What You Think You Want Is Usually Not What You Really Want

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” — Bill Copeland

My sister, a third-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, texted me recently, frustrated she wasn’t getting accepted to internships for which she applied.

“I just need something to pay the bills this summer,” she said. “But I want an internship — a finance internship — because I like my finance class and want to learn finance in business.”

A few years her senior, and someone who’s had his fair share of internships, I told her “internships are overrated.” Sure, I was trying to lift her spirits, but I also used the word “overrated” for a reason.

You see, as much as my sister thinks she wants an internship (the means), she doesn’t truly want an internship. What she really wants is to pay the bills this summer and learn finance in business (the end), both of which are not exclusive to an internship. (I have a feeling she also wants something that looks good on her résumé, which is overrated as well, but that’s a different post for a different day.)

So, if her actual goals are to pay the bills this summer and learn finance in business, she could also get a “summer job” and enroll in an online or local course about finance in business. Or, she could start her own venture in time for the summer and learn finance in business “on the job” — a double-whammy. Heck, she could even get a “summer job” and get an unpaid internship, or find a mentorship/fellowship to learn finance in business.

Again, this is assuming her actual goals are to pay the bills this summer and learn finance in business.

Either way you cut it, there are multiple paths to the same destination, yet we so often get caught up in the path to take — what my dad calls the “thick of thin things” — rather than focusing first on the destination we have in mind, and then reverse-engineering the path.

When you focus on the destination first and subsequently work backward to decipher the path to take, you increase the likelihood of actually getting from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow.

Reverse-engineering your goals

The first of this two-step process is to ask yourself a simple (but not easy) question: “Why?”

For instance, I mentor freelancers, and one of the first questions I ask them is: Why are you freelancing, or why do you want to freelance?

Is it to be happier? To make more money? To have more control of your schedule and workload? To spend more time doing things you enjoy away from work? Something else?

The point is: Look beneath the surface and dig deeper until you find the actual reasons you want what you want, not what it appears you want at first glance.

Once you develop the answers to these questions — I purposefully use the word “develop” to indicate a process, which takes time — proceed with the second step by asking yourself: “What are the specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound objectives to achieving my goals?”

That is to say, how can you make the “why” come to life? How can you build a vehicle that will take you to the place you truly want to go?

It all starts with asking yourself the why, and then figuring out the how.

About The Author

Josh Hoffman is an international digital marketing consultant, strategist and instructor. He also runs Epic Freelancing, where he helps freelancers achieve financial success, creative freedom and lifestyle design.

Get his free courses 4 Social Media Strategies to Attract More Customers and 6 Steps to 6-Figure Freelancing.