GOALS : PUTTING THE LAW OF ATTRACTION TO WORK

If you’ve ever sat through a goal setting exercise you’ll know they can quite often be pretty mundane, boring experiences and quite removed from the reality we’re living in. Maybe that’s just how they’re framed up, or the fact a goal might seem so far away. However, despite the distance of a long term goal, they can have a huge implication on everyday life. 

Olav Stubberud

One of the main problems is that a lot of people have goals that don’t really have any tangible meaning. For example, ‘I just want to be rich so I can chill,’ is something I’ve heard plenty of friends say before. Now as soon as I hear that, I kind of know that they don’t have a clue what they want. If they were to say, “hey, I want to get $100,000 saved so I don’t have to work anymore,” whilst a lofty goal, that’s something we can get to work on. From there you can break it down into manageable steps of how you might get there.

One of the stories I love the most in this book when it comes to goals is that of photographer Olav Stubberud who knew that he wanted to shoot with the biggest name in the music industry at the time and so despite having no connections to him, broke down the steps it would take to get there and just got after it. 

That to me is such a powerful story. It’s a clear goal, which frankly is for most people pretty far out there, but it is achievable. Quite often, if you put that goal out there, you’d be amazed at the power of what happens, especially if you make the action plan to get after it. For Olav my guess is his thinking was something like, I’m already a great photographer in the action sports world, I should probably learn the ropes of shooting at gigs, at night, with lights, smoke, all the rest of it. Where can I get that experience? 

Achieving goals like this requires a single minded drive. It might mean you’ll have to sacrifice things along the way though. I mean, you can’t be Justin Bieber’s photographer by watching Netflix every evening. You have to put in the work that no one else is. However, that’s where I wanted to shift from focusing this chapter purely on goals and more around the Law of Attraction instead. There is a crazy force at work where once you put these desires out in the world they have a way of coming together, which is almost unbelievable. With this book for example, once I had got comfortable telling people that I was writing a book (considering I had never written one before) people heard me. People who were willing to help with editing, design, digital marketing, PR and more, it has been amazing to see it come to life. Maybe they saw me in a slightly different light, because all of a sudden I had offers of being put in touch with publishers or great people to interview. If I’d kept this idea quiet and to myself, this help would never have come my way, because no one would have known about.

I got into the habit of setting goals at 28, which I feel is a little late, but it was enough to shape my whole career. I remember distinctly working in Austria and meeting our US based employees at Burton Snowboards and instantly thinking to myself, I would love to work in the US. Rather than keep it to myself, I began mentioning quietly that it was a goal of mine to work there. Eventually a couple of people got wind of my goal and I received some feedback that I should be happy with my current job rather than planning the next step. Yes, I was stoked on my current role, but I knew where my sights were set. A couple of years later some past acquaintances came back into my life with the opportunity to jump over to Nike. That set in place a chain of events that eventually led to them offering me a role in Portland, Oregon. It was a nice journey and proof that having that initial conviction paid off.

However, when it comes to setting goals the first step can be daunting. To help me, I’ve got into the routine of taking time every year in those few days between Christmas and New Year. That quiet lull when you’re not really doing too much except watching TV and feeling kinda gross from all the food. I set out a couple of days to try and clear my mind, stop with all the distractions and write out my goals for the year. It’s also a great moment to reflect and the thing I’ve noticed is that for many of those years when I’ve set a goal, they generally seem to be achieved. Even the years when a goal isn’t met, I’m usually well on the route to it. 

The first year I started making goals was one where I was alone during the Christmas break and made the decision to take a holiday on my own to a surf camp in Nicaragua. I know for a lot of people the thought of a solo trip during the holidays is horrifying, but for me it was such a transformational moment. It meant I could just focus on me. Not what someone else wanted to do, or what gossip they’d heard. I was free to just shut everything out, surf, drink a beer, lie in a hammock and focus on me.

It’s important to point out that we shouldn’t get caught up in goals solely focused on schools, career, or finance. We should think about all aspects of life. Wellness, sport, being present, travel, friends. They’re all things worth spending your time thinking through. For example, I know a lot of people struggle when Apple sends you that reminder each week of how much time you spent on your phone. It’s grim reading some weeks, but that there is a tangible goal. 

If you want to reduce from five hours a day to two hours a day on your phone, you can easily go in and assess which apps are eating up your day and make a plan of how to cut it down. Maybe it means you don’t look at Snapchat and Instagram between 9-5, or perhaps after 9pm. The important thing to note here is that there are clear ways to get that time down.

I set two physical goals recently, one was learning to handstand walk, the other was a half marathon. For the handstand walk, believe me, I am one of the least coordinated when it comes to any form of gymnastics, but have been pretty consistent with crossfit classes and so on Jan 1st I told myself that by July 4th I wanted to be able to walk 12 feet on my hands. 

Tom Klocker, always pushing his goals higher.

Day one, I am literally just trying to kick into a handstand against a wall. Day two, I’m trying to hold against the wall for a couple of seconds. By trying every single day, it soon became second nature to be upside down on my hands. I began staying after class every day for five minutes to practice and quickly went from being fairly unspectacular in the gym to being ‘the handstand guy.’

Thankfully, on June 15th I achieved my goal of walking those 12 feet on my hands and you better believe my Instagram story that day was fire.

In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he refers to it taking 10,000 hours of practice in a specific task to achieve greatness. Now I am certainly not at greatness levels, I maybe spent 10 hours in total trying this and managed to get it. If I keep going I could maybe walk 20 feet or maybe even 50 feet. No one is handing out prizes for that though, so I think I’m good for now, but it showed me what a few minutes a day can achieve.

Think about how you spend your evenings and break it down into times you could be trying to learn something. I don’t mean for school, college or work, I mean for the satisfaction of a new skill. It could be a language, playing guitar, cooking. Most of us must spend at least 30 mins an evening scrolling through our phones, or watching something on Netflix. It’s very easy to take that small amount of time and dedicate it to working towards our goals.

At the gym where I go, we also hold ourselves accountable and support each other because we write our goals on the board. Each of us know where other people are heading so we can support each other. Getting comfortable in setting goals is one thing but being comfortable in sharing them is something that takes most people even longer to commit to. However sharing and vocalising them does tend to ensure that you actualise them. Of course, a lot of people can be intimidated by their lofty goals and there’s often a very real fear of being ridiculed for even having them. Growing up in the UK, there is a very unique culture where it’s not really the done thing to talk about aspirations for success and in hindsight that has very much affected me. 

To illustrate, I’ve been purchasing properties since 2007 and renting them out for income. My strategy has always been to rent these properties out for supplemental income with the long term goal of being able to live off that passive income stream in the future. 

However, I’ve probably only told a handful of people I own any of them, let alone that I’m actively setting goals in that space. Over time, I’ve got a lot better at being more open about my plans and have a couple of people I trust to share them with. Having this small network means we can help each other align on our next goals and keep each other accountable. Just like at the gym.

One of the best summaries of how to get after your own goals came from Colin Mooney, the treehouse builder who has a specific goal of being able to live off AirBnB income in the future. He lays out that the easiest way to do it is set a goal for yourself five years from now and then just break it down into smaller more manageable tasks.

I would urge you to be clear and bold with your goals. Have those audacious goals that excite you and share them with others so people know this is the journey you are on and so when avenues to assist you arise they can help you reach your target. Siddhattha Gotama, or Buddha as he was more commonly known once said, “What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.” That goes both ways. If you have negativity and doubt, that’s where you’ll be headed if you have positivity and optimism you’ll end up headed down a path full of opportunities.

Colin Mooneys Treehouse : Definitely Goals.