Defining Purpose and Setting Goals
What is the first image that comes to your mind when I say the word success? Did you imagine an actor, musician or professional athlete? As much as those public figures might deny being role models, we do idolize these people. They have money and seem to earn those dollars doing something fun. The dream is to make a lot of money and live better than the generation before us. Indeed, the media we grow up with creates the image of success many of us desire. If your first image when you read success above was yourself relaxed and retired, care to be my mentor?
Stardom is rare, part of the reason it is so coveted. The other reason it is so appealing is because we only ever see the prominence of the stars. The media seldom covers the years of hard work, playing community halls, dive bars and singing covers. Instead, we see the success of the first album and the many sold out concerts. Actors and actresses almost never retire. Instead, the lights shine on others and they fade to obscurity. The path to success as a star looks easy. Just get discovered! That’s all it takes. The truth is far more complicated.
I was in my late 20s when I accepted that I was not going to be the next Grant Hill (Go Pistons!) or Matt Hoffman. As I grew older, it became pretty clear that Steven Spielberg wasn’t going to call me for his next film. Success, in the form of riches and stardom as proselytized by the media was out of my reach. Was this realization part of my slide into depression, or was that thought a result of a depression I didn’t know I was in? Either way, it is a true statement. Making matters worse, I never defined success for me.
I was not “discovered.” Had I continued acting in community plays, went to auditions in bigger towns and majored in theatre, my chances for that Spielberg phone call would have increased. Granted, I have a better chance getting bit by a shark in the land-locked province where I live. Still, playing video games and bouncing from job to job in my 20s was less likely to help my movie star rise. I lacked vision and goals because of this hopeful dream of being discovered.
As I continue to discuss the idea of stardom as success, I understand that in some ways “being discovered” has changed. People are building careers from making Youtube videos. Even early on, people like Bruce Branit and Ryan Wieber launched careers with the first viral videos. Musicians like Julia Nunes are producing their own music without the big record labels behind them. Even those people making duck faces at their phones on Instagram are selling themselves as models. Of course, the successful individuals in this new world are still working hard and we continue to ignore that fact. Instead, we want to believe they were simply at the right place, at the right time.
What Is Success to You?
This is an important question that you have to answer for yourself. You won’t find success trying to live someone else’s dream. Whether it is your father’s dream for you to be a ball player or your own fantasy to be Adele, success will be unattainable.
While the question is a serious one, remember that you can adjust this vision at any time. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. The pressure of choosing a career for the rest of my life was daunting. Even as I tell you adjusting your idea of personal success is possible at any time, I find it difficult convincing myself that it is good advice for me. Most likely, that’s my depression trying to keep me down. So, what is success to you? Is it simply being loved and having a roof over your head? Do you want 3 kids and a nice house? Maybe it is learning to live with depression?
See, success doesn’t have to be a pie-in-the-sky objective. If you’re a student, perhaps your idea of success is to graduate. After that, you can re-evaluate and define a new intention. If you are retired and struggling with what to do without work, maybe you want to focus on your health. Personally, I find journaling to be helpful for these big questions. I don’t worry about punctuation or any formatting, I just free write. If that’s not your thing, find a close friend or someone you respect and talk it out.
After you’ve defined success, it is time to set goals. I find the best way to construct a goal is the S.M.A.R.T. system. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Realistic, and Time frame. While used in project management, as the link suggests, I ran into this process for creating goals in cognitive behavioral therapy. Below is how S.M.A.R.T. goals work in that sense. (Click on the image to get a pdf.)
If we take the example of being healthy as our personal success, that will entail a number of changes. Eating right, getting exercise, proper medical care, and possibly quitting other substances will be the path to success. A Specific goal means taking each of those goals individually. Let’s try to exercise more. We’ll say that I’m going to walk more. Well, how much? I’m going to walk 4 times a week. When? Every other day during lunch time.
To make it Measurable, I might choose to track it on a calendar using the don’t break the chain method (This is attributed to Seinfeld, but that’s not correct). There’s several habit tracking applications for my smartphone, or maybe I partner with a friend to be my accountability buddy.
So far, I want to walk every other day on the lunch hour and have a friend keeping me accountable. Is this Achievable? Can I sustain this? What if I have a lunch meeting for work 2–3 days in a row? Is my accountability buddy going to be available on these days to walk with me? Of course, I could promise myself to reschedule. However, how many times have I said I was going to workout? Perhaps, I should do it before or after work to be able to sustain this? Maybe I can simply ask my friend to keep me in line by texting me on those days to remind me, rather than relying on them to walk with me.
Now things are really shaping up for this single goal. Is everything I’ve laid out Rewarding? As far as being healthier, hopefully living longer and feeling better, it’s worth it. If my goal was to produce a video each day in order to grow my Youtube following, I may find that to be a stressful pace. Thus, it may not be that rewarding and I might want to go back and tweak my goal.
Finally, I will need a Time-frame for this goal. There’s a common perception that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. That number comes from a book from the 1960s. In an actual study published in 2010, researchers found the average was more like 66 days. It depends on what type of habit you’re trying to form, as well as the individual. So, for my time frame, I might want to promise that I’ll be walking every other day for an entire month. From there, I can revisit the process and see if there are some things I need to change.
When you create a S.M.A.R.T. goal, be sure to set the bar realistically. I know I won’t makeup days that I miss. I know that at the end of the month when I look back I will be really disappointed if I don’t meet the goal. Thus, I’ve decided to walk every other day and not every single day. Start small and work up to the bigger changes. That’s why we set specific goals and I didn’t just write, “I want to be more healthy.” Leaving the goal so vague means I am more likely to fail. Just like sitting down and defining success, we have to have clear goals as well.
Success Is A Consequence
Like happiness, success is not a state of being, it is a result. You may achieve it at times and it may elude you on other days. That’s fine. This is the process of learning and becoming more efficient and skillful. As mentioned above, stardom comes to those that work very hard. The Youtube examples above know visual effects and music because they studied their crafts. Their objective wasn’t “get discovered,” instead they made videos and music for themselves. It may sound cliché, but do this for you.
Letting go of the idea of Spielberg calling me sounds easy, but success equals riches was imprinted on me as I grew up in the U.S. Thus, redefining personal success isn’t about working hard and showing the world what I can do. I cannot emulate the success of others on Youtube. Instead, I have to show myself I am capable of success. No one can take that from me. This is the power of true success that allows a housewife with five kids to be legitimately more happy than the late Robin Williams. While the housewife has found her personal success, I’ll bet that Williams never felt like what he did was enough. Many of us inflicted with mental health issues feel that way.
Find your success. Define what it means to you. Hash it out with a friend or journal it for a few days. Remember that you can always change this definition. Set a small goal. Set another. Then, another. Work toward this definition with purpose. If you follow this simple looking plan, you can achieve success. You can be the next great thing: you.
