Unrealistic goals
How to stop shrinking your vision and start trusting the space that shapes you.
I hung up, and I was so mad on her behalf.
Ten minutes beforehand I was on a call and my friend Bethany (not really her name) shared about a vision she has been working towards for the last several weeks. She was about 10 days away from her deadline, and she found herself at the 50% mark of her vision. This is a classic gap. She feels so close to the date, and, at the same time it occurs** to her that she is too far away from her goal line.
She is only halfway.
It took her several weeks to get to 50%. How is she supposed to double her current results?
**I use the word occurs above very intentionally. It is not a fact that she is far away from her goal, but it is her belief that she is. She could, in fact, be one phone call or email away from hitting 100%. But we’re so quick to count ourselves out. To say we know what is, and what isn’t. Our brains are clinging and grasping for certainty.
Even if it means having certainty of our own failure.
Could it not also be just as true that she is so close to hitting her goal?
That she has more than enough time?
That she’s cracked the code on what works, so she is well positioned to close the gap.
What would Bethany’s most resourceful and confident self say?
All that energy she is using to complain and say why it won’t work; what if she used that energy to fuel curiosity instead?
I coach clients around this gap all the time. As humans we are constantly looking to escape the pressure we perceive in the gap and take the quickest route back to comfort. I help clients fall in love with their gaps. To see the gaps as their best teachers and the training grounds for greatness.
And the reality is, if you have a compelling vision – you’re going to encounter a gap. It’s that most of us believe our gaps mean we are somehow falling behind or ill-equipped or not good enough. We’re certain of it.
This was where Bethany was; certain she couldn’t close the gap.
So what had me fuming when we got off the phone? One of Bethany’s other friends actually told her she wanted too much.; that she was always going after too much. Bethany’s friend advised her to make her goal smaller. To shrink her vision.
I have no idea who her other friend is, and truthfully, I believe she offered that advice to Bethany with love in her heart. Perhaps she wanted to protect Bethany from disappointment. But what if disappointment is resourceful for Brittany’s vision? We’re so quick to discourage anything that feels bad. But what if building a healthy practice of grief and a connectedness to her own feelings of disappointment becomes Bethany’s most resourceful fuel toward the vision?
Bethany’s friend was asking her to play it safe. To keep her goal within reach.
She wanted Bethany to play it safe, to not lose.
But what if Bethany wants to play to win?
What if Bethany has a vision that can change her life?
Now, let me be clear. Loving the gap does not mean you will always win. It means that when you throw an interception, when you fall off the bike, or when you only hit 85% of your goal by the deadline; you don’t stop. In loving the gap you know it doesn’t define you. It refines you. You get clearer.
You fall in love with the very process of growth. You develop a new way of being in the gap. You begin to embrace and welcome the discomfort between who you are and who you aspire to become.
Imagine looking at the gaps as evidence that you’re actually closer to your vision. That the gaps are good news. What if we started to celebrate the noticing of our gaps?
Because honestly, the gap isn’t a problem, your belief about what the gap means is.
Your belief about what the gap means about you is what’s holding you back. The gap invites the opportunity to inspect your strategy, your mindset, and your integrity.
If you’re in a gap right now, I’d invite you to check in with yourself on these three areas:
Strategy: What is the plan to hit your vision? What is the data telling you? Have you worked your plan backwards? Have you asked trusted and experienced people for feedback? If your plan isn’t working, you may need to revisit the strategy you’re using. It may be that your strategy is entirely about “doing” and it could be resourceful to add in some “being” strategies. Who do you need to become to hit your goal? For example, a determined person? What are the habits of the most determined people? Focus on being that person.
Mindset: Are you counting yourself out before you even pick up the phone? One of the earliest lessons I learned in building a multiple seven figure business is that other people will believe about you what you believe about you. Self awareness is a powerful tool, and you can often grow exponentially more in this area by having someone walk with you through the mindset. Find a therapist. Hire a coach. Do the work.
Integrity: Are you doing what you said you would do, by when you said you would do it? Integrity is the very engine that makes all of this go. If someone said they’d give you a million dollars to complete your to-do list, you’d probably find a way. But so often we have excuses as to why something isn’t possible. The reality? More often than not we just didn’t want it badly enough. Or, we want to keep our own comfort more than the thing we say we wanted.
As a coach, I have three main roles in my clients lives. I invite them to keep the vision, I give feedback, and I help them fall in love with the gaps.
So if I were coaching Bethany, I would ask her about the three areas above. I’d invite her to consider who she needs to become to hit her vision in the next 10 days. I could (potentially) also play around with a bigger vision; asking Bethany who she’d need to become to hit 200% of her goal in 10 days. This is tricky because I don’t believe in “more is more” but oftentimes people are still subconsciously playing it safe with their visions. I’d ask Bethany what strategies would she run if she wasn’t afraid of failing? And, I’d ask her if would give her one million dollars for hitting the goal, what would change about her integrity?