Supercoach - Michael Neill [28]
• Goals are always reached in the future; projects are worked on in the present.
• Goals are things you work toward; projects are things you work on.
• With a goal, your focus is on the desired result; with a project, your focus is on the daily action.
• With a goal, you’re a failure until the moment you succeed; with a project, you’re successful until the moment you fail.
An Obstacle Course to Success, Revisited
How simple can it be to get what you want in life?
I’m writing this in my office. Let’s say I want to walk outside to enjoy the California sunshine. Unless my legs suddenly give way or someone leaps out from behind my sofa and tackles me (a somewhat creepy, if extremely unlikely, possibility), I’m going to do it. In fact, short of an act of God or other unpredictable event, there are only two things that could stop me:
The first is that I might not really want to go outside. It might just be a “neat idea” that I read about in a magazine or I might have been told was good for my health. In that instance, I might think that I should go outside, but this is extremely different from actually wanting to go.
Of course, the second thing that could stop me from walking out the door would be some sort of obstacle. But if I really wanted to go outside, that wouldn’t really matter. I could use my creative genius to find a way over or around that obstacle. Because when you really want something, the question isn’t “How will you get it?”; it’s “What could possibly stop you?”
Action Days
Sometimes all the psychological insight in the world won’t get you unstuck or move you forward as quickly as simply taking action. That’s why when my clients seem overly caught up in theories of why they’re stuck, we book an action day.
To create an action day for yourself, simply enlist the help of a buddy or coach. Every hour on the hour, phone in to let them know what actions you intend to take that hour. Then, no matter what else you might be up to, call back an hour later to let them know what you’ve done and what you’ve got planned for the next hour!
When I was a child, my favorite sport to watch on TV (and on very special occasions in the stadium) was football. I spent years playing in my backyard and the school playground, and then when I was 12, my parents finally let me sign up to play in a “real” league. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to get into pads and transform myself into a pint-size replica of my gridiron heroes. However, the first day of practice was more like a military boot camp than my fantasies of football glory. If you’ve never thrown on the pads of a football uniform, the one thing you may not realize is how heavy they are, particularly when you’re 12. In full uniform, we spent the practice doing push-ups and sit-ups and running so many sprints that several of us threw up in the grass by the side of the field.
Finally, at the end of that first practice, they set up a mini-game to let us show them what we had. Unfortunately for me, what I had left at that point wasn’t really worth having. On the very first play from scrimmage, our quarterback threw the ball downfield in my general direction, only to have it intercepted right in front of me by one of the largest 12-year-olds I’d ever seen. Caught between my exhaustion, fear, and desire to prove my manhood, I gave chase and was actually closing in on him when one of the other team’s players threw himself to the ground in front of me in a lastditch attempt to trip me up. At that moment, time stood still. I realized I had a choice: to carry on in the lungburning, leg-aching pursuit of my prey or to let myself trip over this would-be blocker and finally get a rest.
In the years since that moment, I’ve found that this same kind of decision faces us nearly every day in the pursuit of our dreams. Things come up between us and our goals—something we don’t yet know how to do, an unexpected bill, an overprotective gatekeeper, a child who doesn’t sleep, or a spouse who somehow doesn’t quite grasp the magnificence of our vision. What we do