Dear Readers,
Here is my fourth treatise, for the month of December, 2014. If you are someone who would like to find a way to set New Year's Resolutions without the nagging guilt that you're just going to forget about them in the next couple of weeks, then I think you'll enjoy what I've written.
I will publish 1-2 more treatises before the school year is over, depending on things go with my schedule during the latter part of the upcoming semester. Additionally, an offer has been made to me by another, much larger blog to begin writing for them as well. If I accept this offer, I will be double publishing here on this blog, as well as on the one I just mentioned. I intend to post a link to this blog soon so that all of you check it out and see some other amazing written work.
Happy reading and Happy New Year,
Dallin D. Shumway
Every January 1st, we celebrate New Year’s Day. The new year is, for many people, a time for reflection and pondering on what they can do better in their lives. Many people take some time on New Year’s to sit down and make “New Year’s Resolutions,” promising themselves that they will stop bad habits and start good ones. It is in the month of January that more people are seen working out at gyms, saying no to certain kinds of food when offered, getting up earlier, going jogging, etc.. It is also during the month of January that more people get up in the morning and go through a routine of reviewing the goals that they have set.
The funny thing in all of this is that often, sometime around mid January, people are completely throwing their resolutions out the window and making light of them, returning to their previous apathy and acting as if their resolutions never mattered in the first place.
Last January, I remember distinctly two occasions where a speaker that I was listening to
said something along those very same lines.
The first of these occasions took place at my aunt and uncle’s church, which my family was visiting that particular Sunday. The speaker, who I believe was their bishop, said something along the lines of; “Well, it’s a new year, and so all of you should make New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve made some. There’s a bunch that I’ve already broken, but that’s okay. I want you to at least try to be better by setting goals to make you better.” To me at least, it sounded like he was trying to justify himself by saying; “Even though I’m not keeping my resolutions, I made them, and that makes me a good person.”
The other occasion occurred while I was sitting in class within the next week of the previous instance.
It was the turn of the semester, and the teacher of this particular class was giving a little motivational speech in light of the semester transition. This particular speech was about setting goals, in keeping with the traditions of the new year. What my teacher said was something like this; “I hope that you have all made New Year’s Resolutions. I made some, and I’ve already broken some of them. Maybe you’ve already broken some as well. If that’s the case for you, I just want you to remember to never listen to the voice that says ‘you’re not in control, and you can’t do it’ because you are in control and you can.” Now, there is some value to this statement, because it is true that we need to remember that you can do it and we are in control, even when we fail to get what we wanted. But, the problem I see with this statement is that it can be used too easily to justify apathy.
Both of these explanations of the importance of making resolutions made me laugh, because it’s so utterly narrow-minded. While it may be true that you are better off setting goals than not setting goals, even if you don’t achieve them, those who give up on their resolutions three weeks after they set them really aren’t much better than the people who don’t make them at all, because the results that come from it are generally going to be about the same.
With the dawning of a new year, many of you are probably thinking about some resolutions that you’d like to make. More than that, there are probably quite a few of you who experience a little bit of anxiety while setting resolutions because you know your own weakness and feel sure that in just a week or two you will have given up on your resolutions and be right back to where you started.
But, what if I told you that I’ve developed some ideas about how to set goals that might just make you last a little bit longer in the contest of sticking to your New Year’s Resolutions? Heck, what if I told you that these ideas might finally make this new year the year you’ve been waiting for? The year when things work out they way they’re suppose to?
Well, that’s exactly what I intend to do today, so let’s get started......
In my last treatise I touched on the more intuitive and emotional things to remember when we are trying to make achievements. Things like believing in ourselves, not giving up, defying the popular consensus even when it seems so convincing, and so forth. If you didn’t get a chance to read that treatise yet, you can find it using this link; http://teenagephilosoper.blogspot.com/2014/12/treatise-3-making-achievements-part-i.html
This time, I want to touch on the specific, concrete aspects of making achievements. In other words, I’d like to talk about goals.
Just as a review, last month I defined goals and dreams separately, so that we have a clear understanding of what we’re talking about here. The word goal, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means something that you are trying to do or achieve. That definition is very different from the word dream. Dream, also defined by Merriam-Webster, means something that you have wanted very much to do, be, or have for a long time.
Obviously, there is a difference between these two terms. Goals have to do more with the here and now usually, and they don’t have to be something you really are passionate about (for example; you might have a goal to make lots of money at work, but feel very dispassionate about the job that you do). Dreams on the other hand usually seem very far off, and they are things that you feel deeply passionate about.
The example I used last month illustrates this very powerfully; When you’re in elementary school and you’re playing around with your friends and you talk about what you want to be when you grow up, you’re talking about your dreams. On the other hand, when you’re in college and you’re at a social gathering where you hardly know anybody, and you’re standing right next to someone and it’s really awkward, and you want to make conversation but can’t, and finally break the ice by asking; “So, what’s your major?” then you are talking about your goals. Your goals and your dreams can overlap of course, but there is a difference between the two terms.
Dreams cannot be achieved without setting goals to get there. American life coach and author Tony Robbins says; “Setting goals is the first step in the turning the invisible into the visible.”
Our dreams often seem daunting, impossibile, and, in a way, invisible. But, once we start setting goals to achieve those dreams one step at a time, the dreams suddenly seem easier to reach, or, as Robbins says, become “visible.”
My purpose with this treatise is to show you how to set goals in a way that will be effective enough to help make the dreams you have come true, not only this year, but every year after that. This might not be the magic, ancient Chinese secret to success that you’ve been looking for, but I hope that it will at least get you off to a good start.
If we live life without setting and achieving goals for ourselves we will never be able to find true happiness and fulfillment. For, as Earl Nightingale once said; “We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.”
If you take a look at the adults in your community, you’ll likely be able to observe a stark difference between the people who are anxiously working towards something they see as valuable, vs. the people who just go to work because they have no other choice. The people who are achieving their dreams by working towards the goals that they’ve set are generally much happier than those who aren’t.
The last sentence of the previous paragraph is key; “The people who are achieving their dreams by working towards the goals that they’ve set are generally much happier.....”
Goals come prerequisite to dreams. If you’re dream is to become a millionaire will you ever achieve it if you don’t set a goal to get there? Absolutely not. Without a goal in place you will never be able to change your financial situation to one that would allow you to gain such a vast amount of money.
With that in mind, let’s delve into some specific steps that I’ve laid out to move each and everyone of us closer to obtaining the things we want.
Step #1; Our Routines
I’m going to begin with a personal example, having to do with the achievement of my Eagle Scout award;
I was pushed by my scouting and church leaders to get my Eagle from the time I was 12 on up until May of this year, when I started working on it heavily and no longer needed to be bothered about it.
It was something that would nag at me on and off during my scouting years. Like I said in my last treatise, I wasn’t allowed to start learning how to drive until I had the award so I knew that I would have to knuckle down and get it at some point. As I got older and older, my parents became less and less willing to drive me around places. In addition, as often happens to teenagers as they grow older, my social life got bigger, making transportation a more desirable commodity.
To top that all off, because I’m not public schooled, the friends I’ve met through private classes as well as my ballroom studio are spread out over a somewhat large geographical area, instead of being concentrated into the boundaries of one particular high school.
All of these factors combined together gave me a strong desire to get my Eagle Scout. Once I had it, I would be free. I would be free to go where I wanted, when I wanted and I would be able to take my friends with me.
In the autumn of last year I asked the question; why don’t I have this award yet? what’s the deal? why have I taken so long?
The answer, I found, was simple. Here it is; Each Monday morning I wake up with new tasks and new assignments to tackle during the upcoming week. My teacher’s give me assignments on a weekly basis. My week is dedicated to accomplishing these tasks.
I don’t do anything, ever, as a part of my regular routine that gets me closer to Eagle Scout.
On the other hand, I know that if I keep going to school and keep doing what my teachers tell me, I will eventually be able to graduate from the program that I am in.
Similarly, until I incorporate Eagle requirements into my weekly routine I will not be able to get the award.
For me, this was one of those “duh!” moments, that happen all too often in life when we realise significant pieces of truth that are quite obvious but have never crossed our mind.
Like I said in my previous treatise about dreams, once I incorporated Eagle Scout requirements into my weekly task list, I was finally able to get the award.
When last New Year’s rolled around one of the resolutions I made was to get my Eagle Scout within the next year. With what I just said in mind, I decided that I needed to make some incorporation between school and scouts. Too busy with school at the time to incorporate Eagle requirements into my schedule very heavily, I made a goal that every school day I would fill out at least one section from my merit badge worksheets. I did this every day until the semester was over. It was a huge help in earning my Eagle Scout. Once I found myself in summer, I was able to incorporate Eagle requirements into my schedule much more heavily because of all the time that I suddenly had on my hands.
Trying to accomplish a goal, without having the necessary steps integrated into our routines is like trying to quickly get from one location to another without actually standing up and moving in the direction of our desired location, is it not?
What does this mean for you? It means that if there’s something that needs to be done, or that you wish was done (if you’re a Boy Scout it might be getting your Eagle, *wink, wink*), then stop and ask yourself; “Am I doing the things that are necessary to get me to this goal on a regular basis?” If the answer to this question is no, then it’s time to incorporate steps to achieving your goal into your routines. If the answer is yes, then the rest of this treatise should prove especially useful in helping you in other areas in which you may be lacking.
To be sure, after a very long period of time, you may achieve the goals/dreams that you had by aimlessly accomplishing one task at a time without a real plan, because you just did it “when you felt like it.” This would be comparable to wanting to get to a certain geographic location, and getting there by wandering aimlessly, stopping often to rest, and going about this way for a long period of time until you finally looked up and found yourself at the spot where you wanted to get to. This is an entirely viable possibility, but how possible is it? Consider also the amount of time it will take. Leaving the analogy for a bit, and examining our real lives, what are the chances that we could actually achieve the goals we have if we travel to them so aimlessly? Physical roads to different locations generally do not change except over very long periods of time. But the “roads” to our life achievements, because of life’s complexity, are prone to change much more suddenly and dramatically, increasing the difficulty of getting to our destinations even more than in my metaphor.
Clearly we see that it is much more practical to deliberately take our geographical journey’s, one step at a time, in an intentional manner.
In the same way, the journey to our goals should be taken deliberately, which can only be done if the routines that we regularly go through accomplish the steps needed to get there.
Step #2; Small, then Big
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Always.
When I was born, my dad was working for a large financial corporation that sent him around the country on a weekly basis to sell their products and teach their financial principles.
We were living in the Provo Utah area at the time, and each month he would fly from the Salt Lake City airport to Seattle, Washington for a sales training.
The man that owned the corporation would stand at the front of the room and would begin the training by drawing the following shape on the whiteboard, followed by the words; “It’s like a funnel”;
Immediately all of the people in the room started to chant; “Funnel! Funnel! Funnel!” This would happen each month at every single training. It was very cliche for all of the people involved. The man would go on to illustrate the process (that any salesperson could probably explain to you) of getting customers to buy products in a funnel like fashion. You start out broad, and you gradually narrow things down.
This same marketing strategy applies to setting goals as well. Trying to achieve a huge dream/goal without any idea of where to begin is comparable to having a huge elephant in front of you and trying to swallow it whole. It just won’t work, and it will seem very daunting and overwhelming. Maybe you’ve experienced this feeling before when you were thinking about a dream that you have and how you could accomplish it. Perhaps you wanted to take your family on a trip somewhere. You were very excited, but when you began to look into it more and realized how much it would cost, and all the planning that would have to go into it, and how much work it would take you became very overwhelmed. At this point, it is very likely that you just gave up on the idea altogether.
This task, like eating an elephant, seemed very daunting. Yet, (and maybe you took this course instead) if you were to actually map out how much money you could afford to set aside each month and compare it to how much the trip would cost, things would suddenly seem easier and more possible. You would be able to see a clear way to get the money needed to afford such a trip by knowing that you needed to save X amount every month. Additionally, if you figured out each thing that needed to be done to be prepared for the trip and when you needed to start preparing (which might not be for a very long time, depending on how quickly you could save the necessary amount of money), you would suddenly realize how doable the task of preparation really was.
Now, you’ve done all that, so does that miraculously make the task much easier all of a sudden? Well, maybe not, the task might still seem very hard. Think about it, even if you were to stop and realize that you will be able to eat the elephant if you take it one bite at a time, it’s still going to seem like a difficult task. The important thing here though is that you know what needs to be done and can measure it.
In the case of our large goals, we apply this principle of “one bite at a time” by creating small goals, the accumulation of which will result in “funneling” into larger goals. As you continue on this path you will find that as the size of your goals increase, the quantity of them decreases.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Always.
Step #3; Make Your Goals S.M.A.R.T.
In November of 1981, readers of the magazine Management Review were enlightened by an article, written by a man named George T. Doran, entitled; There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives.
This article laid out five, very specific and concrete steps that Doran thought would make corporations successful at achieving goals if they applied them. These five things are an acronym. The following diagram will illustrate what each of the letters in the acronym mean;
Specific
Measureable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound
I’d like to explain each of these concepts one by one, but, before I do, I would like to clarify something about the nature of this article; although this article’s audience was the business world, you will, I’m sure, find that these principles apply to setting personal goals as well. Take a look at the examples I use to explain each one and see if I’m not right:
Specific: When setting goals, we need to get specific. In some cases, the extremity of how specific your goal is is the very thing that makes it a goal instead of a mere dream.
Which do you think you are more likely to achieve; a New Year’s Resolution that says; “I will exercise more”? or one that says; “every other morning I am going to hit the gym at 7:30 before I head for work”? If you set your goals like the first of my examples your likelihood of achieving them is very low. You won’t have a very good direction of where to go because you won’t know exactly where to go. On the other hand, if you were to set a goal similar to my second example, you will have a clear direction of what to do, and you will be much more motivated and likely to achieve it.
You’ve probably seen this pattern in your own life. When a goal is specific, you know exactly what it is that you need to shoot for. Because you know exactly what it is that you are shooting for you will be more motivated to achieve it because you will be able to see it, taste it, and feel it more than an unspecific goal that just says something like “I will exercise more.”
Measurable: This goes back to what I said about “funnels”. You’ve got to be able to see how long it will take to accomplish your goal. Additionally, you need to have steps laid out that will get you where you want to go.
Here’s a personal example; I currently live near very Salt Lake City Utah (my family has moved more than once since I was born). Every Christmas Eve, my family does something fun together. Usually we go sledding, but once or twice we’ve gone ice skating. One particular Christmas Eve a few years back, my family was discussing what we should do in the afternoon together. My younger brother, who was quite naive at the time, suggested this; “Why don’t we go down to L.A. and play on the beach?” We tried to explain to him that this was easier said than done, as it is a 12-14 hour drive from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, and we couldn’t just up and decide to do it in one day.
This childish ignorance may seem amusing, but how often do we have this perspective on our goals? New Year’s rolls around and we think; “Oh yes, now I am going to lose weight and get fit” but we never clearly measure what exactly it will take to accomplish this goal before we start out. But, if we do make a goal that is measurable we will be able to make the journey knowing that we are taking the necessary steps to get where we want to go. In other words, we will know that we are making progress.
Big corporations understand this principle very well. During the planning stages of public administration, business, you name it, planners clearly define what the end goal is (wink, wink, specific goals), and then they move backwards, laying out each component and detail necessary for the goal’s achievement, and when each thing needs to be accomplished (i.e. deadlines). Deadlines are one of the most effective tools for motivation.
If this is the pattern that successful organizations use to set their goals, then don’t you think that there is at least some wisdom in using this pattern for yourself personally? I certainly do.
Achievable: This one is rather self-explanatory; set goals that you can actually accomplish. Be careful though; for sometimes when we are trying to take care to only set goals that are achievable, we get scared that what we want actually isn’t achievable. Let’s say your goal is to pay of all credit card debt. You decide to work hard to achieve it, but then a negative voice starts to whisper in your ear, saying things like; “There’s no way that you can accomplish that! That goal is not achievable!”
Of course there’s a way to pay off your credit card debt! But you’ve got to believe that you can. My last treatise had a lot to say about believing in yourself, so go check it out if you’d like to learn more about how to shut out those negative voices.
When I say don’t set goals that aren’t achievable, I’m talking about things that really aren’t achievable, not things that your brain just says aren’t achievable. These are things like being able to afford a $300,000 house within a year when your yearly income is only $50,000. That is something that is legitimately not achievable (unless, of course, you set a goal to increase your income level first). But, most people in their right mind would not set a goal to achieve something like that, so I’ve got a better example to offer in the next paragraph.
Often, the reason why this step is so important to remember is that we sometimes just need more time than we think we do to accomplish goals. Let’s imagine that you want to pay off all credit card debt in, say, six months or less. Hmm... That might be something that would legitimately be unachievable. You might need to take a year or two to accomplish a goal like that.
Or maybe you want to lose 50 lbs. in one week. Achievable? Probably not. Try taking a few months on that one. But, once you measure your goal to know how long it will take to achieve, then you can give yourself sufficient time to make goals, like the two I just mentioned, possible.
It may take some time to learn, but I know that, with enough practice, you can learn to discern which goals are actually achievable and which ones aren’t.
Relevant: Also self-explanatory, goals should be relevant to what we want to accomplish. Lets go back to my analogy about getting from one geographical point to another; If you want to get from point A to point B, then you’d better not make a goal to go to point C (unless, of course, that is a necessary step on the journey to point B).
It’s hard enough to achieve goals as it is, why bother trying to achieve ones that have nothing to do with what you want?
Time-Bound: Going back to what I said in the section on measurable goals, set deadlines to go with your goals. A goal to get fit is a wonderful example of this; let’s say that you make a New Year’s Resolution to lose 20 lbs. Great. You have a goal. But, if you don’t have a certain time to get this goal done by, the likely of ever getting is cut considerably.
If you read my last treatise, you may remember that I mentioned a love for theater that I developed in 7th grade. The school that my family is involved with (as a part of our homeschooling program) puts a lot of focus on its drama program. Each May, the beginning drama class produces a Shakespeare play. It’s wonderful to watch as nearly the entire school turns out to help put the production together. Yet, at the same time, the week leading up to the play’s opening night is usually very hectic for a select few people that have taken the burden of being the play’s director, producer, stage manager, or what have you (thus giving the week the nickname of “heck week” as opposed to its proper name, “tech week”). Often, there’s a handful of actors who get to the first day of tech week without all of their lines memorized. In addition, the set usually needs to get put together but too often pieces of it are missing. Then, there’s all of the chairs that have to be set up, and to top it all off, the actors keep missing their cues, and the flow of the play isn’t coming together.
Last May, my dad watched me come home each night from tech week, beat tired and stressed out. One of the nights he said something like this to me; “Ya’ know, it seems like we aren’t ready to perform this weekend, but if we were to hold off on the first performance until we were ready, we would never do it.”
What my dad was describing is the power of deadlines. The directors of the play know that they have to perform on such and such a date, so they feel motivated to work hard and get things ready. When the week of the play rolls around, preparations hasten so that it can be all ready by opening night. However, it soon becomes obvious that things won’t be so easy. The play just isn’t coming together right. But, because of the deadline at the end of the week to have the performance ready, everybody does their part, and somehow things come together. We never would get there without the deadline in place.
Step #4 and Conclusion; Newton’s First Law of Motion
Sir Isaac Newton, world famous physicist, greatly advanced the study of physics by laying out three laws that govern the way in which things move. These laws are known as Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
The first of these laws states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. If I throw a frisbee, it will fly through the air at the same height and speed until an unbalanced force, called gravity, pulls it downward.
When Newton made this law, I can’t help but wonder if he realized the role that this law play’s in human achievement.
Just like an object at rest, a human being that is sitting on their couch at night will continue to sit there until something compels him or her otherwise. That something might be hunger for a sandwich, which would motivate the person on the couch to get up and go into the kitchen and make one. Or, maybe he or she needs to go to the bathroom. One way or another, an unbalanced force has to act on the person on the couch to get him or her to get up and do something.
This New Year’s, I want to challenge you to not only make New Year’s resolutions, but to clearly understand why you made them. If you understand this, then you will be more likely to achieve the goals that you set. And when I say “clearly understand” I mean constantly having the reason for achieving your goals somewhere in your mind where you can access it quickly. Why should you do this? Because at some point you are going to find yourself tempted to give up on your resolution in a weak moment.
Right now, you are at rest, but the resolutions you make will be an unbalanced force that causes you to move forward. If you want to keep moving forward past the middle of January, at the same height and speed, then you will need a way to counteract the negative forces trying to slow you down.
If you forget why you need to hold strong to the resolution that you set, then you will give in to temptation. But, if you can remember why you are fighting for your goal, you will have the strength to say no to the voices, and to hold true to what you intended to accomplish.
Happy New Year everyone. I hope that you are willing to ponder on the things that I have shared, and use these guidelines while making your resolutions. If you do, than I promise that you will come closer to achieving the things that you want. You may not be able to get it on the first try, but you will find yourself getting farther along in your goals than you ever have before. And, if you can get farther along, then maybe this will, finally, be the year that you’ve been waiting for. The year when that something in the distance that you’ve wanted for so long becomes yours to hold. The year when the invisible not only becomes visible, but also becomes tangible.
Thank you for reading,
Dallin D. Shumway
