The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life
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Sentence Summary.
SCIENCE-BACKED, practical & real world approach to setting goals.
Just as the Renaissance created a more evidence-based approach to many fields, I believe it’s time for us to move into learning and embracing a science-backed approach to goal accomplishment through goal setting theory (GST) and the BRIDGE (Brainstorming, Relationships, Investments, Decision-Making, Good Grit, and Excellence) framework that I’ve spent years testing and refining.
Let’s do away with fantasy approaches like “The Law of Attraction” and learn how to master our environments in ways that build resilience, optimism, and grit. Let’s go from dreaming about big goals to undertaking the journey to make them a reality, regardless of how hard we must work to overcome challenges and not get a trophy at the end of the day.
I believe that every one of us is responsible for leading ourselves to our best performances in work and life. We can’t expect others to do this for us, so my goal is for every reader to learn the skills and behaviors here to develop and enjoy the fruits of a more proactive approach to life. This mindset shift will lead you to a more fulfilling and purpose-driven existence and equip you with the tools to overcome procrastination and work disengagement. By the end of this book, you will have the practical strategies for developing resilience and grit to use every day in your personal and professional lives.
Hard work, that sounds like fun!
Resilience & grit are earned, like muscles, by repeated use.
And once you see the hard times as opportunities to grow and become stronger, they become a privilege.
Everyone wants comfort & ease, but bugger all was ever produced in a Comfort Zone of sloth and satiety.
Miller builds on Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham’s Goal Setting Theory, based on US Loggers, high, hard goals and self efficacy –
“Latham found that ineffective loggers differed from effective loggers in only one way: the effective loggers set specific goals for daily and weekly cords cut per man hour. A subsequent study at the American Pulpwood Association narrowed the best performance among loggers to those setting specific and challenging goals, not just specific goals. Instead of seeing their work as tedious, the hard goals had given these experienced loggers a new feeling of meaning, purpose and challenge. He and Locke had now both firmed up a key tenet in what became part of goal setting theory: best performance in both lab settings and real-world settings only came from hard, high goals, not easy or ‘do your best’ conditions.”
“Remember that Locke and Latham say that a person’s commitment to accomplishing a goal is one of the reasons they can succeed, and that commitment comes from having self-efficacy. Self-efficacy also predicts the ability to come up with a variety of possible solutions to accomplish the goal, which is called ‘task strategy’ in Goal Setting Theory.”
…with her BRIDGE model (Brainstorming, Relationships, Investments, Decision-Making, Good Grit, and Excellence).
“The most important outcome of the work you will do is that you will be moving forward, armed with the right science to steer you efficiently without wasting time and energy on unproven approaches.
My goal is for you to understand goal setting theory and how the BRIDGE method can show you how you to get what you long for after you set the goal thoughtfully and wisely with the tools and knowledge in the book, much of which you have probably never seen or heard before. The zombie goal setting approaches that have hung around too long and that won’t die—like ‘Law of Attraction’ and ‘SMART’ goals—will not interest you once you experience the power of the science I’ve pulled together from numerous sources that most people never see.”
“B” is for “Brainstorming.”
We need to start by thinking about our goals and how we’re going to apply this wisdom and get what we want.
“R” is for “Relationships.”
Then we need to think about the people who will help us achieve our goals. (Note: We ALSO need to think about the people who might PREVENT us from achieving our goals!)
“I” is for “Investments.”
What investments will YOU need to make to achieve YOUR goals? Aka: What price will you need to pay?
“D” is for “Decision-Making”
We need to make wise decisions (especially with our time!) if we’re going to have a shot at hitting our high, hard goals!
“G” is for “Good Grit.”
Grit comes in multiple flavours—there’s good grit and there’s not-so-good grit of the stoopid, bullshit, selfie varieties. Caroline tells us that good (or “authentic”) grit “is the passionate pursuit of hard goals outside your comfort zone that awe and inspire (you and) others to ask themselves, ‘What if I had the courage to pursue my dreams and live life without regrets?’”
“This type of good grit attracts the right people and unleashes positive energy; bad grit repels and diminishes you, and has the capacity to destroy your goal and harm yourself or others.”
“E” for “Excellence.”
Each of us will have our own idiosyncratic definition of what excellence entails and we want to take the time to define it!
Premeditatio Malorum & Premeditatio Bonum
“The Ancient Stoics, Greek philosophers who originated in Athens around 300 B.C.E., believed that curiosity was a powerful advantage in staying alive and achieving one’s aims.
Their rational, practical approach to life emphasized preparation, diligence, and perseverance in response to inevitable challenges. They preached ‘premeditatio malorum’—a Latin phrase—which translates into ‘preparing for evils’ that you will encounter when you are trying to achieve your goal. The Stoics didn’t see this outlook as pessimistic; on the contrary, they were optimists whose preparation for the future often led to success.
The Stoic spirit of examining all variables to be ready for curveballs and surprises infuses the BRIDGE methodology, which is designed to give everyone their best possible shot at getting where they want to go by being scrupulously prepared. I have added a twist based on my training in Positive Psychology, though, by including a concept I call ‘premeditatio bonum’: prepare for the good that will cross your path, and not just the bad.”
Hope for (expect) the best whilst anticipating and preparing for the worst.
Or WOOP it –
W – Wish: Pick a goal that is important and challenging, but still possible to reach.
O – Outcome: Think about the best result from reaching your goal and how it will feel.
O – Obstacle: Find the main internal block inside yourself that gets in your way (such as tiredness or doubt).
P – Plan: Make an if-then plan for what action you will take when that obstacle happens.
Marginal Gains & Your Pit Crew
“That’s why people who are seeking excellence in their performance goals are always looking for a way to be more efficient in how much water they catch and cleanly sweep forward in rowing, how little their head moves while swimming backstroke, or how quickly they spring forward at the start of a running race.
Every motion matters so they scrutinize their races for the smallest imperfections to improve.
This was the case with Jeff Gordon, a NASCAR racer who was ranked as a great sports car driver, but who wanted to be one of the best of all time. He and his pit crew team already knew how to do their jobs—for example, refuel the car and change or inflate the tires during the brief pit stops—and they were a united group that was familiar with each other’s personalities and work abilities. There was nothing they could put their finger on that involved learning something new about each other, the car or Gordon—so they did not have a new learning goal.
The performance goal they set was to have Gordon pull into a pit stop during a race and to return to the track in 13 seconds, which was a specific, high goal that would require finding more efficiency somewhere, somehow. For every second that Gordon did not get back on the track, they estimated he lost 300 feet to a competitor. Where were they going to pick up those precious seconds?
Gordon’s NASCAR team brought in a consultant to help them identify missed opportunities during the pit stop and together they brainstormed possible solutions. Finally, someone suggested that he thought that they were losing precious seconds shouting at each other over the roar of the car motor. They experimented with using new hand signals that replaced voice communications, and that was the difference Gordon needed to become a NASCAR elite for the ages. He retired from the sport in 2015 as the top-ranked driver of the modern era and in 2019 was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.”
Turn up consistently and make little gains that will compound over time. If there is a secret, that’s it.
It ay fancy, it ay quick, it ay making anybody any money.
But it is true.
This is how Team Sky & UK Cycling went from laughing stock to gold medals galore, via Sir David John Brailsford’s Marginal Gains Theory & Practice.
Also, very important to choose your “Pit Crew” wisely.
Define Excellence & Go Get It!
“Be careful to remain true to where you are in your own journey of learning how to make big goals come true.
The worst thing you could put on your strategy sheet is an ‘excellent’ outcome that feels unrealistic or set just to please someone else. I am going to leave it to you to know what outcome is going to raise your self-esteem, develop your strengths, give you more confidence, and make you even more hopeful about your future. A good rule of thumb for me when it comes to figuring out what excellence looks like with a goal is that I was proud of what I accomplished and satisfied that I worked my hardest with a strategy that was well-considered.
I am now sending you out to make your dreams happen. My goal for this book was for you to learn, feel, and experience the steps of identifying, visualizing, and then mapping out a specific big goal, and to then get turned loose to make that goal come true at home, at school, at work, in your community, and in the world. I think this is going to raise the bar for everyone else because you will be surrounded by the passion and optimism that accompanies feeling alive because you are going from dreaming to doing, and from talking to acting. It’s surprising how elegant goal setting theory is in its simplicity, but when it is put into action and you have the BRIDGE to take you from here to there, the world takes on a different color, and everything feels a little happier.
My heart is with you, and I wish you well on your journey. I hope that reading this book has had the same impact on you as I experienced when I first learned about goal setting theory in 2005 and I suddenly felt like I had the answer that I’d been seeking to achieving excellence in my life. Nothing has been the same since then, and my wish for you is that nothing will ever be the same again for you, now that you are armed with the tools of hope, change and success.”
Excellence is a habit, usually in the direction of the things we fear most.