The 3 Things You Definitely DON’T need to reach your goals.
We spend so much of our time and energy focusing on what we should do, or all the things that we have to do, or what we (think we) need to do.
When it comes to reaching your goals, there is some good news! Here are three things (to start with) that you can cross off your to do list. Yes, that’s right, you can feel free to let go of trying to figure these things out – because they’re simply not necessary to achieving your dreams.
1.You don’t need to work harder – or try harder
I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve thought to myself, if I just try a little bit harder, if I become a bit more efficient, if I just push myself a bit more, then I will finally figure this thing out. I’m pretty sure that I know what I need to do (I’ve done the research, I’ve created a strategy and formulated a plan), but I can’t get myself to put what I know into practice, to make it tangible.
Sound familiar?
But working harder doesn’t necessarily equate to better outcomes. (I know, I couldn’t believe it when I first learned this truth either!)
The hardest working employee doesn’t always get the promotion or the pay increase. It’s not necessarily the hardest working athlete who wins the race. The hardest working student doesn’t always get the top result in the class (or even score highly enough to pass).
It doesn’t mean that putting in your best effort isn’t worthwhile – I think it is. But generally, it makes sense to work smarter, not harder. And sometimes that means doing less (focusing on one priority at a time rather than ten) or thinking about ways to make the task easier.
“We try hard to do good. But we should try softer.” Andrea Gibson
Instead of working harder, try being fully committed to achieving your goal. It’s a subtle change but it makes a big difference.
Try this now: are you 100% committed to achieving your goal? If not, what would it take for you to get to 100%?
Notice what changes when you feel fully committed to achieving your goal.
2. You don’t need to have the perfect plan mapped out on day 1
So often we put off getting started on a goal that we really want to achieve – or we even convince ourselves that a particular goal is not meant for us – because we don’t know exactly HOW we’re going to do it.
What would change if you trusted that you don’t need to have a complete and thorough plan mapped out before you get started?
Because you don’t need to know how to achieve your goal to get started.
Here’s what you do need before you start:
+ you need to know WHAT your goal is, and you need to know WHERE you are now in relation to that goal. You need to know these two pieces of information so that you can figure out the direction that you need to head.
+ you need to know WHY you want to achieve that goal. What will it get for you or allow you to do once you achieve it? Knowing this is key to your motivation – to get started and to keep you on track along the way.
It is helpful to have a rough roadmap of how you might get from where you are to where you want to be – but keep in mind that the plan will become clearer as you start taking action. A useful approach that I often use is to work backwards i.e. start with the end in mind, then figure out the major milestones you’ll need to reach along the way (and lastly you can start to fill in the details to get one from one milestone to the next).
3. You don’t Need to Feel Confident
It’s easy to think that once you feel confident, then you’ll start taking action towards your goals. But the opposite is true – as you start to take action, your confidence starts to build.
Honestly, when I’m starting something new, something that’s outside of my comfort zone, I don’t find it helpful or necessary to even think about how confident I feel.
Confidence is something that comes with experience and practice, after you have made progress and started to develop competence at a new skill. When I am right at the start, or in the early stages of something new, I don’t expect to feel confident. And I wouldn’t expect you to feel confident with something that is unfamiliar and that you’re not yet competent at either.
In those early stages, rather than focusing on how confident you feel (or don’t feel), it’s much more supportive to draw on your sense of self-trust.
Self-trust is that deep, inner knowing that you can use your strengths, knowledge and past experiences to manage whatever comes up. Even when an obstacle comes up or you make a decision that doesn’t turn out as you expect, it means that you trust that you can (and will) figure it out in the end.
Self-trust leads to self-confidence.
If you are going after a big goal, something you’ve never achieved before, but something that is deeply important to you, well done!
It takes courage to name what it is that you really want and then start taking action towards achieving it. But take comfort in the fact that you don’t need to work harder, you don’t need to have figured out exactly how to do it yet and it’s completely fine if you are feeling a little uncomfortable as you step outside of your comfort zone. It’s normal to feel uncomfortable when you’re doing something new or unfamiliar.
Lean into your sense of self-trust. You said that you were going to reach this goal, so you will. Even if it doesn’t all go according to plan, or the way that you expected it to, you can trust that you will figure it out in the end.
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