Archive for the 'Goals' Category

Jun182008

The Power of Doing

The first few years after I graduated high school and first started college, I competed in the sport of Olympic Weightlifting (sorry no pics right now). I did reasonably well and found a coach to work with me in preparing for meets and national level championships. One day, my comrades and I were training about 5 weeks ahead of an important meet - it was a particularly long and difficult training session. We were discussing various things between sets (girls, college classes, girls, etc.) when I loudly proclaimed to one of my training partners that I was going to lift 160 kilos at the upcoming meet.

Upon hearing this, my coach suddenly stopped what he was doing, creaked his neck around and gave me an odd look. He turned around and walked briskly over to where we were standing. Puzzled, I looked at my friend for any idea of what was going on, but he returned an equally puzzled look. Coach stopped in front of us and looked at us both intensely but didn’t say anything - it was one of those uncomfortable silent moments where you dare not speak first.

Finally, coach looked me in the eye and said:

“don’t ever talk about what you are going to do”

I blinked back an acknowledgment that I had heard him and he walked back to helping another lifter. For the rest of the day we trained in silence, methodically performing the rest of our exercises. I reflected on what my coach had said that night and on many different nights since then. Looking back on that day, I don’t think that my weightlifting coach was auditioning for a philosophy professorship, but the words: “don’t ever talk about what you are going to do” have had a sizable impact on me at various times.

You can interpret “don’t ever talk about what you are going to do” in several ways. Here is what I usually come up with:

  • don’t jinx yourself (ha!)
  • don’t trash talk
  • don’t brag
  • don’t reveal your intentions
  • be “in the moment”
  • talk is cheap
  • actions mean everything

Perhaps I could mash all these things up and come up with something really profound…

What my coach said soft of flies in face about what I had been taught about goal setting, you know, where you are supposed to boldly tell everyone you know what your goals are. However, I think there is something more powerful in the works here.

You see, I think when we talk about what we are going to do, it’s a way of programming your mind. Words are very powerful and can indeed manifest themselves in your life. However, most people (virtually all) are not careful with the words they use and how and when they say things. In addition, most people don’t think through what they are going to say (even if it is a goal, they haven’t even thought through that) to make it adhesive at all in their own minds. Simply blurting out things, no matter how profound or substantive we think they are, usually just pollutes the air.

Here is the other aspect: actions are all that count. In the court of life, the only thing that matters is what you do. What you say may offend or make people happy temporarily, but your actions will be the lasting impression and feeling they have. In this light, I have added the old Nike commercial tag line as an ad-lib to my weightlifting coaches saying:

“don’t talk about what you are going to do - just do it”

Published
by
Adam Davis
on June 18, 2008
in Goals and communication
. 1 Comment
May302008

So, What Don’t You Want?

no

There never seems to be a shortage of people who are willing to tell you what to do. No matter what aspect of life it is: career, entrepreneurship, parenting, marriage, spirituality, fitness - there are innumerable experts and pundits that are happy to tell you what you should do and how you should do it.

I’ve read dozens of success and self-help books. Some of them good, some of them bad. One of the recurring themes throughout these books is an emphasis on getting clear about what you want. What are your goals? What are your dreams? Where do you want to be in 5 years? etc.

While I’m not going to attempt to usurp authors like Zig Ziglar and Anthony Robbins, I want to make a point of how reverse psychology can help you get closer to where you want to be.

Focusing on what you want in life in terms of lifestyle, money, health, family and other areas is good. But, what I have had even more success with is defining what I DON’T want.

“How is this different?” you might be asking. Well, to me it is profoundly different for several reasons.

Let me lead with one of Thomas Edison’s most famous quotes: “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”

Perhaps I should just end with that quote, I can’t really claim to out-wit one of the greatest inventors in American history. But, here goes.

First of all, I think finding out what you don’t want puts something finite and concrete in your brain and your brain likes it. We are conditioned this way from when we are young. For example: cross the street, but only cross within in the white lines of the cross walk. I think we force ourselves to focus more when we know there are certain rules. Developing a list of things you DON’T want is kind of like having a set of rules that govern your life.

Setting goals about what you DO want is great, but what knowing what you DON’T want is often derived from experience, which makes it set more permanently into your psyche.

Secondly, defining what you DON’T want helps you realize in more profound terms what it is you DO want. For me, this epiphany came when I quit a fairly well paying corporate job to strike out on my own. One day I just realized that working in a cubicle farm under florescent lights and having 8 different bosses drone on about mission statements was not for me (ok, I borrowed that last part from Office Space).

billy

Lastly, defining what you DON’T want, under any circumstances, helps instill a stronger sense of discipline into your daily life. A lot of people think discipline has to do with punishment, but it really means adhering to rules and principles and making no excuses or exceptions. I have been more successful in my endeavors when I have kept to a disciplined focus. The discipline is strongly derived from keeping away from what you DON’T want.

Here’s another example: I want to build my business bigger and better each day. Each day brings forth opportunities. Some opportunities are potentially lucrative, and I am inclined to pursue them, but pursuing them would violate one of the things I absolutely do not want in my business life: complexity (too many moving parts). I prefer to stay with a strict and simple value proposition. To me, life is complicated enough and just about every human being on earth is involved in a mad conspiracy to complicate things further and muddy up their lives. Therefore, knowing what I DON’T want helps me stay disciplined in pursuing my end business goals.

Now, what to do?

I think it’s going to be pretty easy for you to get clear about what you don’t want to do. It might even be fun. We’ll revisit this topic in a future post and I’ll share some of my absolute DON’T list (it’s getting larger by the day - does that mean I’ll be trapped in my own cocoon pretty soon?).

Published
by
Adam Davis
on May 30, 2008
in Goals and Self Improvement
. 3 Comments