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It’s not the goal; it’s the process that is important
By Colin J. Campbell
When I finished the four-part article for e-KNOW on the value of starting with why I was not totally satisfied with my conclusions about goal setting. From my own experience, I have learned that having goals and objectives is fine but unless there is a process or system to achieve the goal it may not become reality and it can in some cases become such a burden that it inhibits progress. It is impossible to predict the future and by setting unachievable goals that is what we are trying to do; the result is often less than satisfactory.
Pretty much everything we do everyday is done with the objective of achieving a level of happiness that will satisfy our inner self. Victor Frankl in his book Man’s search for meaning, talked about the hierarchy of needs which is what drives us to get up each day and go to work, the instinctive need to feed, cloth and protect ourselves and our loved ones. We are driven by love and a desire for happiness.
What we have learned about love and happiness in the years since Frankl defined the hierarchy of needs is that the opposite is not hate and sadness but indifference and boredom. Falling out of love, which seems to be a common occurrence today, is directly related to the indifference shown by one partner to the other and boredom with work or profession is almost as common a disease and effects the workplace because it can be contagious.
These are all connected, boredom with work leads to less income, less income leads to stress, stress in the breadwinner will spill over to the relationship leading to indifference which impacts every member of the family and adds more stress because we are not meeting the basic needs of the hierarchy of needs. Life becomes a treadmill with no way off.
As I thought more about this and recalled some of the ideas of the great thinkers of the past such as Napoleon Hill the author of Think and Grow Rich, David Schwartz author of The Magic of Thinking Big and Victor Frankl author of Man’s search for meaning, that when we figure out our why, the how is not goal setting but the process required to achieve why. The Wright Brothers for example, their objective was to fly, that was the why, the reason for their success was the process. They began to experiment with various theories of how to fly and their failures eliminated what didn’t work, that provided the feedback to make the changes to try again.
The process of elimination was supported by a system of recording the results and modifying the experiment and trying again, to fail better so to speak. The key was the system, which meant they would not repeat a previous failed experiment.
Applying this same principle to building a successful business, developing a sales force, or of life in general is not difficult and can be much more satisfying than trying to achieve an insurmountable goal.
These ideas tie in with the concepts that Hill talked about in Think and Grow Rich that the Law of attraction will provide you with everything you can think about. His concept was that you need to have positive affirmations which when repeated daily will begin to program your subconscious mind to believe this is what you want to achieve and you will be rewarded with success.
There is no question that positive affirmations will have positive results. The human mind is an amazing powerful organism and if left to its own resources will gravitate to negative thinking. The problem is that our minds espouse to the principle of Garbage in Garbage Grows, (GIGG) positive affirmations reverses that process. David Schwartz illustrated this in the Magic of Thinking Big.
As I began to research this idea, I went back in my archives to see what I had written in the past on the subject and what others had said about it. Jeff Haden wrote a terrific article about the value of process versus goals and I had written an article on using gratitude to achieve spectacular results. Both approaches focus on what we can control rather than on what we have no control over. Goal setting to some extent tries to control the future do by predicting the outcome.
Haden uses the analogy of a basketball coach who has the stated goal of winning the championship. That is the stated goal, the way to achieve that goal is to focus on the process, to teach the players the skills needed in the practice to the extent that they can execute those skills without thinking in the game. The focus must be on the process not on the goal.
The same principle can be applied to business, or to writing. As Haden learned from his own experience, if a writer’s goal is to write two books a year and that is equal to about 110,000 words, if he focuses on the two books the goal becomes a burden but if he focuses on producing a specific number of words daily or weekly the process becomes more important than the goal and the results are two books.
Every sales trainer for the past 100 years will tell you that if you want to make a sale you need to see 10 people to get three appointments to make one sale. Unfortunately, this formula leads to failure more often than to success because the focus is on the one sale rather than on the process.
When the objective becomes making contact with a specific number of people and starting a conversation the focus is on the process and the results can be spectacular. The goal is no longer the sale, it is making contact, therefore the goal is no longer a burden when it isn’t achieved. The salesman becomes more relaxed focused on what the other person’s problems are and as a result the number of sales will increase by 10-fold.
My personal experience in this regard happened some years ago, I had set some very lofty goals at the beginning of the year and by mid June it was obvious that I was not going to achieve them. When I realized what was wrong and began focusing on the now and the process rather than the goal the results were more than I could have imagined. In a few short months I had surpassed the original goals. The best part of this epiphany was the change in my daily activity, I no longer had to work 12 to 14 hour days and I was more relaxed and able to enjoy the results. It really was life changing.
The conclusion of this hypothesis is that focusing on the process not the goal requires patience, we must trust our own intuition not worrying about tomorrow and staying in the now is going to result in progress. Not an easy task, patience is not a character trait that we have developed, we are all looking for quick results and instant gratification. However, it is a proven fact that results do come when we patiently focus on the process.
We should take a lesson from the work of a restorer, such as those who restored the passenger cars at the museum in Cranbrook or those working on restoring the Henry Ford mansion in Detroit. The restorer recognizes that under years of paint, dirt and varnish is a piece of art. Removing all that material and not damaging the original, must be done painstakingly with great care. The process takes infinite patience and time; however, the results will be spectacular.
The same mind set is what is required with whatever we are doing on a daily basis. That can be difficult to achieve when there are lots of distractions and we are really busy. The only way to alleviate the problem is to focus on the process rather than the goal.
– Colin J. Campbell, CFP, CLU is an independent financial advisor and managing partner of Guidance Planning Strategies Ltd, in Cranbrook. Serving the Kootenays since 1995, Guidance Planning Strategies focuses on helping families and entrepreneurs create wealth and keep it for generations.
