My Goal-Setting Hack: Lie!
When lies become realities.
I claim to enjoy failing because as entrepreneurs we’re kind of required to do that. It’s part of the whole Silicon Valley mantra. I am, of course, lying.
When I was young, I used to claim that I hate sugar. I would lie to myself and to anyone who asked me…
I said it aloud so often that, curiously, I began to believe it. Now, when I taste sugar, the foreign flavour assaults my taste buds. It’s disgusting.
Because that’s precisely how lies work.
Lies aren’t all so bad. The ones we tell over and over again can eventually become our realities.
Start lying to yourself and everyone else about something you would like to achieve this year. Set a goal, and then say it out loud so often that the fairy tale lives in your daily reality.
BJ Fogg’s work in behavior change calls this a trigger, the most powerful way to create a change for yourself.
To lie about a future state out loud is setting a goal into action. I love exercise. I don’t need to be perfect all the time. I am capable of achieving anything.
Elon Musk lied about going to Mars. Up until he didn’t.
And back to that idea of failing, I hold onto my failures forever. They sit in the back of my brain as a set of lessons for what never to repeat again. This is precisely why we don’t set goals in the first place. We’re afraid of what might happen if we do…
Today, I revisited the financials of an old company I created which didn’t turn out to be what I had expected. Put simply, I failed. And it never leaves my cortex.
And then, just now, I discovered that it’s starting to take off!
Lie until it becomes real. Have the patience to let it become real. Have the tenacity to stick with it. And whatever you do, don’t dare succumb to the poisoning fear of a potential failure. Unless your goal is to be exactly the same as you are right now.
A mentor asked today “What if everything stayed exactly the same for you in 5 or 10 years? Would you be happy?” If not, then you better begin creating that future state now.
As for all the failures, they keep me safe from repeating a calamity. I do love them for it.
About.
Jessica Higgins is an agent of change for public, private and non-profit organizations around the world. Her focus is on facilitating the development of an enterprise’s authentic voice as a means of conveying their core values to stakeholders through their internal and external words and actions.
Beyond her advisory work, Ms. Higgins is a best-selling author as her first book: 10 Skills For Business Communication, reached #1 in Amazon.com New Releases for Communication and Social Skills books. Her work has also been published in over ten thousand media outlets including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, CBS, and Newsweek.
In addition to serving as a Partner of R+I, Ms. Higgins is the President of Curated Financial, an investment fund manager she founded in order to streamline the cultivation of bespoke investment opportunities for private clients after finding a general lack of cohesion in the investment selection process of alternative investment options. Curated Financial advises a venture capital fund and a fund of funds focused on the selection of emerging managers.
Ms. Higgins holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Behavioral Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctorate / Master of Business Administration from the University of Miami. In addition, Ms. Higgins is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification holder with specialty in Systems Design and holds an executive education certificate in Behavior Design from the Design Lab at Stanford University.
Learn more about her work in finance at curatedfinancial.com, her venture accelerator is researchinnovation.co and her marketing agency is digital-unicorns.com.
She currently resides in Miami Beach, FL full-time.
