You’d think the easiest question for people to answer is “What do you want?”
Turns out it’s one of the most difficult.
[ca_audio url_mp3=”http://gg.podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/P-cast-2014-12-19-The-Drill-What-do-you-want.mp3″ url_ogg=”” align=”none”]
You can download the .mp3 here.
No doubt you’re getting all sorts of emails about goal setting for the new year.
And no doubt you’ve set some goals. Or meant to.
But it probably felt incomplete.
Hopeful, but unconvincing.
If you know what I mean, keep reading.
For some reason, answering the simple question “What do you want?” rarely turns out to be so easy.
When you ask someone what they want, most people answer by telling you what they don’t want.
For example, “What do I want? I want to not have to worry about money any more.”
And even when someone answers by telling you what they want – they’re often not telling you what they REALLY want. They’re telling you what they think they can have.
And even those who do answer with what they want, they tend to FORGET what they want. Quickly. Because they don’t keep it front and center. They don’t make the effort to remember what they want day in and day out.
And even those who do clarify what what they want, most do so with a feeling – an emotion – of “But will I ever succeed? Will it really work for me?” They don’t have a feeling of expectancy. Of confidence that they will achieve it. And so they don’t do everything they possibly can to make it happen.
And of those who do regularly remind themselves of what they want, most will never create a simple, clear and aggressive plan to make it happen.
And of those who do have a feeling of expectancy, most will get overwhelmed. Usually because their plans are too complicated. Because their plans require them to be doing too many things and / or don’t allow them to build layer upon layer.
Can you see how there are many layers to “goal setting.” And even if you manage to get some of it right, you’re still unlikely to make it all the way through – if you’re not consciously aware of all this?
One of the earliest pieces of self-help advice I ever got was this: “Set goals.”
For so long, I brushed it aside thinking “Yeah, I know how to do that. What do I REALLY need to do to get where I want to be?”
Looking back now, 23 years after reading my first ‘self-help’ book, I realize that this advice to “set goals” is yet another area where people oversimplify. So they get caught in the complexity. And never make it to simplicity on the far side of complexity.
But at the beginning of a recent session with members of my Plenty of Clients Mastery Program members, we looked at what it means to set goals in a “simplicity on the far side of complexity” kind of way.
I decided to share 9 minutes of that session with you. It will be 9 minutes very well spent.
To build a thriving business based on your expertise, recognize that your clients struggle with this.
And when you can master this yourself – and live it yourself – you’ll be ready to lead them.
Something will change in you. And your ideal clients will be drawn to who you’ve become.
Dov Gordon
