase your prospecting and marketing activities slowly.

Before lifting your intensity calculate your current activity levels. In other words, find out how sales fit you are. Then look to gradually lift your activity levels by small increments over the course of the next 12 months.

During the course of the month measure and record your activities. At the end of each month take the time to reflect on your performance. Regardless of whether you achieved your targets or came up short take responsibility for them.

Reflect on what went well and why and what you could have done better. Doing this will empower you to work on the processes that contribute to you achieving the results you’re chasing.

Photo credit. Tobyotter on Flickr

Results: they’re best achieved by ignoring them

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Sales award recipient celebrating

Go to any sales-based industry awards night and the plaques and certificates are handed out to people who earned the most money. These awards reflect the mantra that until someone makes a sale, no-one gets paid.

It’s no wonder, then, that sales managers set sales targets based on achieving results.

It’s an understandable reaction but results-based goals distract people from doing what really needs to get done so that individuals and teams can perform at their best.

In 2005 I set myself the goal of riding from Kalgoorlie to Perth (600 kilometres) in under 24 hours. Few thought it could be done.

After consulting with sports psychologist Neil McLean I broke the ride into around 8 smaller rides. Flowing from that strategy, when I left Hannan Street Kalgoorlie, in front of me was a short 40-kilometre ride to Coolgardie, not a 600 kilometre ride to Perth. Once there it was a quick hop to Bullabulling, then another to Southern Cross, then to Merredin and so on until we’d arrived in Perth.

Without breaking the ride down like that the sheer size of the starting goal would have been a de-motivator. When we arrived in Merredin (about the halfway mark) my focus was on riding the next 60 kilometres to Kellerberrin, not on the 300 kilometres left to ride to Perth. Working through the ride this way allowed me to tick off another job done in the process of achieving the much larger goal. For the record, we completed the ride in 19:06:32.

Had I had most sales managers in the support car they would have been shouting meaningless platitudes like “come on you can do it! You’re nearly half way!” If there’s one thing you don’t want to hear after you’ve just ridden 300 ks is that there’s another 300 to go.

And that’s exactly what adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco Jim Taylor recommends.

His advice to athletes at every end of the spectrum is that results are important but are best achieved by ignoring them.

Outcomes and results, Taylor advises, cause athletes to focus on something external to themselves and therefore on something that’s out of their control.

In contrast, process, “…involves focusing on what you need to do perform your best such as preparation, technique, or tactics. In contrast to an outcome focus, a process focus is entirely on you.”

According to Taylor, focussing on results leads to failure, not success.

He believes that if you focus on the outcome you’re not focussed on doing that which needs to be done to perform at your best. “The bottom line,” he says, “is that when you focus on the outcome, you are far less likely to get the outcome you want.”

On the flip side, focussing on process allows athletes to perform at their best. Results, then, are a reflection of the quality of their processes.

Taylor’s advice for coaches is this: “…if your athletes had a good day, don’t say “good job.” Instead, help them understand why they performed well. If they had a bad day, pat them on the back, tell them you still believe in them, and help them figure out how to perform better in the next competition.”

“Go through your routine (in practice or competitions). The purpose of a routine is to get yourself totally prepared to perform your best and, if well ingrained, to trigger thoughts, emotions, and physiology that will help you perform well. So, by going through your routine, you are reminded of the process and it takes your mind off of results.”

What are you doing to improve your processes?

Photo credit:  Horticulture Week photos

10 tips that will help turn your New Year’s Eve wishes into reality

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New Year's resolutions
Today is the 1st of January. It’s a day that many people make resolutions to do things such as lose weight, give up smoking, or get fit.

Sadly, many of these resolutions are dead in the water before the end of January. They needn’t be, says psychologist Caroline Adams Miller.

Miller believes that there’s a more positive way to set goals rather than simply writing them down, as was the mantra of the fifties .

In summary, here are Miller’s top 10 tips that will help turn your New Year’s Eve wishes into reality.

  1. Get happier. According to Miller, “it is now rock-solid science that being in your most positive frame of mind and functioning is the most powerful predictor of any type of success.” We’re successful because we’re happy so make that your first priority.
  2. Our happiness flows from what we think and do so make doing things that produce happiness and well-being a priority in your daily routine. Miller sites meditation, journaling (blogging anyone?), practising forgiveness, and expressing gratitude as habits that produce happiness.
  3. Don’t set too many will power goals at once. Giving up smoking AND starting an exercise regime is a big ask. Start with a regular exercise programme, says Miller, and the willpower to tackle others will flow.
  4. Prune dead wood from your social and professional life. Or as the old saying goes: show me your friends and I’ll show you what you’re like. If you want to become fitter, hang with fit people. If you want to give up smoking, make friends with non-smokers.
  5. Fill your environment with positive reinforcement, or “primes” as Miller describes them. Uplifting music and inspiring art and music all contribute to feeling happier.
  6. Create ‘hard’ goals, not simple, easy stuff. According to Miller, people who tackle and complete things they didn’t enjoy feel the highest level of self-esteem. In other words, avoid plucking only low-hanging fruit. Instead, have a crack at something big and audacious, something that’s going to stretch your sense of what’s possible.
  7. Be a risk taker. According to Miller, “we regret what we don’t try, and not what we try that doesn’t work out.” Get out there and have a crack.
  8. Make your goals your goals. Her advice, specifically to women is: “Get on the stage of your own life…”
  9. Think ahead to create positive habits using “if-then” scenarios. Miller gives the example of thinking of three blessings when encountering a stop sign. I do 3 chin-ups every time I walk through a specific doorway in my house.
  10. Have goals. According to Miller, “the happiest people wake up every day to clear-cut goals…that involve building relationships with others, making a difference in the lives of others, and making the space you inhabit a bit kinder and brighter.”

via New Year’s Resolution Advice You Won’t Read Anywhere Else | Psychology Today.

Photo credit: Lori Ann at http://www.mamawit.com/

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