Asking For Help
Do you try to accomplish your goals on your own? Sort of a "rugged individualism" mentality that prevents you from asking for help?
If you never ask for help, you will certainly accomplish less in life. I'm not saying you need to throw your hands up and scream "Help Me!" every time you have a goal or every time you encounter a hurdle.
I starting thinking about this today, because I need your help. I think it will be easy for you to help me, but I'll wait a few paragraphs to formally ask.
People fail to ask for help in accomplishing their goals for a number of reasons:
- Truly don't need help. Sometimes this is true. We can do it ourselves.
- Pride - asking for help, in some circles, makes you appear weak.
- Hope that help will come without asking.
- More rewarding to do it yourself. There are some goals that just plain feel more powerful when completed purely on your own. Often, this is a false perception, but sometimes it's true.
- Fear - this takes many shapes, including the fact that to ask for help, you have to tell people about your goal. That in itself is sometimes scary. "What I I fail, after telling everyone? I'll be ruined! Ah me!" But it can also be fear of rejection: "What if I ask for help and the person says 'no'?"
- Arrogance - sometimes we fail to ask for help because we believe we can do it on our own, when in reality we can't.
How To Ask For Help With Your Goals
Asking for help on an important goal is different, in some ways, from a generic plea for assistance. It's not asking for a favor. It's asking for substantive contribution towards something really important to you. Here's my checklist for asking for help with a major goal:
- Start with "I've set a goal for myself to do ________________. But I realize that there are parts of this that I can't do alone. Can I tell you more about this because I would like your help with one area?"
- Be specific with how you want them to help.
- Don't try to soften it by saying "I understand if you don't want to" or "You don't have to" or anything like that.
- If this is a truly important goal, and you sense that the asking for help will be difficult for you, then practice the asking and visualize it turning out the way you want.
- Say please. For example "Could you please email me every Tuesday morning to ask me how my run went?"
- Tell them exactly why you chose them and how their small assistance will make a big difference for you. For example "I know you are very organized, and I respect your opinion a lot, so knowing that you will be emailing me every Tuesday will be a major motivator for me to do my jog before I get that email from you!"
- Choose someone you trust. You need to trust them ethically and trust them from a skill-level, that they can actually perform the help.
- Choose someone who will also benefit, in some way, from the process.
So Now I'm Asking You For Help
Let's see if I can follow my own advice...
I've set a goal to get to 1000 registered readers of this site by June 30, 2010. But it's tough going and I can't do it alone.
But you can help. See, you already must be enjoying this site right? So you are in a great position to tell others about it.
All I want you to do is email, right now, 5 people who you think might like the site. Don't send them to this article though - this won't be as valuable to them. Send them to another article you really like. And tell them to sign up.
To make this easy, I'll include an example message below.
Getting more active readers will help you too - that means better discussions and more incentive for me to invest more time in quality articles that help you achieve amazing goals.
So can you please tell friends about this site?
Here what you can cut and paste to them:
.................
Hi ________
I've been reading a cool site for goal setting. It's called The Goal Triangle. I think you'll especially like this article: http://goaltriangle.com/advanced-goal-setting/the-myth-of-the-balanced-life-success-comes-from-imbalance-not-balance/
If you like it, you should definitely register on the site - no spam or anything, just good articles once a week.
...............
Please send this, or something like it, to 5 people you know right now! I thank you in advance!
Darrin
How Are You Spending Your 100 Hours?
What do you spend your 100 hours on?
You’ve got 100 hrs a week, once you subtract sleeping, showering, eating.
Bill Gates has 100 hrs. Barak Obama. Drew Brees. Your neighbor down the road who seems ordinary but is actually rich, happy, morally inspiring, with an amazing family…
Everybody has the same 100 hours or so.
What are you spending your 100 hours on?
If you are like most of us, you spend your time about like this (and yes, I’m intentionally taking a cynical tone here so that in a few paragraphs I can shine some glorious light on the problems and make myself seem uber-insightful…):
- 45 hrs a week “half working”, going through the motions of your job, trying just hard enough to make sure you get a modest raise at your annual review, trying to not make mistakes, and neglecting to set your own goals, instead just doing whatever your supervisor directs you to do
- 5 hrs in the car, listening to junk
- 10 hrs a week watching TV, mostly off-color sitcoms or repetitive news, maybe 1 hour of pseudo-educational stuff and rarely anything that truly inspires you to become more than you are now
- 5 hours cruising the web, doing God-knows-what but rarely anything of real purpose
- Anywhere from 2 to 10 hrs hanging with friends, doing the same old things you always do
- Between 2 and 5 hrs doing household chores, and often doing them the same way you always have – inefficiently and incompletely
- 2 to 5 hours with your spouse complaining about your jobs, your kids, or your neighbors
- 2 hrs making a lame attempt at exercise, most of which is either spent doing ineffective cardio or talking to buddies in the gym, without any intelligent goals in mind
- 5 hours of unfocused time with your kids, where you aren’t really doing anything of purpose, and spend half of the time thinking about something else
- 5 to 10 hours that are simply “lost” – you honestly have no idea where they went; it’s just that when you add up your hours, you are less than 100 and you are clueless how you are losing that much time every week
So What Are Better Uses Of Your 100 Hours?
Obviously I’m going to say that it all starts with your goals: What are you trying to accomplish?
Part of The Goal Triangle philosophy is that there are 3 major areas of your life:
- Family (including friends and greater community)
- Fitness (physical, mental, spiritual – “fun” is included here too)
- Finances (including career)
If you haven’t written down your most important goals in each of these areas, stop reading right now. This article is useless if you have no goals.
Once you do have the right goals (read the other articles on this site for advice and tips on how to do so), then there’s an overly simplistic answer to the question “What should I spend my 100 hrs on?”
The answer: on doing what it takes to accomplish your goals!
It can’t be that simple can it? Actually it is. But it’s not easy. It only becomes easy after you have practiced it repeatedly. A regular review of your goals – daily, and even multiple times per day – will allow you to almost effortlessly start using your time more wisely.
So let’s revisit that list of what “most people” do with their 100 hrs. Except this time, I’m going to write it from the perspective of someone who has clear goals in multiple areas of their life.
The Goal-Oriented Way Of Spending Your 100 Hours
- 45 hrs a week working all the time you are at work, focusing on the things you want to accomplish to further your career and advance your income dramatically; not spending time at the water-cooler and not spending time on “busy work”; willing to take some risks because you know that accomplishing great things requires some risk; working with your supervisor to tie together your own goals, with her goals, and the goals of your organization
- 5 hrs in the car, listening to audio recordings that support your goals (for example, if you are a sales woman, there are countless recordings on how to improve sales; if you are a parent, you can find CDs at the library on parenting; if you have a goal centered around minimizing your angry outbursts, there are recordings for that too)
- 10 hrs a week reading books that help you learn things to accomplish your goals; if you watch any TV, it is uplifting positive shows; and you limit your news watching to just the headlines and only watch more when a truly important event is taking place
- 5 hours using the web not as “entertainment” but as a research tool to help you grow, learning more about fitness, finances, or family-oriented topics
- Anywhere from 2 to 10 hrs hanging with friends, but doing things that are both fun and growth-oriented; finding ways to inspire and challenge each other to be more
- Minimal time doing household chores because you do them so well and completely that they don’t need to be done as often; also incorporate a schedule that allows them to be done more efficiently (like batching them, or like doing them immediately when needed)
- 2 to 5 hours with your spouse brainstorming ways you can excel at your jobs, talking about your goals for your kids and the successes of your kids, or ways you can establish friendships with neighbors who are going to be fun and inspiring
- 2 hrs of focused exercise using established principles to accomplish whatever your specific fitness goals are; when you are working out, you are working out according to your plan and you don’t get distracted into socializing or slacking off
- 5 hours of time with your kids where you are focused exclusively on them, playing and talking about what is important to them (and helping them to think about the bigger picture of what they want their life to be like and setting goals around those)
- 5 to 10 hours that are available for other important goals that you’ve defined
So I ask again, what are you spending your 100 hours on?
Fail In Order To Achieve
For most things in life, you have to fail – and fail many times – before you achieve your goal. Sometimes it means sticking to your goal and trying many, many times. Occasionally it means trying something, and if it fails, switching gears to try it differently or try something new.
You may have heard the mantra “fail often and fail quickly” – the point being that you have to stretch yourself, expand your boundaries. Doing so will accomplish many things:
- You’ll try more things – if you aren’t afraid to fail, you’ll attempt more; if you fail quickly, you’ll have more total attempts which means more overall successes
- You’ll learn to stop wasting time on efforts that aren’t worth it – if that goal isn’t that important to you you’ll stop after the first time you fail; if it is important to you, you’ll keep trying
- You’ll learn from your mistakes (yes, that’s a cliché) – every time you fail, if you’re smart, you learn something that helps you either succeed the next time you try or gives you insight into a new and different goal that you value more
- When you do achieve, you’ll appreciate it more – succeeding after failure tastes much sweeter than the easy successes; though I’m not a fan of intentionally failing or anything, nor do I advocate taking the hard path just to “build character”
There are very few successes without failures. Take basketball great Michael Jordan. Do you know how many times he missed shots? He’s missed more shots than I’ve even attempted. A constant refrain from parents of elementary school basketball players is “I wish they were less afraid to just take some shots”. Lesson: life is a numbers game.
Does this mean you should bang your head against a wall and fail repeatedly in the delusional hope that you’ll eventually win? Of course not. You need so see measureable progress. The young Michael Jordan, even when failing and missing shots and losing games, was able to see his own progress. The pro Michael Jordan was able to make more shots than he missed and win more than he lost. Lesson: you need a way to measure progress, or lack thereof.
I’ve started several companies in my life. One recent effort involved selling someone else’s product in an industry/market I didn’t really understand. After several months, I still wasn’t making any money. And I was wasting my time because there were several other opportunities I had that were being neglected. I didn’t give up soon enough because I didn’t want to fail. After many more months, I finally through in the towel and the next thing I started was much more successful. Lesson: recognize failure and don’t let your ego interfere because success may be hidden behind a different rock.
Imagine a child learning to walk. He takes that first step, and immediately falls. Does he say “Wow, this is too tough. I think I’ll stick with crawling.”? No, he tries again. He really has no other option and doesn’t even consider giving up forever on his dream of walking. Lesson: for life’s most important goals, never ever give up.
What lessons do you have about failure that you are willing to share?
The Addiction of Being Right
Addictions to "being right" feel good - initially
Being right is addictive.
That small pleasure you get when you prove someone wrong is like heroin.
But like heroin, it’s temporary. Soon enough the high wears off and you need another hit.
You need to prove yourself right again.
Oh, you’ve convinced yourself that you are a good person and you are not proving the other person wrong. You are just proving yourself right.
Tell that to the person you just proved wrong!
And like heroin, the addiction of being right erodes. (And in a moment I’ll tell you how it prevents you from achieving your goals.)
Soon your true self-worth is supplanted by the subconscious fear that if you aren’t right, then you aren’t worthwhile.
You’ve all met the extroverted know-it-all who gets in your face when she’s right. She loves it and lets everyone know it. Maybe she knows how annoying she is, or maybe not. But in her wake she leaves fragile relationships and tentative partners who avoid her when possible.
Now before you assume that everyone who is addicted to being right is a loud-mouth, there’s another type.
The “introverted, be-righter”.
It’s hard to spot them (not that I’m saying you need to seek them out). And maybe, just maybe, you are one of them.
How would you know if you are an introverted be-righter?
- Do you not admit to being wrong?
- When hearing someone make their point on some trivial issue do you stop listening and start thinking of rebuttals (even if you never speak them)?
- Do you even spend time later trying to gather evidence?
- Are you a “yes…but…” guy, who pretends to agree with someone, and then bashed the other guy over the head with your wisdom? “Yes, that’s a great idea, but it will never work because you forgot that the dorsal fin only has a thermic generation of 1.98.”
It’s hardest when you see it in one of your kids. You see their craving for filling some unseen hole that apparently can only be filled by being right. It might start with correcting a younger sibling. Then as a teenager kids tend to think their parents are always wrong, right? Most people outgrow all this. Did you?
I know this addiction well. I love being right.
Proving others wrong has been a massive motivator for me.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. One of my businesses was in part fueled by my desire to prove other people (those who said I couldn’t do it) wrong. Actually, it’s often fear that motivated us. What if they were right? I can’t let that be the case so I have to prove them wrong!
But here’s the insidious danger in being right all the time.
So What’s This Got To Do With Goals?
Being right all the time can turn into blaming of others for your situation.
After all, if you are always right, and yet your choices or decisions or inaction or mistake leads to pain, then of course it can’t be because you were wrong. It must be because someone else didn’t fulfill their role. Or they lied to you. Or they cheated.
Sometimes the blame is victimless. The “universe conspired” against you. For example, my daughter couldn’t find one of her lipsticks. She “knew” that she left it on the counter. So it started with blame to her sister. “You must have taken it because I know I left it here.”
When the errant lipstick was discovered in the wash, in her jeans pocket, she still couldn’t admit to being “wrong”. “Well, I know I left it on the counter so I don’t know how it got in the wash."
Really?
Like all addictions, the psychological defenses we prop up to feed our habit are mind-numbingly illogical.
It’s relatively harmless when we’re talking about a missing lipstick.
But what about when it’s failure on a test (when the real failure was setting the right goal – to get a good grade – and identifying the steps to get there)?
Or when you not only fail to lose your 20 pounds of fat but actually gain 5 more? Victimhood is akin to being right – you don’t want to be wrong so you blame your genetics or your wife or something else.
When actually, your goals were off. Your workplan was off.
Setting great goals starts with accepting full responsibility for their achievement.
And you will fail sometimes. You might be wrong and set the wrong goal. If you can’t admit to being wrong, you won’t learn from the experience and tweak the goal and action plan so that you can actually excel.
And when setting goals, there are so many unknowns. You might not have planned for slipping, falling, and having a leg cast for 8 weeks. That would mess up a lot of goals. But if you are addicted to being right – and therefore looking to find fault elsewhere – you’ll be blocked from finding a creating way to STILL achieve your goals even though you have a cast on.
How Do I Change?
Most of us who are addicted to being right have had years of reinforcing habits. Extracting ourselves from the mesh is no easy task.
It starts with small things.
If you can learn to simply let the small things go, you are on the road to recovery.
Don’t argue with the waiter over whether or not you said you wanted the dressing to the side. It doesn’t matter who is right.
True self confidence comes not from proving to other people who is right and who is wrong but proving to yourself. And admitting to yourself when it is you who is wrong.
If you can start with the small things, you can eventually work up to admitting that you gained 5 pounds of fat because you set poor goals or because you failed to follow through.
And without trying to prove yourself right (and other people wrong), you’ll find creative ways to achieve all your goals.
Am I right?
Poll
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