Goals and Mechanical Rabbits

When I turned 39, a few days ago, I wrote a list about 39 things I learned through experience. A few of them got picked up by my readers and broadcasted on Twitter. Being bitesized really helped this process, I don’t think any of those items were bigger than 140 characters. One of the most retweeted was number 8:

“Goals are good, but no better than the mechanical rabbit at a dog race. At the end of the race, they’re useless.”

Since that seemed to touch a lot of people, I thought it would be a good idea to write a full post about it. Which I am doing as right now.

The Promise of Goals

Everybody knows the power of goals. They light the path, throw away the fog and make your efforts worthwhile. Some of the most popular goals are:

• get out of debt
• get a compatible partner
• be your own boss
• get a promotion

Of course, there are other smaller goals like owning a specific house or car. Or even buying a specific computer. I want to have a Mac by Christmas. That’s a goal.

Usually, goals are good. But, once you reached your goal, what happens? Where is the drive to run? Where is the motivation? Gone, of course. You reached your goal. The race is over.

The only thing that would make you run again is another race. Another goal. Another mechanical rabbit running in front of you, close enough so you can tell it’s worthwhile, but far enough to be out of reach. In order to catch the rabbit, you have to stretch. To go over your limits. Usually, you do that.

But after the race you bump into that frustration again. What the hell is wrong with that rabbit? Where does it hides? Every time I think I caught it, it disappear. Damn you, rabbit!

Running in the Right Context

The problem is not the rabbit. The problem is the context. A dog race is a limited context. It’s a stupid competition, trying to establish a winner among a pack of dogs. A dog race stretches the animals until one has the power to reach out and become what we call “the winner”.

This is pretty much what happens in the real world of jobs and careers. This time the  mechanical rabbit is a certain lifestyle, a certain amount of money in the bank, a specific power position. A lot of dogs are running after that rabbit. One of them, after years of struggling and sacrifices, go in front of the others. The result: the dog who catch the rabbit is a winner. The rest are losers. They have to start the race again. And again. And again.

I think you can see now how a limited context can totally change the game. Imagine a dog in the wild. And wild here is not defined as a context with no rules, but with less limitations than a stupid dog race. Imagine a dog at wild, chasing real rabbits. Is there winner there? Barely. The natural context is so large that the chances that 2 dogs are chasing the same rabbit are pretty low. And when it happens, they usually share, somehow.

A dog chasing real rabbits will do it for the thrills and for survival. If it doesn’t catch the rabbit, his meal will be gone. There is no competition here other than continuing to live. The victory here will be life in itself, not the first place and a medal.

Choosing Your Race

Fact is goals are highly dependent on the context. If you chose to live your life in a limited context, chasing goals will feel as frustrating as running at a dog race. You won’t be living a real life. You would actually live a dog’s life, being enslaved for the benefit of others. Don’t blame the mechanical rabbit for that, as it does the best it can. It runs. That’s what a goal does, it runs before you until you reach it.

But was it worth the effort? The whole race was something that fulfilled you? Being “number one” is making you really happy? Most of the time, the answer to these questions is “No”. Running over and over trying to defeat other people with the stupid hope that being ahead of them in a limited context will make you happy, that, instead of being your source of happiness, as you expect, it will eat you up inside. The context in which you are running is limited. So are the goals.

But, what happens if you would chose a larger context? Avoid the dog race altogether, step out of it. Get rid of notions like “winner” or “loser”. Think in terms of living, not racing. Just being joyful for the run. And then chose a goal on which your entire life will depend. What if, instead of chasing a career or a political position, you would chase a life. A different life. Living in a certain way. Earning enough to travel the world, for instance, but not entering any Fortune 500 list. The difference is that once you reach this new goal, in this new context, you will feel alive and thrilling. Reaching that goal in this new context will make your life go on, instead of just preparing you for another race. It will leave you free and full of energy, not empty and frustrated. That goal will be the real rabbit. Instead of being just a mechanical impostor, it will actually give you the energy to go on. And continue to live as you chose.

I used to chase mechanical rabbits all the time. Being the first in my niche, with my business. Been there, done that, felt like crap. Maybe it was a necessary milestone for my personal evolution, but truth is I never truly enjoyed this type of competition. Once I stepped out of the context, everything changed. Once I left the dog race yard, with all those mechanical rabbits ready to run in front of me, something changed. The whole game, changed, in fact.

There is no victory and no first place when you chose to live your life. There is only life. Sometimes you catch the rabbit, sometimes not. But running after a real rabbit, after something on which your entire life depends, that is so amazingly different.

What type of rabbits are you chasing now? Are you in a dog race, following a stupid social device which will leave you empty inside once you complete the race? Or are you chasing out in the wild, with no limitations in a game with no victory or defeat?

It’s just a question of choice.

Rising above the Context

We’re greatly influenced by surroundings. From our friends to the way we lay out furniture in our rooms everything has an impact on the way we act, react and deal with our life situations. I call these surroundings, generically, contexts. One of the things which constantly fascinates me is how to get over your contexts. Like overcoming them, stretching and reaching beyond.

It Ain’t a Walk in the Park

Everybody talks about how wonderful is to overcome your condition. To win against all odds. To get over your current status and reach to something way better than everybody thinks it’s possible. Well, that might be true, but it talks only about the second half of the game. The half in which you already reached beyond. And I totally agree: once you got over your pressuring contexts, everything is pink and easy. Sweet harmony all over.

But few are talking about the first half of the game. The half in which you are struggling. In which you are in a war. The part of the game in which every part of your being is challenged. The part in which you are ready to quit more than one million times (and yet still remain in the game). The part in which you don’t really believe you can do it unless you leave all hesitations behind and just dive in, like jumping into an empty pool, hoping water will be there by the time you’ll need it.

This is where everything happens. This is where you conquer your freedom, beat the context and reach out. And that part is not about harmony. It’s not about fulfillment either. It’s about challenging the status quo, about creating disruption and denying your current condition. All in the hope of something better, agree, but something better which doesn’t exist yet. I’ve already told you, and I’m telling you again, I’m fascinated about how one can give up everything he has – like his current context – for a promise of something which doesn’t yet exist: his goals.

Reaching beyond your context is risky, difficult and totally against nature. You’re chasing fantasies. You’re fighting your current position, your current stream of life. You can’t reach out to the things you want until you actually destroy what you have right now. You can’t become the one you want unless you give up the person you are right now. In order to become a bird you have to break the egg shell. Can’t stay in the egg context forever. And this is destruction. This is fight. You’re eliminating something: most of the time, parts of yourself.

Financial Struggle

One of the most common contexts people want to overcome is their current financial situation. They’re willing to give up what they have in exchange for something better. Like their current income for a future, allegedly better one. But somehow, in the process, they don’t really get over the current context. They expect a better context, but they don’t really get out from their current one. The risk part of the game is unconsciously rejected. Reaching beyond will actually destroy what they currently have. And the result is more than often predictable: they can’t reach beyond their current context.

Your financial context shapes a lot around you. There’s a huge part of life far and beyond money, I agree, but if you are interested in exploring the world in all its dimensions, having a good financial potential is a key factor. Money gives you the possibility to travel, to live a better life, to enjoy more, to experiment more. If you’re rejecting a potentially better financial context, you’ll rejecting a better life.

The current global financial context is a mess. We’re going through a world financial crisis and that’s a fact. People are losing jobs, houses and businesses are dramatically decreasing profit margins. There’s constraint. There’s limitation. It’s a tough financial context. And yet, being just a context, it can be overcome. People often forget that. In a strange, yet totally understandable way, the current context becomes the expected one. Financial struggle became the new comfort zone. Living under your real possibilities is accepted as norm.

And yet, this is just a context, folks. Just a context. You can overcome this. You can reach beyond and change it for the good.

What Does it Takes?

Finally. The question I’ve been waiting since the beginning of this article.

It takes discipline. And vision. And trust. This is all it takes to overcome a limiting financial context.

You need discipline to stay on track even with limited supply. Learn to live frugally while aiming for more. Discipline to implement frugality but not to get used to it. I’m not into frugality and I enjoy life to the fullest, whenever I can. But if there are limiting contexts, I can adjust. And so can you, until the storm is gone.

You need discipline to understand the new processes around you. Overcoming your current context means learning new things, making new connections, really grasping the underpinnings of the new, richer context. These are all new and if you don’t focus on them, you risk being pulled back to the old context.

And you need vision. You need to be able to identify the new context, to establish a new financial level, even if only mentally for a few months or years. Or weeks, if you’re really into it. You need vision to be able to actually see where you want to be.

And you also need vision to integrate your life in the new structure. Everything will be different in that new context. You will be different, your relationships will be different, your physical surroundings will be different. If you are acting on a new, more abundant financial context, things will dramatically change around you. Better cope with it, or you’ll lose it.

And, last, but certainly not least, you need trust. Not a blind trust that things will go smoother, although this kind of trust can’t hurt. But hope alone will do nothing. You’ll need trust that you’ll have enough power to finish the race. Trust that you know what you’re doing. Trust that you’ll be able to go through this even if everything else around collapses. And trust that you deserve what you envisioned.

Discipline, vision and trust, those are your only allies in the first half of the game. You’ll go through many battles and hit a lot of walls. You’ll lose some, you’ll win some. In the end, you’ll reach above the context and you’ll tell everybody how pink and easy your life is right now. And you wouldn’t lie, of course. Your life is sweet harmony all over, now that you’re enjoying a brand new abundant financial context.

But you couldn’t make it without discipline, vision and trust.

The game has always two parts. Usually, the first one is the most difficult. You don’t want to talk about it. And to some extent that is ok. You’re free not to talk about it as long as you still keep it handy for the next challenge. As long as you don’t let your secret tools (discipline, vision and trust) worn out in a comfortable, yet infinitely fragile and temporary context.