Stop Focusing on HOW to Achieve Your Goals

Ep: 226

Do you spend a lot of time focusing on how you’ll achieve your goals?

This is the most common trap people fall into when setting goals, but the truth is that it rarely produces results.

There is a better way to achieve your goals that feels a lot more fluid and a lot less stressful. 

Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment®, Blake explains why this pre-planning so often backfires. In fact, it could actually be limiting your possibilities and preventing you from achieving your goals.

In this episode, you’ll learn a better way to achieve your goals that focuses less on having a step-by-step plan and more on following in the direction of your North Star. You’ll hear about a different approach to goal-setting that helps you take the steps you need while gathering valuable information for the journey ahead.

When you stop focusing on the how, you actually open up your options and expand the possibilities. 

What You’ll Learn:

  • When having a plan actually works against you (1:40)
  • What successful people have figured out (3:33)
  • A new approach to achieving your goals (5:36)
  • Why planning ahead isn’t always helpful (6:40)
  • How this method reduces stress and opens up more possibilities (8:15)

Favorite Quotes:

  1. This obsession we have about figuring out how something needs to happen is what keeps us stuck.
  2. When we approach every new circumstance with the perspective of having to know exactly what it should look like, then we drastically narrow the amount of choices we have because those choices can only fit in what we know.
  3. It’s nearly impossible to create something different if you’re only using the knowledge you have today.
  4. When you remove having to know the how, you allow yourself to be open to an infinite number of possibilities.

Additional Resources:

Rather than hoping the grass will be greener, identify what the RIGHT next step is.
We can help you do just that.

Get clarity on where you are on your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optional paths to get there, and the right next step to take.

Start your complimentary, Personalized Career Fulfillment Plan by going to https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan

Want free resources to set your job search up for success? You can get them by going to: https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/mistakes

For other programs and opportunities to work with Blake, go to www.BlakeSchofield.com

Transcript

Blake Schofield 0:05
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment®, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment®.

Blake Schofield 0:39
So I was having a conversation with a couple of my clients today. And I realized in sharing how often the things we’ve been taught as high achievers are actually wrong. They’re the things that are creating patterns of stress, anxiety, or frustration, or worry that maybe we won’t be able to achieve what we want to achieve. They’re the things that cause us to procrastinate, get stuck in analysis paralysis. And what that does is either stop us from achieving our goal, or make the process of achieving our goals so painful and so much work, that we often don’t end up with the best outcome. And I’ll share with you today one of those things that I see, that keeps so many people trapped, and as a huge part of why I was trapped for so long, which is all about seeking to understand how to accomplish something. Now, this is gonna seem probably totally counterintuitive to you, you’re like, What do you mean? Anytime we’ve been taught to build a big goal or do something important, we’re taught, we need to figure out how, how is that going to work. And then we need to map out the entire plan, step by step by step, understanding what the options are, and have all of that done before we take action.

Blake Schofield 1:58
And the irony is, when you work in sets, corporate America, and you have millions of dollars and hundreds of people on the line, you have to have all of that plan mapped out in order to be able to bring everyone alongside you. But when you as an individual are building your own goals, or looking to transform your life or looking to do something important, that process that works in schools, that works in large corporations, actually works against you as an individual. Yes, you heard me right, it actually works against you.

Blake Schofield 2:32
So what I’m about to share with you are methodologies that I learned from several of my mentors that have fundamentally completely changed my life. I’ve always been a high achiever and successful pretty much honestly, in everything that I’ve done. It’s funny, my mom actually not that long ago said, you know, your trajectory just continues to grow and grow and grow. And it’s never like you had this huge drop off. And it doesn’t mean that the journey was always easy. But it does mean fundamentally that I figured out the things that create success, and I’ve continued to learn the things that create success. And I’ve continued to build capabilities to continue to grow and level up in my life. And that hasn’t been without a lot of struggle, or a lot of work or a lot of hustling and grinding, especially the first 40 years of my life. And then, I went to work with mentors who had found a different way. And I was fascinated about how it was they could be so successful, and yet working tremendously less than I was to achieve their goals. And so if you’ve ever seen somebody and wonder how in the world did that person gets sick, so successful? How in the world did that person do that? They have less qualifications or less experience, they work less than me.

Blake Schofield 3:45
I offer you at the point that maybe they’ve identified or uncovered something that you haven’t. You see, for my whole life, I was taught, just work hard, and you’ll be recognized. Make sure that you’re making responsible decisions, make a plan, figure out all of the steps think through what could happen so that you’ll be successful. And for many, many years that worked for me, what I didn’t understand was I wasn’t successful, because of those things. I was actually successful in many ways, in spite of those things. You see, this obsession we have about figuring out how something needs to happen is what keeps us stuck. And it actually reduces our chances for success. And it also limits the types of endless possibilities or benefits that we could have it might be even greater than we think. Because here’s the reality. Today, you know so much and you’ve experienced only so much. Six years ago, I would have told you that I knew a lot. Today, I would tell you after investing and learning so much more, that I recognized I know so little. Most of us really know what’s equivalent to basically a grain of sand in the ocean of life.

Blake Schofield 4:57
And yet we go through life believing that if we just knew everything we’d be successful, or believing if we just had all of the right steps we would get there. But we don’t even understand that our perspectives are so limited. And when we approach every new circumstance with the perspective of we have to know exactly what it looks like, then what we do is drastically narrow the amount of choices that we have, because those choices can only fit in what we know. Now, this can become exceedingly challenging when you want to transform or do something different in your life. Because it’s nearly impossible to create something different if you’re only using the knowledge you have today. So, I want to challenge you that whenever you’re looking to do something significant or new, stop feeling like you have to know how it’s going to happen. Get clear on the North Star. Who and what. What is that North Star? What is it I want to accomplish? Who can or will I be doing that with? And then, focus on the next one to two steps to get there.

Blake Schofield 6:03
I know it sounds counterintuitive, it challenges probably everything that you’ve done before, in the same way it completely challenged me. And yet, when you can allow yourself to be open to new outcomes as long as they fit within the north star in the direction you want. And you can allow yourself to focus on the next one to two things. What happens is you gather more information, you’re able then to learn more and course correct. And through that learning and course correcting, you’re actually able to create far more and far better outcomes. And here’s why. When we pre-plan everything in advance, we only use it based on the information we have, we have to make a lot of assumptions about what we think’s going to happen. And we limit the outcome based again on what we know. However, when you remove having to know the how, when you allow yourself to be open to an infinite number of possibilities, so long as they meet the criteria of what that North Star looks and feels like. And you just take the next one, two steps, what happens is you gather information, each step that you take, you learn more and more, you make better and more informed decisions, and ultimately, your view of what is possible expands.

Blake Schofield 7:21
Now this is the methodology that I learned from Dr. Jeff Spencer, who’s cracked the code on goal achievement. He’s an Olympian himself, nine time Tour de France mindset coach, and I believe they won eight of those nine tours. He coached Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, YouTube from Bano, Dave Asprey from Bulletproof Coffee, and countless other high achievers, prolific performers. If it worked for him, and it worked for all them, and it works for me, it can work for you too. But it requires a shift, it requires being open to the fact that you may actually be able to achieve what you want in life with a whole lot less hustle and grind, you might be able to achieve it without having to know all of the answers. And ultimately, that there might even be greater possibilities or opportunities that you haven’t even seen yet.

Blake Schofield 8:15
Applying this methodology fundamentally, has changed my life in so many amazing ways, given me peace of mind and joy in the process of creating my goals, removed all of the pressure and friction and worry about failure and not getting more I wanted to go. Because I recognize that if I’m moving closer and closer to my North Star, I’m winning every day. And that through this process has given me such a great sense of freedom, and joy, and fun, in what might come that could be even better than what I expected. And as a result, I’ve removed the friction. And I’ve really created an opportunity for tailwind, pushing me for. And so today, if you are in a place of transformation, or a place of wanting to achieve something and you don’t know how, instead, get clear on what it would look and feel like. What’s the who and what’s the what? And then what are the next one to two steps you have to take just to gather information and move in that direction. Allow yourself to be open to what comes and then focus on the next one to two steps. You’ll be amazed how much progress you make and what amazing things can unfold. Until next time, have a great week.

Blake Schofield 9:39
Thanks for joining me today. Rather than hope the grass will be greener, identify what the right next step is. We can help you do just that. Get clarity on where you are in your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optimal paths to get there, and the right next step to take. Start your complimentary personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan . Again, you can get your personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan Thanks again for joining and have a great week ahead!