What if we’ve got it all wrong? Used the wrong analogy or metaphor, and by doing so, kept ourselves stuck. So stuck that we can’t move forward, and goals become an exercise in frustration.
Before diving into this topic too much I checked an online dictionary for the definition of equation. Everything I found pointed to equilibrium, or a balanced state.
Goals are a method of giving us direction and a target to aim for. A way for us to focus attention so that we can improve on what we’ve got now, with the hope we can create ourselves a bigger and brighter future.
The process usually begins with describing a desired outcome. What we’d like to have happen so that we have a better experience of life. We then try and plan how we’re going to get from here to there, and then try and execute to that plan.
But what if that’s where we’ve been going wrong? What if trying to figure out how to move from A to B, from where we are now to where we want to be, from what we have now to what we want is exactly what is keeping us stuck?
I’d like to dive into a new possibility.
Sharing a Vision for the Future
I recently spent the five days at a Mastermind with a small group of amazing people, taking a deep dive into of life full out and on a bigger stage.
There seemed to be a common story line within the group. We know where we’re at but have a bigger vision of what we want to do and where we want to be. But how so we get there?
Best practice goal setting would have us create a vision for us to aim at. We get very clear on this end state even to the point of being able to describe how we’ll feel when we get it. The next step is then to take stock of where we are now and try to figure out a plan of how to get from our current situation to the target.
That will take the form of tasks to do, skills to learn and people to engage with that can help us if the result warrants it. It’s a way but is it the best way forward? Especially when what we’re creating is uniquely personal and there is no worn path to the promised land.
I recently had a conversation with a developer on a project I was working on. We were clear about the desired outcome and benefits, yet when it came to the solution, he was trying to fit the limitations of what we had in with the result. This approach would severely limit the benefit of what we were aiming.
Insight – When It’s the Same but Different
During the Mastermind someone was sharing an insight and said something that made a number of us gasp audibly.
I can’t recall the exact words, but I heard it as, “The future is unwritten”.
It was so simple and yet so profound I couldn’t deny the truth of it.
I’d heard similar things said before but this time it really hit home. There future isn’t written and therefore is full of possibility. It’s an empty page waiting for us to write whatever we want.
The future is unlimited potential.
But even more than that, what was implied is we didn’t need to try and fit the past into our future.
Unlimited Possibility
When we focus on getting from where we are now to where we want to be, we inadvertently limit that future without necessarily meaning to. We take our current baggage and limitations and compromise the potential of our outcome.
I started this piece with the statement ‘The future is an unwritten equation’. If it was an equation it would look something like this:
CURRENT STATE + CHANGE = FUTURE STATE
But what if we didn’t take that approach?
What if instead we treated the future as a clean slate? One where there was no need to worry about how we’re going to transform our current self or current situation? Where our only focus is on the desired outcome so that what is created is pristine and free of limitation?
An example from my life in Project Management is an IT System upgrade. Of all the upgrades I’ve done, master data has always been a problem. When you try to do and upgrade with corrupted or incomplete data, you limit the functionality and benefits of the new system. Even when you try to clean data you don’t always reap the benefits because you’re carrying forward years of data mismanagement, mistakes and misunderstandings. Not to mention the new system may have functions that the original data just didn’t cater for. But start with a clean slate, a new understanding of what outcome you want, without all the old baggage, and you end up with a different data set and a different solution.
It sounds idealistic, but as a thought exercise it frees you from constraint and opens unlimited possibility. This is how to solve the big problems we face rather than going through incremental change.
This new equation would look like this:
FUTURE = UNLIMITED POSSIBILITY
Which is not really an equation because it’s not balanced, there aren’t two sides to it, but then again it doesn’t really need to be.
Goal Setting & Subtractive Thinking
When it comes to meaningful goals, a new future will include new aspects of yourself and an altered world view. That’s the dichotomy of personal goals. We set out on the path hoping that we can change in our external circumstances which will lead to a change in the way we feel. But to create the external changes, we first need an internal shift.
Without growth, nothing changes.
In my early 20’s I was bitten by the running bug and would go out on long training runs and find that I would slip into a state where solutions to problems I’d struggled to solve would easily come to mind.
‘Flow’, ‘The Zone’, ‘Runners High’. Conditions where thinking falls away and the person experiencing it enters a state where learning, creativity, problem solving, and complex task execution appear effortless.
I recall reading the book ‘The Rise of Superman’ by Steven Kotler. He had extensively researched the benefits of ‘the zone’ and how science was now attempting to ‘hack the zone’, to find ways to enter the state ‘on demand’ so that you could reap the benefits.
What I found strange about the attempts at hacking, is that in my experience the zone had always been subtractive. The less I had on my mind, the easier it was to enter the state.
I’ve found the same is the case with personal growth and transformation. The less I have on my mind the, the less negative self-talk I have and the more capable I am.
Growth in capability is the result of insight. Insight is the process of seeing through misunderstanding, of moving away from superstition and closer to the way things work.
Unfortunately, it seems insights can’t be manufactured. All you can do is create a fertile environment and hope for the happy accident.
And what is the ground where the insight is sown?
A quiet mind.
Beneath the self-talk and noisy chatter of our own mind we all have a space of peace and quiet. It is from this space that new knowing emerges.
Subtractive Thinking
Where attention goes, energy flows. An old cliché in the self-help world. When you focus on what stopping your progress, when you get stuck in a snowball of thinking about what you can’t do and spend all your energy and self-talk justifying that takes your attention and you don’t expend enough, or any effort on the solution.
Positive thinking is the solution given by most life coaches, but I wouldn’t even try. How can you control a Thought? Keep it in mind by telling yourself you’re not going to think that? Rather the answer is subtractive. Strip away the misunderstanding that keeps us stuck in the first place, then positivity and high performance come to us naturally.
Results come from doing, by continually taking active steps towards your outcome. Deepening your understanding the nature of experience is what clears the path forward. For me, the more I’ve seen for myself how we each create our experience, the simpler it gets for me to move forward, the job then becomes waking others to the same possibility within themselves.
