One Surprising Secret To Achieving Your Goals
To achieve your goals, you might think that you have to pursue them all on your own. In fact, sometimes what you need the most is a helpful friend.
It was the early 1960s, and beloved country singer Willie Nelson was struggling.
From a very young age, he had dreamed of being a musician. Now, living in Nashville, he was trying everything he could, but nothing was going right for him. He was teaching music lessons instead of getting gigs. He was selling other people his songs instead of playing them himself. The big record labels weren't interested in him. He was drowning his sorrows in alcohol and struggling with his mental health.
One night, things got so bad that, drunk on whiskey, he attempted suicide by lying down in the middle of the road waiting to be struck by a passing car. They all swerved around him.
The next day, one of his friends, a drummer named Paul English, stopped by to visit Nelson, who was hungover and still despairing that he would ever find a way to make it in the music business.
English told him to celebrate how far he had come and encouraged him to keep going, saying:
"I'm thinking of how these fools [record labels] are going to feel when you start having hit songs left and right. That's when they'll eat their hearts out for paying you no mind when they could have bought you for a nickel and nail."
With a friend in his corner, Nelson persevered. In fact, shortly after this conversation, he got his big break. He became one of the most successful country artists of all time, and at the age of 90, is still playing live shows to this very day.
Paul English became his longtime drummer, and they spent the next fifty years traveling the world and playing together. Writing about their friendship in his recent book, Nelson described how much that support meant to him:
“It was good being with someone who seemed to believe in me more than I believed in myself. He really believed in a rosy future at a time when I couldn’t afford to buy my wife a dozen roses.”
There will be terrifying moments in all of our lives. What helps us to be braver? Knowing that someone else believes we can get through it.
Paul English believed in Willie Nelson. You have had people who believed in you. And you can believe in other people. That's what we're here for. That's how we achieve our goals: together.
Read More
How To Become More Motivated
If you browse any corner of the motivational internet, you'll probably see one message repeated over and over again: You need to be consistent to achieve your goals. This is not, actually, the key to achieving your goals.
If you browse any corner of the motivational internet, you'll probably see one message repeated over and over again: You need to be consistent to achieve your goals.
This is not, actually, the key to achieving your goals.
If you want to achieve your goals, make them joyful. Make them fun. Make them interesting. Make them fascinating. Make them engaging. Make them meaningful.
If you do this, you will never have to worry about 'being consistent' ever again.
To understand why this is the case, let's dig into the research. You've probably heard of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. These terms comes from a 40-year-old body of research, led by Edward Deci & Richard Ryan.
Their research discovered that there's a continuum of motivation. At one end is extrinsic motivation ("I'm doing this because I'll be rewarded/punished.") At the other is intrinsic motivation ("I'm doing this because it's joyful and interesting.")
(If you want to go deeper, here's a helpful example of the continuum, for someone who is donating blood.)
Intrinsic goals are more aligned with your authentic self and fulfill your human needs.
If you pursue intrinsic goals, you'll 1) experience greater happiness and well-being, and 2) be more likely to achieve them!
People who choose goals aligned with their interests, values, and identities are more persistent and therefore, more likely to be successful.
On the other hand, people who are extrinsically motivated are more likely to abandon their goals and experience ill-being.
Here's your key takeaway: Don't worry about consistency. Consistency is a downstream metric that indicates how aligned the goal is to your authentic self, which in turn drives your happiness and success.
Your current behavior — consistent or not — is a piece of data that you can use. Consistency is not a target to aim at; when it is, it can very quickly become a source of pressure and shame, which ironically leads to de-motivation.
If you find it easy to be consistent with your goal, you're probably more intrinsically motivated. You find it joyful, it puts you into a state of flow, and you see it as way to express yourself or contribute to a greater purpose.
If you're struggling to be consistent with your goal, you're probably more extrinsically motivated. That is a sign that your goal is not aligned to your authentic self and is not fulfilling your needs.
Here's one thing you can do to shift it. Ask yourself, how can I make pursuing this goal a more joyful experience?
Or, go further: what would it look like to throw this goal out and choose a new, joyful one instead?
Read More
A groundbreaking new approach based on a decade’s worth of research and brought to life with beautiful artwork, New Happy shows you the proven path to happiness.
Order today to receive exclusive bonus gifts that will help you to get even more out of the book.
