In business, as in life, we’re taught that we can achieve anything we want by setting SMART goals. You know the ones. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
I’ve used them for years and while they can be hit and miss (mostly hit), I couldn’t help thinking that something else was missing. Something that, by the time I achieved my goals, made them seem less exciting…less relevant. I’d somehow become less connected with the outcomes.
I met Graham King almost two years ago during one of the most intensive training courses you could ever imagine.
I heard Graham’s story and recognised that, since we’ve already created the life we live right now, we can absolutely create the life we want into the future. If we just pay attention to one small, but very important detail when setting goals, we can truly achieve what our hearts desire.
What Graham described reminded me of a story in which an expert was speaking to a group of business students.
In the story, the expert pulled out a large jar and put it on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked the students, “Is this jar full?”
Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”
He then reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. He poured some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks.
Then he asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?”
By this time the class was less eager to respond. “Probably not,” one of them answered.
The expert looked up at them, smiled, reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is this jar full?”
“No!” the class shouted. They were onto him.
After a short time, he reached over, picked up a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim.
Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this exercise?”
One very keen student raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your life is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more in it!”
“No,” the expert replied, “that’s not the point. “What this exercise teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
Graham teaches about SMILEY Goals (Specific, Measurable, Inspirational, Likely, Ecological, Yours) and makes this the basis, the foundation, for setting goals that stick. (And, let me tell you, they do stick.)
SMILEY Goals connect to Your heart. They inspire You. Most importantly, they make You Smile.
Why do they work?
Listen to Graham’s radio recorded radio interview with Coach Bobbi recorded on Sunday March 13, 2011.
