michael neill

I’ve always been a goal-setter, a planner keeper (not to be confused with a Trapper Keeper because I don’t think I’ve ever been that cool), and am currently attached at the hip to Google calendar.

Spontaneity and Arminda haven’t traditionally been synonymous. My college boyfriend laughingly assured me any children I brought into this world would likely arrive sporting matching Franklin planners.

I’ve even taught classes on goal-setting, its significance and how to achieve more than your neighbor through better techniques and the adept use of colored pencils on a grid (I haven’t actually taught that part about the colored pencils; I’ve mostly kept that trick to myself).

But yesterday I read something that rocked my calendar a little bit. Okay. A lot.

Supercoach Michael Neill thinks there’s an inherent problem with goals:

they’re future-based (always ahead of us like the carrot on the stick)
they’re results-focused
they’re successful only upon completion (meaning failure is your only option unless, or until, you reach it)

I haven’t stopped thinking about this. I can’t stop thinking about this. And after my obsessive thinking spree, I believe he’s right.

This is a game changer for me. Remember when I wrote about the definition or meaning we attach to words? This is one of those moments for me. One of those words.

What’s in a name?

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet; (Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 1-2)

Or would it?

If what Michael Neill says about goals is true, and I believe it is, then my focus on setting and achieving goals is misplaced effort and energy. In fact, based on the above list of problems, it’s a wonder any of us goal setters ever accomplish anything. This could be the very reason February is consistently guaranteed time for me to have the entire gym to myself. Every single year.

I don’t want to suggest I never accomplish anything or that I fail before I even get out of bed in the morning. On the contrary, I think up until now I’ve successfully checked many many things off my ever-lengthening list of goals.

But the point isn’t about what’s in my past. It’s really about what future I’m creating.

Because when you really want something, the question isn’t “How will you get it?”; it’s “What could possibly stop you?” (Supercoach, Neill, 74)

With this question in mind, and a determination to shift my thinking in order to create a new definition I realized I only need substitute a different word with its own meaning intact: project.

Again, Michael Neill provides the structure for this mind-shift toward project-based behavior:

they’re in the present (happening and being worked on now)
they’re action-based
they’re always successful until you fail

Here’s what happens in my world, and probably for many of you, too: I set goals, I create timelines, I tell someone else about my goal so I feel accountable, and I write it down. And then something happens. Or comes up. Or I get tired. Or I slip up for a day. Or I don’t feel like it. Or company comes for a visit. Or my daughter needs something. Or I need to walk the dog. Or whatever.

These are called excuses. And they consistently pop up into the space between us and our goals. We’ve all used them. They’re always in abundant supply when we need to justify our failure to achieve our goals (remember #3 in the first list?).

Projects feel different to me. A project is in motion from the moment I say “Go,” and if I’m an effective project manager I will look ahead at what barriers might stand in my way of completion and figure out how to minimize, work around or even eliminate them before they arrive so that the project stays on course.

Juliet’s rose would still smell as sweet given another name, and perhaps goals are just another word for projects, but I’m abandoning goals and the false belief that I will only be successful if I achieve them in favor of projects through which I can create my future from the future, rather than from the graveyard of abandoned attempts and faulty restarts in my past.

If you really want what you want, there’s always a way for you to create it (Supercoach, Neill, 77).

Choose you. Choose happy.

Creation has been a lot on my mind lately. The creation of our lives. Our futures. Our realities. Our now. And how our beliefs create the world around us.

We have within each of us the power to create whatever present and future world we wish to inhabit. We are the creators of our today and of our tomorrow.

How do we create something that we don’t believe exists?

Start believing it does.

Shawn Achor (my happiness crush) says:

Studies show that simply believing we can bring about positive change in our lives increases motivation and job performance; that success, in essence, becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy (The Happiness Advantage, 75).

Coach Michael Neill says you can make believe anything:

. . . we can change our experience of the world (and ultimately the world itself) by changing the way we choose to see it. . . . instead of always trying to align your beliefs with “reality,” it’s possible to align your beliefs with what you most want to create in your life. And when you consistently make believe in what you want, you can begin to create some pretty unbelievable results (Supercoach, 15,16)!

The greatest athletes and performers in the world will tell you they weren’t born talented; they created their talent by believing they could and in his bestselling book Wealth Warrior, Steve Chandler corroborates that sentiment with his reminder that “practice creates talent (115).”

Creating a new belief can be intimidating, or even scary, for some of us. You’re not alone.

Even Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking Glass, challenged the very notion of believing what Alice deemed an impossibility when the Queen chided her:

I daresay you haven’t had much practice. . . . When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Impossible only exists if you believe it does. You define impossible.

Me? I’d rather eliminate that word from my personal dictionary altogether.

Let yourself give in to this new belief. This creation notion. It’s very liberating.

Perhaps practicing believing the impossible before breakfast as the Queen suggests is a great idea, and before long you’ll recognize you’re no longer chasing after your dreams; you’re manufacturing them.

Choose you. Choose happy.

What’s In a Name?

What’s in a name?

Or would it?

Create Tomorrow Today