No One Is Doing This Goal and It Is Killing People

There’s one specific type of goal that no one is doing right now and it’s causing significant damage in our world. I didn’t really notice what was happening until last summer.

Last July, I did an informal test to figure out what types of goals people were pursuing. I asked hundreds of people via Facebook, Twitter and the Guaranteed Goals Community for feedback. I received 188 different goals and categorized them into one of five buckets:

1. Career
2. Financial
3. Relationships
4. Health
5. Fun

If you’ve read my new book, All it Takes is a Goal, you know exactly what I am talking about. (You can grab a copy right here.)

Here’s how the results broke down.

Financial = 21 goals

There were 21 different financial goals represented in the study, ranging from save for retirement to pay off debt to replace my vehicle.

The next biggest category was:

Fun = 49 goals

There were 49 different fun goals, ranging from learn to paddle board to get a puppet performance ready to live in an RV fulltime to write a book.

The next biggest category was:

Career = 50 goals

There were 50 different career goals, ranging from pass the CPA exam to grow my coaching business to earn the incentive trip with my company.

The biggest category of goals that people were interested in was:

Health = 64 goals

There were 64 different health goals, ranging from losing weight to doing 30 days of yoga to reducing stress to running a 5K.

That’s only four categories though, can you tell what was missing?

Relationships.

When I combed through the responses, here’s what I found:

Relationships = 4 goals

Out of 188 goals, 4 were relationship focused. That’s about 2% of the list.

The wild thing is that most of us would say, “People are important to us.”

Right?

If you’re married, you’d say your spouse is important to you. If you’re a parent, you’d say your kids are important to you. If you’re a friend, you’d say your friends are important to you. But our goals don’t reflect it. It’s even wilder to think about when you consider the dangers of isolation and loneliness.

For the first time ever, the Surgeon General of the United States, has laid out a framework to deal with social connection. He warned, “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized health issues such as tobacco, obesity and substance use disorders.”

Loneliness is an epidemic. Loneliness is a monster. Loneliness is killing people.

So, what do we do? Part of the problem is that it’s hard to turn something fuzzy like, “Have more friends” or, “Stop being lonely” into a tactical, practical, measurable goal. But I bet we can fix that today. Here are three relationship goals you can try immediately.

1.?Encourage one person every day for a week. Take out your phone, go through your contacts and make a list of 7 people you want to encourage. Tomorrow, text the first person on the list a short message like, “Was just thinking about how glad I am that I get to be your friend” or, “Whenever I think of creativity, I think of you!” or, “I still laugh every time I think about how wild that football game was that we went to.” I guarantee that 90% of them will respond with some form of “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that today.”

2.?Call your _____. I realized that with the busyness of life, I can often go weeks without talking to my mom. She won’t be around forever and I want to have a strong relationship with her, where she feels loved, so I made it a goal. I picked Friday because that’s her day off from work. What name would you put in that blank? Who do you need to call more consistently?

3.?Own the ask. Be the person who sets up the event, lunch, coffee, etc. Sometimes, especially for teenagers, it’s easy to sit and wait around for someone to reach out to you. Jenny and I will often say to our kids, “Do you have any plans this weekend?” and they’ll say, “I wish, no one asked me to do anything.” We’ll respond, “Own the ask.” Those three words have become a family soundtrack. Be the one who reaches out.

The pushback I sometimes get to relationship goals is that people will say, “That makes it feel forced, it’s not natural,” or, “I shouldn’t need a goal to do something nice for someone.”

That logic reminds me of something author Marshall Goldsmith wrote about a few years ago. In his book The Earned Life, he shares, “A friend once mocked me for tracking how many times I said something nice to my wife each day. ‘You shouldn’t have to be reminded to be nice to your wife,’ he said.” To which Goldsmith responded, “Evidently, I do.” He goes on to say, “I’m not ashamed that I need a reminder to behave better. It would be shameful if I knew it and didn’t do anything about it.”

It’s difficult to think of an area of your life that won’t be improved by a simple, deliberate goal, whether that’s relationships, career, finances, health or fun.

If you’re lonely, try one of those three ideas and let me know how it goes.

If you want to accomplish your next goal, regardless of the type, read this.

Jon

(I wrote this for my free newsletter, the “Try This!” Sign up today to get ideas just like this, twice a month. www.Acuff.me/newsletter)