Wisdom Wednesdays
What’s the best way to get what you want? Anybody? Set a goal!
Or is it?
Goal setting is a standard model where you figure out the outcome you want to have happen, get really clear on it and create the steps to make it happen. There are some things that can make it more effective like making it positive (i.e. wanting to achieve something instead of avoid something) and writing it down.
About 10 years ago, the author Bobb Biehl wrote the book Stop Setting Goals If you Would Rather Solve Problems. Are you the type of person that would rather solve problems than set a goal? He figured out a ton of folks (80% or so) fall into this bucket. However, goal setting and problem solving are both important and useful skills to develop.
The concept of inevitability thinking suggests that you ask what the conditions need to be so that success is inevitable. Said another way, it’s about setting things up so that the conditions you want to have happen, happens automatically.
Here’s a small example: If you want to start going to the gym every day, you can treat not working out regularly as a problem to be fixed and do things like laying your workout clothes out ahead of time or setting an alarm 30 minutes before you leave work to grab a bottle of water and Clif Bar from your desk drawer, which just so happens to be stocked with them. But then you have to get yourself to go do it… One thing you might do is find an accountability partner that picks you up every day and drives you to the gym or maybe you alternate days that you drive each other. That’s a lot closer to making the goal of good fitness happen automatically. You might also need to find a way to make sure when you’re at the gym, you get a good workout in. How could you make this inevitable? Perhaps a competition between your friend and yourself that the person who works out the least between the two of you buys the other the protein shake.
So start thinking of ways that you can set up conditions for what you want to happen, happen automatically. A recurrent theme is having some time, date or deadline (where other people expect it to be done by).
Of course you still can wiggle out of things if you really are determined to, but this is just another way to think about structuring things in your head. Hope that gets your gears turning a bit…
