4 Soft Skills That Make Hard Goals Easier

There are three kinds of skills in the world:

1. Hard skills.

2. Soft skills.

3. The stuff Liam Neeson can do.

I can’t help you with that third type. Those are very particular.

But what I do have today is a few thoughts about that second category.

A hard skill is a specific capability like speaking Italian, having your real estate license,knowing how to code in a certain language or copywriting.

I have that last one.

I learned it writing advertising for companies like Staples, Bose, The Home Depot and AutoTrader.com. The ability to craft a headline has helped me tremendously in speeches and books. Here’s a few headlines I’ve written:

"Never compare your beginning, to someone else’s middle."

"Fear comes free, hope takes work."

"Empathy = Read less minds, ask more questions."

"It will either be a success or a story."

"Be brave enough to be bad at something new."

I like to write headlines because I learned that hard skill in my corporate job. I also learned a few soft skills that have served me well in pursuing goals.

There are four that have helped me the most and they might help you, too.

4 Soft Skills That Make Hard Goals Easier

1. Resilience

Some people think resilience is toughness or grit. They imagine you have to be a Navy Seal to have resilience or jump out of airplanes to fight forest fighters to live this one out. That’s not how I think of resilience. Here’s the definition I use: Resilience is allowing yourself to begin again when things don’t go the way you expected the first time.

That’s it. That’s all it is.

Resilience is for what I call, “The Day After Perfect.” Have you ever had that day with a goal? You were on a streak. You were being faithful to your workouts. You were meal planning perfectly. You were writing every day. You were practicing piano after work 15 days in a row. And then, life happened. You got busy unexpectedly. A kid got the flu. An aging parent moved in. Big or small, a rogue wave knocked you over. The streak died and now, it’s the day after perfect.

Resilience is why you’ll try again.

Not just that, resilience is why you’ll allow yourself to try again. Resilience doesn’t shout, “Get up you loser!” Resilience says, “These days are going to happen, let’s try again buddy.”

2. Self-Awareness

You can’t accomplish big goals without self-awareness. If you’re not self-aware, you can’t have real relationships, succeed at work, stay in shape, or accomplish any other goal that matters in life. How could you? Without self-awareness, you don’t have an accurate picture of reality.

The leader who thinks they’re passionate is shocked to get fired one day for anger issues. The dad in his fifties is insulted when his doctor warns him he’s dangerously overweight. The young woman in her late twenties is confused why she keeps attracting losers to date, never once wondering if she’s the one who needs to change first.

Self-awareness is like when you hand a pair of full-spectrum glasses to someone who has been color blind their entire life, or when you turn on cochlear implants and a toddler finally hears their mother’s voice for the first time. Look at all the colors I can see! Listen to all the sounds I can hear! Check out the moments of life that make me come alive!

(I wrote more about self-awareness in my brand new book, “All it Takes is a Goal.” You can pre-order it here!)

3. Flexibility

I don’t know what goal you’re working on right now but I know it won’t go exactly the way you planned. It never does. Flexibility is the ability to change and adapt as the year changes in ways you couldn’t have possibly anticipated during the planning stages. Sometimes you’re hit with unforeseen challenges.

When Covid cancelled every speaking engagement I had booked in 2020, I had to be flexible. I had to start a podcast, learn how to do virtual events and launch online courses. Sometimes you’re gifted with unforeseen opportunities. When my book “Soundtracks” came out, I didn’t anticipate parents wanting a version for teenagers. That wasn’t something any of us planned. When we saw the need though, we reacted with flexibility and responded quickly with “Your New Playlist,” a book my two teenage daughters wrote.

Rigid goals fail, flexible goals succeed. Here’s an easy litmus test I use to see if my goals or expectations have become too rigid. If I get angry when plans change, I’m being too rigid. If I get mad when things don’t go exactly how I planned, I’ve made an idol of my plan.

As a control freak, that’s hard for me to admit, but it’s true. You know the least about your goal during the planning stages. Every day gives you a clearer picture of how things are really going.

If you have self-awareness, you’ll be able to see what’s really happening and react with flexibility.

4. Patience

Boy, I hate this one, which is a real shame because in many ways, it’s the most powerful of the bunch. It’s hard to beat a patient person. It’s hard to beat someone who is willing to consistently work.

It’s hard to beat someone who stacks a small piece of the goal on top of another small piece of the goal on top another small piece of the goal all week, month, or year long. It’s hard to beat someone who refuses to get bored.

I recently heard Jim Rohn say that some people try building a house but good bored after doing the foundation so they move to a different piece of property and build another foundation and then another foundation. They own a dozen foundations but still have to sleep outside because they never finish the house. I’m not a fortune teller, but I can tell you how long it’s going to take for your goal to succeed.

Would you like to know?

Longer than you want.

In more than a dozen years of helping people with their goals, I’ve never met someone who said, “The goal happened so much faster than I thought!”

Nope.

Big goals take big patience.

What’s helped me with that? One thing I do is “Check my expectations.”

Often, my impatience is born from expecting progress to happen faster than it possibly can.

I used to get angry all the time while writing a book because it was going so much slower than I wanted. I wrote down, “Three pages is plenty” to combat the broken soundtrack that told me, “Every time you sit down to write you should be able to finish the whole book.” Talk about an unkind soundtrack. I felt like a failure every time I wrote because I didn’t complete the whole book in one sitting. “Three pages is plenty” was a much kinder path.

These aren’t the only soft skills you’ll need to be successful at goals. You could add compassion, creativity, wisdom, focus and bravery to this list. But when I’m facing a hard goal this four soft skills make it feel easier. Try this! Turn them into questions:

1. Am I giving myself the ability to begin again? (Resilience.)

2. Can I see all the colors of this situation or am I missing a few? (Self-awareness.)

3. When plans change, do I bend or break? (Flexibility.)

4. Are my expectations about progress based in data or delusion? (Patience.)

Jon

P.S. I have a brand new book about succeeding at every goal you have. You can pre-order it here.

(This article is an excerpt of my bi-weekly newsletter, Try This! If you want to receive more great content like this, sign up at www.jonacuff.com/newsletter)