Why Your Goals Are Making You Miserable

Summary

In this insightful podcast episode, Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler explore how our conventional relationship with goals often leads to misery rather than fulfillment. They discuss the importance of aligning goals with personal wants, rather than societal pressures or subconscious traumas. Joe emphasizes the significance of viewing goals as a tool for creativity and alignment, rather than a rigid endpoint. The conversation spans various themes, including the destructive nature of misaligned goals in both personal and professional realms, and highlights the power of living as if your objectives have already succeeded. Through personal anecdotes and insightful examples, the podcast provides a refreshing perspective on integrating goals into one's life to enhance self-connection and enjoyment.

Highlights

• Aligning goals with your true self leads to fulfillment. 🌟
• Flexibility and creativity triumph over rigid goal obsession. 🌈
• Goals as tools for opening creative pathways and asking the right questions. 🤔
• True accomplishment aligns with inner desires. 🌿
• Principles are key for harmonious goal alignment in all aspects of life. ✨

Key Takeaways

• Aligning your goals with your true desires makes the journey enjoyable and fulfilling. 🎯
• Rigid goals can lead to unnecessary stress; flexibility invites creativity and success. 🌱
• Goals should inspire questions and curiosity, not pressure. Stay playful! 🎮
• True accomplishment comes from aligning heart and mind with your goals. 💖
• Principles drive effective goal-setting, creating harmony in personal and professional life. ⚖️

Overview

In this engaging episode, Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler delve into the complex relationship many have with goals. Often seen as a source of pressure, goals can become oppressive if misaligned with our true desires. Joe suggests a different approach—viewing goals as flexible guidelines that inspire creativity and align with our inner wants. This shift in perspective not only reduces stress but fosters a more fulfilling, playful engagement with life's challenges.

Joe shares insightful anecdotes from his experiences, illustrating how rigid goals can trap individuals and organizations in cycles of unnecessary stress. However, when goals are aligned with one’s personal wants and organizational principles, they become powerful tools for innovation and cohesion. Highlights include stories of sports teams and companies thriving by embracing a goal-oriented yet flexible mindset, demonstrating how this approach can lead to exceptional outcomes.

Throughout the conversation, the importance of aligning head and heart shines through. Joe and Brett emphasize that true accomplishment isn't about the goal itself, but the journey and growth it initiates. By focusing on principles and self-awareness, goals become a harmonious part of life, guiding individuals and teams towards authentic success and deeper connections with themselves and others.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Goal Misery Living as if the goal has already been achieved is a strategy that helps in accomplishing the objective. This approach is often observed in business environments, where even if it seems that the goal will not be met, creativity can lead to unexpected solutions. Such scenarios foster team cohesion and the realization of outcomes once thought impossible.
• 01:00 - 03:00: The Problem with Goals In this chapter, Brett Kistler and Joe Hudson discuss the common issues associated with setting goals and how they can often lead to unhappiness. They aim to explore alternative ways of using and setting goals that foster a deeper connection to oneself and enhance overall life satisfaction.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Aligning Goals and Alignment in Companies The chapter delves into the complex relationship people have with goal setting within companies. It highlights two opposing attitudes: those who are overwhelmed by setting numerous goals and those who avoid goal setting to maintain a sense of freedom but risk feeling directionless. The discussion takes place at an AOA offsite, emphasizing the unique approach in which Joe and Matia present goals.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Different Types of Relationships with Goals This chapter discusses the introduction of goals and metrics into a process which began a few months prior. It describes the first-time delivery and reporting of these goals at a particular meeting, where a captivating story was shared about an executive team's preparation for board meetings from the speaker's experience as a venture capitalist.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Creative Booster of Goals The chapter "Creative Booster of Goals" discusses the inefficiencies encountered when executives spend excessive time preparing for board meetings. It highlights how preparing and presenting board presentations every quarter can lead to a significant loss in productivity, with several days taken up by preparing and presenting the deck, in addition to the time spent in the board meeting itself. The narrative suggests looking for ways to streamline this process in order to better utilize time and resources.
• 10:00 - 13:00: Goals in Various Aspects of Life The chapter discusses the importance of forward-thinking and goal setting in various aspects of life. It emphasizes the need for alignment between different organizational levels—boards, CEOs, and departments—to ensure that the data and insights they work with are coherent and unified. This alignment helps in determining next steps and collaborative efforts, thus enhancing effectiveness.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Understanding Desires Behind Goals The chapter discusses the alignment within a company, emphasizing the importance of transparency and shared metrics across all levels. It highlights the need for consistency between the data used by the company's management and the data presented to the board. If the board requires different data, it may indicate a misalignment or lack of transparency in the company's operations.
• 16:00 - 19:00: Need Behind Wants Exercise This chapter explores the concept of internal conflict between different voices and goals within oneself. It suggests that sometimes the critical voice inside our head sets goals that do not align with the aspirations of the body, heart, or mind, indicating a disconnect between various internal systems.
• 19:00 - 21:00: Art of Play and Lego Metaphor The chapter explores the concept of misaligned goals, highlighting how trauma and societal expectations can create conflicting objectives. It emphasizes the internal struggle many face with self-imposed deadlines and societal pressures, using the metaphor of self-abuse to describe this misalignment. The chapter suggests that true alignment of goals serves purposes beyond merely achieving them.
• 21:00 - 24:00: Reflection on Goals and Intentions This chapter discusses the limitations of setting goals and how they can dictate the right questions to ask. It highlights that while goals might not encapsulate the entirety of what one can achieve, they serve as critical guides. The discussion contrasts different types of goals, such as having a 'good' relationship versus a 'lifelong' relationship, emphasizing how these variations influence one's approach and mindset.
• 24:00 - 27:00: Living as if Goals Are Already Achieved In this chapter titled 'Living as if Goals Are Already Achieved,' the focus is on the shift in mindset required to cultivate meaningful and grateful relationships. Rather than asking self-centered questions such as 'How do I get what I want from you?' or 'How do I manage you to avoid my own emotions?,' the chapter explores the importance of transforming these inquiries to foster a deeper, more intimate connection. The discussion emphasizes that to live as if relationship goals are already achieved, one needs to engage in different thought processes and bring gratitude and genuine care into daily interactions.
• 27:00 - 31:00: Principles, Goals, and Metrics: Business Context The chapter begins with a philosophical exploration of human interaction, posing the question of what individuals truly want in a relationship. This metaphorically sets the stage for discussing business objectives. It highlights the importance of clearly defining goals and understanding the scope of interaction, whether on a personal level or in a business context. The transcript transitions from personal introspection to strategic thinking, comparing the difference in approach required for engaging 10,000 people versus 100. The underlying message is that clarity in our desired outcomes, whether in personal relationships or in business, directly influences the strategies we employ and the metrics by which we measure success.
• 31:00 - 33:00: The Journey and Destination Ideology This chapter discusses the concept of 'The Journey and Destination Ideology,' emphasizing the importance of setting goals and the need to adapt strategies when traditional methods, such as door-to-door canvassing, become impractical due to scale. It highlights that the nature of the goals set can significantly influence the creative process of achieving them. Moreover, it notes that an attachment to certain goals can either liberate creativity or, if there is an inability to release these goals, it can restrict progress and innovation.
• 33:00 - 36:00: Importance of Shared Goals in Businesses The chapter emphasizes the importance of having shared goals in business settings by drawing parallels with sports teams. It illustrates how setting and aiming for goals can drive exceptional performance and creativity. The example of LeBron James is mentioned to highlight outstanding performances that occur when individuals strive to achieve their objectives.
• 36:00 - 38:00: Personal Reflections on Goals The chapter 'Personal Reflections on Goals' reflects on the determination and extraordinary efforts required to achieve one's goals, drawing parallels between sports and business. It highlights the example of a sports team, likely referenced to LeBron James and the Cavaliers, who were down three games but eventually won four consecutive games. This situation is used to illustrate the importance of elevating one's efforts to achieve success. Similarly, in business, when faced with challenging goals, innovative solutions become crucial for success.
• 38:00 - 41:00: Celebrating Failures and Learning The chapter discusses the unexpected and pivotal moments where a team becomes cohesive, finding unity in shared challenges. It draws parallels between goal-oriented sports and business with artistic and seemingly non-goal based activities, like base jumping, that still possess a sense of direction and goals. It emphasizes celebrating failures and learning from them as a crucial part of the growth process.
• 41:00 - 45:00: Conclusion: Connection and Enjoyment from Goals In the conclusion chapter, the focus is on how setting goals can lead to connection and enjoyment. The text begins by referencing the fundamental goal of survival ('don't die') and highlights the enjoyment derived from intermediate steps along the way, such as achieving certain accomplishments or mastering skills. It draws a parallel between explicit goals, like those in soccer, and more implicit goals present in various aspects of life. Despite their implicit nature, these goals still exist and contribute to our experiences and achievements. Overall, goals are portrayed as integral to driving engagement and fulfillment.

Why Your Goals Are Making You Miserable Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Living as if the goal has already succeeded is part of how the goals help you get to the place. I've seen this in businesses. Yeah. Where there's like, oh, we have this goal. We're not going to make it. And that's where the creative solution comes. That's where the the thing that you you never thought was possible could have happened. That's when the team congealed, got together, became cohesive.
• 00:30 - 01:00 Welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Hey. Hey. Today we're going to talk about goals. Why so many of us use goals in such a way that makes us miserable. and we're gonna talk about how to use goals, how to set goals, and relate to them in a way that makes us more deeply connected to ourselves and gives us the life that we want. All
• 01:00 - 01:30 right, Joe. Most people that I know at least have a really shitty relationship with goals. Either either they're setting a ton of goals that they then feel oppressed by or maybe a little bit more of my flavor of they just avoid goals so they don't feel oppressed, they get to feel free, but then also kind of lost. And then there's a whole bunch of other in the middle. Yeah. And you know, we're here at our AOA offsite. We've been here for a couple of days. And what really struck me is the way that you and Matia introduced the goals
• 01:30 - 02:00 and metrics into into our process, which is this started a few months back. And then we all delivered and reported on our our goals for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. In this way at this meeting and as you opened that meeting, you started with a story that was really compelling to me. Uh it was a story about some executive team and how they would prepare for board meetings. Can you can you elaborate on that? Yeah. Yeah. So when I was a venture capitalist, one of
• 02:00 - 02:30 the things that I saw all the time was the executive team spending days presenting board presentations. And so typically board meetings were every quarter. So there was like two or three days of productivity lost by presenting preparing presenting this deck to the board. Then you'd have a whole day of the board meeting itself or a good part of a day with the board meeting itself. And the other thing that I noticed was that most of the time in the board
• 02:30 - 03:00 meeting was looking backwards, which is far less effective than looking forward, you know, like what are we going to do next? How are we going to do it? What how can we be of help? And so that's what started getting me thinking about what what what makes that the case because if there's alignment then the data that the board gets should be the same data that the CEO needs should be the same data that the departments are creating a need for
• 03:00 - 03:30 themselves to be successful in the departments. If a company is aligned, one of the ways to tell if the company is aligned is there should be almost no time to create the board deck. It's, oh, this is what we look at. This is what you look at. Your job is to see if we're running the company well, so that you should be looking at the same data that we look at. And if we're creating data for you, it means that we're not looking at the things that we need to run the company or the board is not looking at the things that they need to help steer the company. So that was that recognition
• 03:30 - 04:00 was the first one to hit. And then the second one to hit is that I realized that's the same internally as well. Meaning oftent times we have this critical voice in our head our board which which is making yeah which is saying here are your goals but it's not actually the goals of the rest of the system. So you know your body has a different goal and your heart has a different goal and maybe even your mind
• 04:00 - 04:30 has a different goal, your trauma has a different goal. So all these goals are not in alignment with one another and especially not in alignment with the thing that says I should be married at 35 and why are you so far behind or whatever that goal making mechanism which is just another form of self-abuse happens inside so many of us and and that when there's actual alignment in the goals the goals do two things the first thing the goals really their biggest job isn't to get to
• 04:30 - 05:00 them often times the goals are so limit limited what we can get to is so much greater than what the goals can even like point at. But the but the goals what they do is they give you the right questions to be asking. So, if my goal is to have a good relationship with you, it's going to be very different if than if my goal is to have a a lifelong relationship with you or my goal is to have a relationship with you
• 05:00 - 05:30 that is like deeply intimate or to have a relationship with you that both of us um just feel insanely grateful for on a on a on a regular basis. That is going to be a very different thing. I am going to ask myself different questions. I'm not especially different questions than how do I get what I want from you, right? Yeah. Or how do I manage you to avoid my own emotions? All those things. But even just, oh, a good relationship with you
• 05:30 - 06:00 is like, oh, the question is, what do you think Brett would want to do today? I want to have a really intimate conversation. I want to have a really intimate relationship with you. One that we both think we have a lot of gratitude for. My question is going to be what is it that I'm not saying to Brett? I'm going to have different questions that that comes from. If you in a company, if your goal is how do we reach 10,000 people, it's a it is going to be very different than how do we reach 100 people? 100 people, you and I can just
• 06:00 - 06:30 go door todoor. 100,000 people, you and I can't go to door to door anymore. We have to do something different. And so, yeah, like this. So you ask the the goals you have determine the questions that you ask. And so it's more about opening up creativity. Goals cano open up creativity. And what I noticed is that when people don't let go of goals, it can open up a huge amount of
• 06:30 - 07:00 performance and creativity. So sports teams, can you imagine a sports team that was like Uh yeah, I don't really want goals. Like they're playing the game. They're like, "Yeah, we don't want to look at the goals." And you see that some like amazing performances happen when somebody is behind, but they really want to hit their goal. Like just some crazy performances. I think about LeBron James when they were playing the
• 07:00 - 07:30 Warriors and he just wanted that ring for Cleveland and he just did unbelievable stuff. They were down. And it was like the they he he they were I think something like they were down three games and then he won the next four games and you could just see it was just he had to take his game to the next level to get there. I've seen this in businesses all over the place. Yeah. Where there's like, oh, we have this goal, we're not going to make it. And that's where the creative solution
• 07:30 - 08:00 comes. That's where the the thing that you you never thought was possible could have happened. And that's when the team congealed, got together, became cohesive. Well, it's interesting that, you know, there's goal- based sports and there's clear goals in business. Yeah. There's also non seemingly non-goal based sports. Yes. And, you know, artistic endeavors that still have a sense of direction and goals. Like, base jumping wasn't something that I was necessarily trying to achieve certain goals, but there was always the
• 08:00 - 08:30 goal of don't die. And there was a certain amount of fun to be had. And there were always intermediate steps like it would be really cool if I achieved this unlock and was able to do that. Are you able to safely make this jump and repeat it? Yeah. I'm curious to go a little bit into, you know, there's areas in our lives where we're clear that goals are literally the point like in soccer. Yeah. And there's areas where they're a little bit more implicit. They're implicit but they're always there. Yeah. And so if you think about
• 08:30 - 09:00 um a video game, as soon as you said, "Wow, you know what? Who you are as a human being is going to be determined if you get to the next level of Mario Brothers and you believe that probably Mario Brothers, which I might have when I was four." Yeah, Mario Brothers is probably not going to be as fun as, oh, I'm looking at these goals.
• 09:00 - 09:30 This goal of like getting to the next level is like, oh, that's that like I want to do that. That's a cool thing. Let's see if we can do that. Which is like a great way to hold goals. Oh, how do I do that? It opens up the question, what's the thing to do? And if you look at the way video games work is the same way great goals work is the goals are the thing that are present that are in your wants that are the that are the next step that get you to the next step that gets you to the next step and that's either in a company or that's
• 09:30 - 10:00 in with with yourself. Something you just said that I want to double click on. You said they are something that is in your wants. Yes. Yes. And I think that's key to how goals people make themselves miserable with goals because they might start in your want and then your want drifts, but the goal hasn't drifted with the want or it wasn't set in a way that was really aligned with your wants. And so you find yourself chasing after goals that you don't actually want anymore for the sake
• 10:00 - 10:30 of the goal. Yeah. I I noticed what I know what you're talking about. I'm not sure if it was actually in your wants to begin with. Often often where did the goal come from? the voice in your head, the board, the trauma, the so often times what I see like in a company for instance is goals that are bottom up where the what are the goals of this team determines what are the goals of this team determine all the way up to the top with the CEO's goals. They are often really effective goals because there's they're
• 10:30 - 11:00 built from the wants of people. It's also really effective the other way. Salesforce has this thing. The CEO sits down and says this is what I want and these are the important things and then everybody else can align around it. The alignment is really really important. The want is also really really important and the want has to come from somewhere. Mh. I but when the want isn't there when everybody's doing it for somebody else. I'm doing it for the board and
• 11:00 - 11:30 then I'm doing it for the CEO and there's nobody who actually has that want. It's like very difficult. It's a similar thing from us. It like just because the voice in the head said this is what your goal should be doesn't mean it's what we want, right? Yeah. I love the idea of bottomup goals because you know if a company gets everything the CEO wants but nothing that any of the employees want and it's unhealthy for them, the company is not going to survive. Correct. If I hit my target weight and I'm my body's a total wreck as a result rather than asking my body
• 11:30 - 12:00 what it wants and what it needs to thrive and be be healthy and functional. Yeah. Then that's a very different place. Yeah. Yeah. And I and if I recall the way Salesforce works is that there's there everybody is being asked how they participate in a way that works for them and their team. I'm sure there's struggle in it. There's always struggle. There's always some friction and and there should be some friction in goals because we're there's friction in getting to the next level with the video game. There's friction in making your
• 12:00 - 12:30 mar taking your marriage to the next level. Anything that we're taking to the next level, there's going to be some friction in there. There is a place where when people don't want friction that they they start turning away from their goals and that's they're also turning away from aliveness in that. So how do you know if your goals are creating or inviting friction that is constructive or friction that is destructive or do you
• 12:30 - 13:00 want it? Do you actually want it? Is that what I really want? And that and your main your brain is just going to say yes right away. That's how the brain work. My goal is to have my perfect mate or my goal is to lose 20 pounds. Do you want to lose 20 pounds? Yes, I absolutely want to lose 20 pounds. Yeah. Okay. You said it. Yeah. Right away you didn't see you want it. I didn't see you feel the wanting of it.
• 13:00 - 13:30 Yeah. Do you want the perfect mate or do you want an ideal of perfection? Are you are you are you indexing on an ideal of perfection that's not actually a lived experience or are you wanting to want the mate wanting to want do I want to want to get to lose weight or do I actually want to lose weight and what happens in a human system is people will jump to yep I want it really quickly but it's not actually allowing themselves to
• 13:30 - 14:00 feel that whole process in their system and when they feel the whole process in their system they might find out something like actually I'm really scared to be in a relationship because my relationship between my mom and dad was absolute and I don't want to recreate it and the last two relationships I had I kind of recreated it and I don't want that but I really want to have okay so now what's going on here now like now what you want is a healthy relationship so is what you want
• 14:00 - 14:30 a mate or is what you really want to learn how to have a healthy relationship How many CEOs are recreating the I've got to cram for the test for my board? All of them. All of them who crammed for the test for the board are recreating that. Meaning like the reason I said all of them right away is because they are recreating whatever it is that they thought accomplishment was. You were in our offsite where we're setting goals. And we literally asked everybody, "What
• 14:30 - 15:00 does your heart want for yourself in this business? What does your heart want for the business? What does your heart want for the community we serve? That's that's where our goals come from. It's not a head want. It's like, oh, it's actually what what is this desire that we have? And there's a deep investigation of our own wants. That's the one of the best ways to really f uh refine what you're doing in the world. One of the things I'm picking up here is that like what the
• 15:00 - 15:30 head wants is almost irrelevant. It's what you want, like what your heart wants, what your body wants. What wherever that want is coming from, your head's job isn't to want it. Your head's job is to help you get it. Figure out how to get it. Yeah, there's a great way to do this. It's super super simple. Um, write down what you think you want that you just went, "Yes, I want it." without actually feeling it. And then just ask like, "What's the need behind that want?" And what's the need behind that want? And what's the need behind that
• 15:30 - 16:00 want? And you just go keep on going down. Oh, the need behind getting $12 million in revenue. Oh, that's the want to be secure. What's the need behind feeling secure? Oh, I want to feel like I can actually make a difference in the world. Okay, now we're like security and making a difference in the world is actually what what we're after. the $12 million is just our strategy to get there. And if you see the thing as a strategy
• 16:00 - 16:30 instead of the actual want. And you see, oh, then making that $12 million isn't about making $12 million. It is, oh, there's this way that I'm going to be able to have impact on the world. And you see that with CEOs. The great example of this, which I think I've talked about long ago on the podcast, was that I had a girlfriend who was really good at tennis in college, and she served with her tennis coach, and the tennis coach put out a basket, one of those baskets you pick up balls with, and said, "Serve and hit
• 16:30 - 17:00 it." And she hit it like two out of five times or something, three out of five times. And then he took that away, put a quarter down in the middle of where that basket was and said, "Serve and hit the quarter." and she didn't hit the quarter once, but she would have hit the basket if it was sitting on top of that quarter every time. And there's a way in which that goal makes you focus through the thing. So the great CEOs that I know, their goal isn't to make
• 17:00 - 17:30 money. Money is a necessity to get to the goal. Yeah. My goal isn't, you know, to, you know, become like self-aware guru, but that my self-awareness is really important to get to be a great husband, to be a great dad, to be the leader that I want to be. So the self-awareness, which I do all the time, I'm constantly practicing and running experiments, is there to serve something
• 17:30 - 18:00 that's that's greater than itself. Yeah. So it goes pretty deep like you can have make $12 million $12 million in revenue. That's like a tactic to serve the strategy of make an impact on the world. And what's the strategy for? What do you get for making an impact on the world? Right? And one thing that's interesting is that a lot of our work, especially as it goes really deep, Yeah. gets to a really goalless sense of being. Totally.
• 18:00 - 18:30 And so there's a paradox in like here we are talking about goals when a lot of, you know, a lot of people come to the art of accomplishment. They're like, "Oh, yeah. This is what I want. I want to accomplish things." Yeah. And then we're like, we do some work with them and it dissolves the goals that they had and they're like, "Well, who am I?" And we're like, "Great. Stay in that question." Right. Right. Like what? And then here we are like goals. Yeah. Goals, bro. Like totally. So So that's that's the thing is when I said earlier, imagine you're playing Mario Brothers and all of a sudden you have to you have
• 18:30 - 19:00 to do it or your self-worth is dependent on you're not a good kid if you don't make Mario Brothers. All of a sudden that level of force makes you resist the goal. And so what the seeing yourself for what you truly are to enter into the goalless state it gives you the freedom to see that the goals are not who you are. Somebody asked me recently they said uh why do you do what you do? Like I'm I'm
• 19:00 - 19:30 looking at your world. You I know you don't have to do anything else and yet you're coming out and you're super ambitious, Joe. You're putting out podcasts regularly. You're putting out all this content. You're out there. You're working with companies. you you could just do one of these things and and be successful. Like what's what is driving you? And I said, "Oh, I I just want more Legos. I just I just like playing in Legos. I just I just want to build Like, this is what I like doing. This is my thing." I was like, "I know that's kind of esoteric. Do you know what I
• 19:30 - 20:00 mean?" He goes, "Yeah, I have a like Lego Titanic sitting behind me in my office." Which what a lucky uh metaphor I used. But that that that there is just this natural part of us that wants to play the game, that wants to learn how to do the ali on the on the skateboard, that wants to learn about ourselves through the expansion of doing stuff that we don't know how to do. Yeah. Growing into stuff that like
• 20:00 - 20:30 that's that's that's our nature. And we try to build meaning into it and I've got to do it to save the world and blah blah blah, you know, all that. We just we like building It's it is a very creative part and that's why it's called the art of accomplishment, not how to accomplish it, you know? Like it's because there's an artistic quality to it and and art you do for the sake of art. Yeah. Makes goals a really interesting lit litmus test. Yeah. and like breadcrumb back to yourself in this
• 20:30 - 21:00 way because yeah, like as we were talking about earlier, it's many people will create goals and oppress themselves with them and maybe they're like really accomplishment oriented. And then there's people who do the opposite. They're like, I don't want goals. I don't want to oppress myself with them. I'm just going to be free. You might pop back and forth between the two because neither is actually working. Yeah, I've popped back and forth between the two for sure. Yeah, I think most people have. Yeah, but simply the way that you relate to goals is a really good uh
• 21:00 - 21:30 indicator of how you're relating to yourself. And you can trace your relationship with goals and the need behind the want. Play that need behind the want game all the way to what is it that you really want, which is coming from just the place of being. Yeah. Being who you are, being what you are right now. What is the next impulse? Where where is your next step, your next evolution? Yeah. And then from there, of course, goals will help you get that goals will help you serve you in that
• 21:30 - 22:00 process. Yeah. So, we have this tradition in our family. Every Thanksgiving, we sit down and we all talk into the phone and say, "What are our goals for the next year?" So, we all do this thing. It is not like a hardcore process. We just know that we're going to do this on Friday night after Thanksgiving and we usually don't do it till Sunday, but and then we just talk out our goals like here are four or five each each of us does it and then we don't look at it again until the next Thanksgiving and then we listen and
• 22:00 - 22:30 almost always there's like five goals and three or four out of the five goals were hit. Huh? We're not thinking about it at any there's just oh this is the thing that we're we're expressing our heart's want into the world and we're owning that thing and and then whatever comes out of it comes out of it. And sometimes it's just very practical stuff like I want, you know, I a house that I love to live in. And sometimes it's
• 22:30 - 23:00 very I want a deeper relationship with this person or I want business to feel like this. in my system. So, there's all sorts of different interesting things that come out of it, but it's it's held so gently. Yeah. There's something really important about that like setting the goal and never checking it until the next year and you find that it's complete. Set and forget. Yeah. Yeah. That it's like how much is it that the goal is actually just creating an intention and the intention is something that you are living. Yeah.
• 23:00 - 23:30 From that point. That's that's exactly what a goal is meant to do. It's like number one is it helps you ask the right questions and number two it allows you to know your intention and live into that intention as if it's happening right now. So what matters is that you're living living that intention following that want less that the goal is even something you're tracking. Well in business you have to track it for alignment but right personally it's not as necessary. But there's also living as
• 23:30 - 24:00 if the goal is there is already made. So for instance, uh we recently had a product that we created and we realized that we were chasing some folks because it was a new product and there was some chasing that was going on and um this is the council there was just like we don't chase we don't want to as a company you know this that we're not running after people's attention and but we noticed that we had done that
• 24:00 - 24:30 thing and in that way we weren't living to our goals. Because to live to the goals, to live in the goal, it's oh, of course we have something valuable, of course we will be successful. Living as if the goal has already succeeded is part of how the goals help you get to the place. And it's a it's an interesting nuance, but it's um if I'm playing basketball and I'm playing as if I'm winning, as if I'm
• 24:30 - 25:00 going to win, as compared to, oh we're 10 points behind. I think I'm going to lose, right? Oh, I'm I'm not playing as if I'm achieving my goal. And so I'm not playing like a person who's going to win. I'm playing like a person who is losing. Right? That's another thing that a goal really does is oh if we as a company or if I as a person have this how do I act how do I assume I'm going to act on the other side of achieving that goal and how is it to act like that
• 25:00 - 25:30 right now in the achievement of that goal principles are the how am I going to be in any area of my life correct goals are where might I be oriented in driving towards following those principles correct Yeah. And so that that's another thing that's really cool. It's a great point is that like we talked about it the early with the board meetings. If there's alignment and the principles are what ensure alignment in the goals and then they help you see how
• 25:30 - 26:00 you want to live as if you've achieved those goals because you're you're literally oh this is this is the this is my north star. This is living as if I've hit I've gotten to the place that I want to go and these this is how I know that that they're in alignment. Those principles really tell us if they're in alignment. So I want to tie this up kind of organizationally just because we open it up that way and I want to deliver on that promise. Yeah. So we've got
• 26:00 - 26:30 principles and the principles ensure that goals that are set across the entire organization are aligned and that actions that are taken are aligned with the company principles. Yeah, they do a lot more than that, but for goals, that's what they do. Yes. Yeah. And then we have metrics. And there's there's something that's interesting that we've also been working with in in the way that this company uses goals and metrics. Yeah. Which is that the goal is set by the person who has responsibility for actually the outcome of that goal.
• 26:30 - 27:00 Yes. Right. And they have the authority in our organization. And so the metrics are the dashboard. So the principle is how do you want to drive? Mhm. The goal is the north star and then the the metrics of the dashboard. It lets you know how you're doing, if you're getting there, what you need to do to get there. And that's the job. And oftentimes people confuse the metrics with the goals. And I think that happens
• 27:00 - 27:30 on a personal level and on a business level all the time where people think the goal is I want to be loved. The metric is how many people are my friends on Instagram and the metric becomes a goal and then you're not loved, right? Or is my wife happy with me right now? Yes. Exactly. Every moment. Exactly. Yeah. That's the metric. The metrics don't tell me if I've hit the goal. The metrics just tell me, right? How am I driving? How am I getting there? I think the other thing
• 27:30 - 28:00 that's just really important to say is that what I've experienced in life is that I always have ended up in a lot better place than I ever thought of was possible with the goals. I've never been in a situation, well, at least in the last 20some years, where I look back and think, I've gotten everything that I've wanted. That's never happened. I've never gotten everything that I've wanted, but I've also never been able to look back and say what I got wasn't a ton better than what I wanted.
• 28:00 - 28:30 There's a rigidity to goals that doesn't encompass all of life. And living by principles and knowing where your north star is oftent times gets you to a place much better almost always than what you thought was possible. I want that to be a journey. I want that to be an adventure. I want that to change me. Yes. I want that to impact me. Yeah. And the goal by the time I get there could be like planting a flag on the mountain,
• 28:30 - 29:00 but the mountain was the per was the whole point. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly right. The the only other thing that I would say about goals generally is if you're in a business, the lack of goals is often just an incredibly horrible thing. It doesn't mean destruction of the business, but it typically means non-alignment in the I've never been in a business where there isn't shared where there's no shared goals and there's alignment. So, and people like
• 29:00 - 29:30 to be on teams that are aligned. Everybody wants to win. So, that's but also internally what I've noticed is that I've lived life with that with the rejection of goals. I don't need goals. I'm just going to enjoy myself in the moment. not recognizing enjoying myself in the moment was the goal. Um, bringing the goal to consciousness, there's a benefit to that. There's also a downside. The downside is now I'm going to beat myself up and have shame if I don't have the
• 29:30 - 30:00 goals. So, it's really about how you relate to the goals rather than if you have them or not because everybody has them. And for me, how you relate to a goal is gently, with a lot of love, and with awe and wonder, and not through being defined by it. And typically when goals go nuts and up is when people are defined by either hitting it or not hitting it. That's typically when it doesn't build the life
• 30:00 - 30:30 that you want, right? or when they're not aligned in an organization and you have an exec team that's giving the board information that they're not actually using to run the company and the board feels like they're getting false information or something that's not quite right. And so my personal experience of goals is when I make a goal, I feel ecstatic. I'm like, "Wow, this feels so good to make this goal." And if we miss on a goal, and you saw we missed on a lot of goals. We we hit our high-end goals, which is great. We did not hit a lot of the lower goals. Like nothing in me is worried about it. I
• 30:30 - 31:00 learn, I grow. There was a failure that we got to like hang out in together. As a matter of fact, every single person in our company announced at least one failure that they did and everybody applauded them and it was like this wonderful thing. That was like a high point of the It was like the high point of the I was surprised about how much of a high point that was when we were all like celebrating our our failures was I got more pleasure out of celebrating our failures than I did on celebrating all the successes we had. It was kind of cool. And that that's the way to hold a
• 31:00 - 31:30 goal is, oh, I can celebrate the win. I can celebrate the loss. I mean, it's kind of good sportsmanship in life is a is an interesting way to put it. It's like we got to play the game. We got to learn. We're we're improving. And yeah, we we really go after our goal. I mean, we really go after our goals. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that we are up if we're failing. Yeah. We're just we're just growing. A critical component of that is the word we. Yeah, there was the
• 31:30 - 32:00 connection that was really underlying the the enjoyment and of course the goals allow us to continue to do what we're doing in connection and grow that in a way that we're excited about. Yeah. But it's about that connection. Yeah. And internally it's about how connected to us to myself do I feel? If I didn't make a goal, whatever. Yeah. But Oh, that's a great way to say it. Are your goals helping you feel more connected with yourself or not? Your personal goals, are the goals in the company
• 32:00 - 32:30 helping you be feel more connected to the company, the company more connected or not? If they're not, then there's a way to make those goals better. There's a way to face those goals, to appreciate those goals, to to to to work with those goals that is far more meaningful because that's what the goals do for me and for this company. Yeah, I think for all of us here, that's our meta goal. like how how do we connect with ourselves? How do we integrate? How do we relate to ourselves and each other
• 32:30 - 33:00 more and more delightfully? Yeah. And that and and our goals are one mechanism to do that. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thank you, Joe. Yeah. Thank you, everybody.