When Goals are more than Goals

Sometimes it takes work.... a lot of work, to understand what your goals should be. 

Goal setting is a skill that's developed overtime. I think back to my childhood and how I would set a goal, and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail but never really feeling like a goal was important. When I started my direct sales business in 2008, my mentor worked closely with me to set goals. When I started, my goals were HIGH. I wanted the highest awards, and the highest payouts. I was dedicated to attempting to overachieve.

A few years later I had a conversation with my mentor that shed some light into how powerful goals are. "Stephanie, I want you to really think about the goals you're setting."

"Oh I have, and this is the year! For sure! $100,000 in sales!" I replied emphatically.

"I'm going to say something here, and I want you to know that I believe in you and that I know you can do this... However, I want you to reflect on the past few years. I want you to think about how high you normally set your goals, how it feels when you don't reach them, and the outcome of that." she replied.

She was right, My years leading up to that year were $5,000... $6,000 even $9,000 in sales, and in no year, or month had I come close to having what I would need in the upcoming year if I were going to hit that goal. I didn't have the client base, the focus, and frankly, the stability in my life to go about reaching those goals. A new mom of 2, with my marriage on the rocks, and no back up plan... I was in no place to think that I could increase my sales by over 90% and if one of my reps now came to me now and thought this, I would encourage it, but we'd set other targets too.

As I grew in my sales career and in my relationship with my mentor, I staggered, drunkenly along the path of proper goal setting. (And by drunkenly, I mean UW Frat boy at 6 am after a REALLY party hard night.) My mentor introduced me to SMART goals. For those of you that don't know, SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relative, and Timely. Some people think that it's Attainable and Realistic. I've revamped this to relative mainly because attainable and realistic to me mean the same thing, but "relative" ensures that your goals pertain to the vision or mission. The Specific, Measurable, and Timely pieces of goals have always been pretty easy for me. "I want to purchase XYZ, by EOY." The challenging pieces were the Attainability and Relativity of the goals that I was setting. For instance, "$100,000 in sales by end of year!" Was neither attainable in that moment or relative to my motivations nor the needs of my life at the time.

Trying so hard to reach these crazy high goals only to fail continued to crush me, year after year. I eventually felt so low and so defeated that I wanted to give up on everything. I felt as if I'd never have anything that I wanted for my life. In my lowest points, and in reflection with my mentor I worked hard to continue to understand goal setting as a practice to help me beyond just sales goals. In 2014 I started to set my goals with a more focused "life" vision. I went through a personal trauma that year, and it caused me to re-asses what I was focused on from day to day. I continued setting goals a little aimlessly, but I started to notice a cohesiveness with them. For instance, in 2015, I set a goal to get my associates degree, and move into a leadership position at my company. So I enrolled in school... and started applying to positions. That same year I set goals to "read 1 book a month" and to "Write once a month." It took 3 applications, but I moved into leadership which helped me directly with my degree progression in "Leadership Development." I was able to take my classes and apply them to the real world, and what I was learning in my job applied directly to my classes.

It was that year that I truly began to understand that the way to be successful is by ensuring that your goal setting is set in line with the biggest priorities of your life. That your success metrics are in line with your personal needs, values, and beliefs. I've set my goals and been successful every year since then, except for 2019. 3 years in a row and I was certain that 2019 was going to be a year that I could really push myself to get all of my dreams conquered. I failed to acknowledge and compensate for personal growth, focus and external factors that would prevent me from accomplishing this. In 2019 I failed, and I failed at almost every single goal that I set for myself. In reflection, it's because those goals, while important, spread me thin. I was working on too many things at once, and I also was focused too much on "accomplishing" the goal, rather than what the year had to teach me.

This might sound more counterintuitive. The goal of setting goals is to give you something to accomplish, right? The me from this time 2019 would have said yes... but I'm starting to believe that there's more to this than just accomplishment and "success." Then again, maybe that's where I am in my life now.

I knew in October that I wanted my goals for 2020 to be different... goals that would affect me profoundly, and goals that would lead me to the next steps of my life. I KNEW that the goals I set this year needed to come from DEEP down And fill me with joy and excitement. For every week that’s gone by this year, I’ve felt like I didn’t have a focus or a path. I've been working on what "goals" I wanted to accomplish this year and I constantly felt like everything I started to aim at just weren't the right targets. I needed something that would encompass my delusions of grandeur, while still allowing me to accommodate for the journey and the lessons that I'd learn along the way. I needed a non-concrete vision for myself that would allow me to create concrete and measurable goals.

It's March 12th, so almost a full quarter in, and I finally have my goals. These aren't just goals though... As the picture shows, they are commitments. These goals are my "I will.." Statements. Stating that you WILL do something, has this odd affect of making it come true. The odd thing is that I didn't feel the need to get extremely granular, so my "SMART" goals this year, aren't extremely specific or measurable. My action steps are, but my goals... "Connection" and "Reflection". are just concepts, really.

And this brings me to the title of this article. When goals are more than goals... This is where I'm at right now. My goal of "Connection" is more than just a SMART goal... it's a way of life. For example, In 2020 I want to live my life in connection... connection to others, to my community, to nature, to the moment, and to life. I can do this with simply being more aware... by creating opportunities to become more connected, and by spending more time with the people I already feel connected to.

It's been hard to set these goals, but I'm celebrating tonight because I've found the RIGHT goals, for the RIGHT now. These are goals that won't just help me accomplish something, but goals that will help me to grow in ways that I've never imagined.