The Ultimate Question in Goal Setting

Most of us have a very weird combination of beliefs around goal- setting.

Maybe you were encouraged by loved ones around you to be realistic and pragmatic. To always have a Plan B.

Then maybe you got the motivational speaker version of goal setting... "Shoot for the stars and maybe you'll hit the moon!"

Either way, our beliefs are a jumbled mishmash of stuff from our childhood and our experience as an entrepreneur, all rolling around in a stew of our insecurities, negative emotions and limiting beliefs.

So today I want share what I believe is the ultimate question in goal setting, and it comes from an amazing yet overlooked book.

When I was in my late teens, a friend of the family gave me a set of seminar tapes by an Australian real estate mogul I’d never heard of named Peter Daniels.

He’s still not well known over here, and he deserves to be.

He started as an illiterate bricklayer and stonemason, rising to become a multi-millionaire real estate developer, speaker, author and counted folks like Paul Meyer and W. Clement Stone as personal friends.

I wore those seminar tapes out and then bought this book, How To Reach Your Life Goals.

So here's the ultimate question: “What proportion of your life are you prepared to give in exchange for accomplishing this goal?”

In other words, do your goals reflect what you’d “like” to happen, or what you’re prepared to sacrifice to make happen?

In this one question, you get the sense that Daniels believes a goal worth setting is one that's hard to reach.

One that will require something more of you. To become something more than you are now.

And I think he's spot on.

After all, as one of my mentors said, if you were worthy of your goal right now in this moment, you’d already have it.

So setting out to accomplish a goal is a serious thing.

In fact, I believe the timeless principle from Peter Daniels book is this:
Goal setting is sacrifice.

Goal-setting isn’t just an exercise in our imagination where we form a mental picture of the things we’d like to happen. There’s a place for that, and it’s in the dreaming stage. Its where we start, but it’s not where goals are set.

True goal-setting is an exercise where we sit down and decide, plan and prepare to give up certain things we want in exchange for things we want the most.

True goal setting means giving up who we are now to become someone different - someone who is worthy of our goal.

Here’s a great example: Look at how Phil Jackson handled superstars like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant as an example.

Both MJ and Kobe felt like they could score at will. Both of them loved the spotlight. Both were hard on their teammates and rarely trusted them to take shots in critical moments.

The genius of Phil Jackson is that he got both of them to agree to the same sacrifice:

Give up the spotlight as the high scorer in the average game, to achieve the championships that will put you in the spotlight forever, listed among the best players of all-time.

Both of them sacrificed short term accolades and praise, for the best interest of the team, and in the end they got all the accolades and praise they could ever ask for by achieving the ultimate goal in their field.

To win those 11 championships between them, they had to change. They had to become something more than they were. They had to transform into someone worthy of their goals.

And in the book, Peter Daniels challenges us to do the same thing.

How much of our life are we prepared to give in exchange to accomplish a goal?

Only when we can answer that question, do we really know we’re committed to that goal.

Let’s finish with another line from the book, “Life cannot accept anything other than it’s equivalent.”

In other words, to get more life out of life, we have to give some of our life in exchange.

It’s the ultimate question in goal-setting.