The Unconventional Goalsetting Technique That Works!

in this video you're going to understand a really subtle but powerful difference in types of goals there are two types of goals that we are train to pursue in the world Whenever you set a goal you always have to understand if that goal is a means goal or an end goal too many people fall into a trap by not knowing the difference now to illustrate this difference let me share with you a story so many years ago this would have been around 2002 or 2003 I was teaching a class in New York City and this was in the early days of me being a personal growth teacher and this class was on the silver method and it was a lot of it was on creative visualization and so I had a student come to me and said can I apply creative visualization to be a faster typist so I thought well that's kind of a interesting idea why would you want to be a faster typist in my mind I was thinking why would any body want speed typing as a goal does she have a fetish of fingers on a keyboard she said well I'm a data entry Clerk and the faster I can type the more forms I can fill out so I said oh okay well why do you want to fill out more form she said well I'm paid not by the hour but by the number of forms I fill out if I can fill out more forms in an hour my hourly rate goes up so I said great now we're getting somewhere so really it's not about being a faster typist it's about increasing your hourly rate she goes yes and I said let's go further why do you want to increase your hourly rate and she says I want to increase my hourly rate so I can be saving more money in the bank good I said now we're getting somewhere let's go further why do you want to save more money in the bank and she says I want to save more money in the bank because I want to have my mother move from Detroit to New York City and live with me great we're going further I said why do you want your mom to move from Detroit to New York City and live with you and this is where she hit on the inspiration the end goal that was propelling her she said look my mom lives in Detroit in a house in a neighborhood that's not safe she's by herself and I'm by myself here in New York and we have such a close friendship I'm so excited about us being together I want to move my mom to New York and not only that I want to be able to afford an incredible apartment in New York see my mom lives in this beautiful house in Detroit and it's filled with heirlooms of our family going back all the way to the Civil War we want to move all of these heirlooms get this New York apartment fill it with the momentos of our family history have my mom and myself there in that apartment someday when I have kids I want my kids growing up in this apartment with their Rich family history and their grand grandmother bingo I said that is exactly what you want to be aiming for you painted a rich picture a rich tapestry of the life she wants to lead that is what you set as your goal that is your creative visualization project not being a fast at typus you see what this young lady misunderstood is the difference between a means goal and an end goal the end goal was that apartment with her mother with her family heirlooms you could feel the excitement as she described it the means goal was being a fastet typus now look that's it's not a bad thing but it's not the reason you were born it's not why you're here it's not what makes your soul sing but so many people make that mistake they forget that we have this incredible power within us as CS Lewis said you do not have a soul you are a soul what you have is a body we forget that and we fall into this trap to try to look at means goals as a dominant goal mechanism the means to an end when instead you should be focused and obsessed with the end with a beautiful picture of the life you want to lead end goals light you up means goals feel like projects think about it end goals are the things that are truly the most beautiful aspects of The Human Experience cradling a newborn baby in your ey mom waking up next to someone you truly love making breakfast for your family on a Sunday morning cuddling with a loved one being able to hop on a bicycle and cycle with friends or family as You observe a sunset along the bay travel the world and take beautiful pictures experience fine dining with exotic food live in a beautiful apartment that inspire bias you be able to finish a project that you're doing not for some money or some goal but because you love the act of writing or painting or composing music or coding all of these are end goals but we don't set goals for these we set means goals designed to move us along life based on a culturescape idea of how life should unfold in confession I used to work in the legal industry so I I had a lot of lawyer friends I I worked with a lot of lawyers had a lot of friends who are lawyers and I always found it really interesting that people become lawyers here's why if you're a lawyer in America or in Australia there are studies that show that you have a 50% chance of clinical depression 50% yet every year millions of people decide to go into law why I don't think anyone decides I want a job where I get to go to court argue with people and could potentially be depressed for half my life instead they are seduced by the mean scho becoming a lawyer or an engineer or a doctor or an entrepreneur is a means goal not an end goal let me tell you why I have a friend who graduated law from Harvard University very dear friend we went to the University of Michigan together he graduated from Harvard University met his wife in Boston moved into a beautiful Penthouse apartment overlooking U the city and was really excited about when he finally was able to practice law but soon he found that it wasn't what it was made out to be he was working crazy long hours he told me 120 hours in some weeks and soon within a span of 2 to 3 years his marriage started unraveling his partner who was also a lawyer was also working so hard they simply couldn't provide enough attention to each other the marriage ended he sank into a depression he was making so much money but he just wasn't fulfilled he decided to quit and when he quit he decided to go and do something completely different he decided to buy a bike and cycle across the United States simply on a bike living a minimalist lifestyle and for the first time he was happy well he fell into the same means goal versus end goal trap that I did when I became an engineer at Microsoft he was chasing the means to an end think about if you're doing this this too when I asked my friend why he wanted to become a lawyer he said because he wanted to change the world he was excited about getting into international law about being able to fight for the rights of refugees he never actually got to do that because he fell into the means skull strap he decided that his life was going to unfold in a specific way he was going to do good in school pass the elet get into a law firm become a partner work hard eventually work harder and harder and harder until he could be a famous International rights lawyer and of course it didn't go that way but he be had done the three most important questions and asked himself the questions that lead to discovering his true end goals his part to happiness might have been a lot more streamlined and effective and that's really where end goals benefit end goals allow you to streamline your path to happiness by giving you Clarity on what you truly want you see my friend didn't really want to be an international rights law La that was a mean schal what he really wanted was to help people to support human rights that was what made him lied up it didn't matter how he did that it was what he was obsessed with human rights I wanted to experience culture travel work in a job with people I became an engineer because I thought well it would allow me to earn an income that would let me do that but I didn't have to do that by I was working for a nonprofit paying me below the poverty rate but I was happy because I got to travel to meet people to experience cultures that was what lit me up you see very often when we nail our end goals something happens it's like our minds our subconscious our spiritual core figures out a way to shortcut our movement towards those end goals this is why we should momentarily set aside the means goals and focus just on the end goals if you study many great spiritual practices involving creative visualization or manifesting you will hear the spiritual teacher say focus on the what and the why forget the how this is essentially what we're doing when we apply the three most important questions you're going to ask yourself three questions designed to get you to the core of your end goals and these questions are going to shine a beautiful light on your life now end goals fall in three different buckets the first bucket is experiences experiences are things like travel Adventure falling in love raising children the second bucket is growth growth is about transformation it's about becoming a better version of yourself growth and experiences are tied together when you get to the second question on growth you would ask yourself to be the man or woman who has all of these experiences how do I need to grow and then we we come to the third bucket and the third bucket is contribution the Dalai Lama said if you want to be happy make other people happy and that is the essence of contribution when you get to that third bucket you're going to ask yourself well if I were the man or woman who had all of these experiences who has grown in such a way how now can I give back to others by answering these three questions and removing means goals and going just to end goals you end up with a beautiful picture of how your life can unfold and to understand this I want to share with you the story of a man who did this exercise and his story will blow your mind his name is dreamer dreamer was a young Sudanese intern at my company when he was 22 years old Drea attended a team Retreat so in my company we take our employees on a team Retreat to a beautiful location everyone sits down and does their three most important questions we guide them through a session thousands of companies do this now and you have the right to take this program if you're a mind Valley member and take your company through the process as well now when Drea wrote down his three most important questions it was really beautifully done and also really bold he wrote that he wanted to speak at incredible institutions around the world at Harvard at at the United Nations at Google he wrote that he wanted to be a a published author he wrote that he wanted to be able to stand up for human rights now Drea at that time had come from a country Sudan that was going through a dictatorship he had a Blog called the Sudanese thinker and he used to write about what was going on in his country and he was passionate about civil rights obviously if you are living under a dictatorship civil rights matter and so he wanted to be able to stand up for freedom for human rights and he was really passionate about all of this but he was 22 years old an intern at a company a Blog that was making no money how would he possibly get this done well the universe had other plans as Drea wrote down all of his goals Something Beautiful started to happen you could call it coincidence you could call it Serendipity but his blog started taking off and he got asked to write a book during that specific time there was a vast Democratic movement happening in Northern Africa countries were using Twitter and Facebook to overthrow dictatorships and Drea was asked to write a book on this digital Revolution so he did he wrote a book called my Islam how fundamentalism stole my soul and doubt freed my mind and it was really about freeth thinking under the the suppression of fundamentalist religion amir's book was so beautifully written that it went on to be listed on a list of foreign policy magazines most important books to to read in 2013 and this blew up his career soon exactly like he had written on his three most important questions he was invited to speak at Major institutions around the world such as Google and then he was invited as a guest speaker at the Oslo Freedom Summit alongside incredible um people like Jimmy Wales who founded Wikipedia I was so proud of Amir the crazy bold dream he wrote in this 3mq came true in the most remarkable beautiful elegant way he never would have guessed that his life would unfold this way and of course all of this happened not overnight but over a span of 5 to 10 years but it happened it's as if the clarity from the three most important questions allowed his soul or his brain to move him in the exact path he needed for his end go to manifest Drea today is living in Canada he's living an incredible life and he's just one off the thousands of success stories of people who have applied this exercise and seen a shift in the way their life unfolded now notice something about Drea's goals he went straight to the end goal speak at incredible institutions he wanted to do that because being able to speak at these places was what gave him Joy he didn't write down speak at the oso Freedom Forum but he did write stand up for human rights and he got that by being able to speak at this activist Summit you're going to learn to do the same but to do that you must ensure that as you go through this exercise you don't confuse a means goal with an end goal so here's how to distinguish between the two the first rule is this means goals usually have a so in them I want to do X so I can do y I want to graduate from this class so I can be this person I want to get this this book deal so I can be a bestselling author whenever there's a so it's a means goal if you want to be a best-selling author write that down ignore the book deal because you don't need a book deal you could self-publish for example but the mistake people make is by obsessing on the mean they actually limit their choices so if there's a so at the end of your goal it's a means goal don't add it you're going to be focusing on end goals now the second quality of a means goal is this means goals are often about conforming to rules what is a Bru well means goals are often about conforming to the bruls of the culture scape a Brule is a rule I coined that term in my book the code of the extraordinary mind in the culture scape they are rules that help us they rules that help us understand the complex world around us for example how to cook an omelette and then they are rules or rules that are simply passed down from generation to generation questioningly without someone going hey should we really be doing this you must be able to distinguish the rules from the rules and much of our rules Come From media from religion from culture from politicians from the way things have always been done is your goal being influenced by a Bru if it is it's not a goal you're probably aiming for a means goal when I became an engineer I was actually conforming to a Brule in Indian families at least in my Indian family you have four job options you're either an engineer an entrepreneur a doctor or a family failure so I had chose to become the engineer but that's a Bru and by questioning that Brule I was able to free myself from the shackles of the corporate job I didn't want now let's go on to end goals end goals also have two qualities about them the first thing is end goals are about following your heart your intuition when you think about end goals you light up often with end goals you don't know how to get there that's okay if we only set goals for things that we knew how to get to our life would be really limited the greatest Visionaries in the world the people who do the most amazing things set goals of things that they feel they really want to experience irregardless of whether or not they know today how to get there the how will come to you focus on the what and the why the second thing about end goals is end goals are often feelings there is a feeling to an end goal when you speak about the end goal of raising children it's that feeling of love and connectedness with your child when you talk about the end goal of traveling the world it's that feeling of of Adventure and Discovery end goals are often associated with feelings so by understanding these rules you can see the difference between a means goal and an end go [Music]

Channel: Mindvalley

Views: 5,417

Keywords: extraordinary life, how to get the achievement, how to set goals, how to set goals and achieve them, goal setting theory, set your goals, how to grow, Goal setting, How to achieve your most ambitious goals, How to set goals and achieve them, How to achieve your goals, How to deal with failure, how to set a goal, how to plan your life, strategic planning, how to organize your life, Growth mindset, how to transform yourself, Self improvement motivation, Self Improvement

Id: KQwyPc2LpP8

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024