Chapter 17
Goals Define Your What

Goals define what you need to do to make your mission and vision reality. The power of goals is, they move you from where you are now (point A) to where you want to be in the future (point B) within a measurable time frame. One of the best ways for young people to convert their “I wish I could” aspirations into “I’m doing it” goals is to make the process well worth their time. TIME, to be exact. Setting and accomplishing goals makes having the TIME of their lives possible. Accomplishing goals is where their desire to live with purpose meets the steps required to make it a reality.

To guide members of the emerging generation to practice setting and achieving goals, try rethinking how we go about the goal-setting method. Give them what they want. Make the experience the TIME of their lives. Using the Think It, Ink It, Map It, Earn It model to guide them will create clarity and make the process worth repeating.

(The following is addressed to a younger Millennial or a member of Gen Z.)

Think It

Think about what matters most to you. What are your highest priorities and greatest aspirations? What are you doing that moves you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future in regard to those things? Think about both your vision’s where and your mission’s why to determine the short-term and long-term gains you would like to accomplish.

Vision—A clear mental picture of a desirable future.

Mission—The driving reason why you do what you do.

Ink It

Write down your goals. Start with where are you today in relation to where you want to be in the future. This can be difficult because you may not have truly considered the distance between point A (where you are today) and point B (where you want to be in the future). You may not understand how long the goal will take to accomplish. Here are some examples of the difference between vague aspirations and specific, achievable goals.

IS IT A GOAL?

No. Not a goal.	Yes! It’s a Goal.
To spend more time with family.	I will work with my family to move from random family time to one night a week reserved for family, starting the first of next month.
To manage time better.	Every Sunday afternoon I will review my calendar for the week ahead. Using a shared digital calendar, I’ll sync my family, work, and personal schedules.
To save money.	I will go from no money in savings to $250 a month automatically transferred to my savings account, starting next pay period.
To get into shape.	Between next week and my birthday in six months, I will exercise at the gym, every other morning, for one hour.
To eat better.	Following a portions-appropriate meal plan, I will cook dinner at home five of seven days a week, starting next Monday.
To get out of debt.	Starting the first of the month, I will budget double payments until my car loan is paid off in two years.

Map It

Once you have your specific, achievable goals written down, decide what action steps you need to take to get started and stay motivated. For instance, let’s break down the goal to exercise every other morning for one hour, at the gym, for the next six months.

• Action Step 1: Find a gym within a couple of minutes of my house.
• Action Step 2: Go into the gym, take a guided tour of the facility, and purchase a membership.
• Action Step 3: Make three appointments with a personal trainer to set a realistic workout plan for myself.
• Action Step 4: Scope out appropriate workout clothes and purchase myself a couple sets of gym clothes, including shoes.
• Action Step 5: Reserve the days and times on my calendar for gym time.

Check off each box once the action step has been completed.

Earn It

Now it’s time to put your goals into action. Knowing the specifics of where you are today in relation to where you want to be in the future is a good start. Next, how will you track your progress? Do you need to see your progress on an old-school refrigerator chart or is there a new-school digital app for that? How will you celebrate successfully making progress along the way to your ultimate goal? And maybe most important, who will hold you accountable and how often?

Accountability is an important part of accomplishing your goals. In fact, accountability can make the probability of completing a goal rise from 10 percent to 95 percent. That’s a big difference!

Probability of Completing a Goal

10%—If you just have an idea or a goal

25%—If you consciously decide you will do it

40%—If you decide when you will do it

50%—If you plan how you will do it

65%—If you commit to someone you will do it

95%—If you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed to (also known as an accountability partner)1

Think about it, 95 percent is almost certainty. If the likelihood of getting struck by lightning today was 95 percent, who would go outside? Nobody! If the possibility of you winning a first-place gold medal was 95 percent, would you enter the race? Absolutely! So if we know there is a 95-percent probability of successfully accomplishing a goal if an accountability partner is involved, who will you ask?

But wait. Don’t rush into this decision. Who you ask to be an accountability partner really matters. A true accountability partner will tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear. So choose wisely.

In a way, the secret to success is hidden in accountability. It starts with setting specific and measurable goals. Next, choose an accountability partner who will hold you to a high standard. Then, get to work. Track your progress with easy-to-understand measurements. When you share your progress report with the right accountability partner, your system should pass the three-second rule. If within three seconds of looking at your progress report your accountability partner can see exactly what your goal is, where you started, where you are now, what the next step is, and how much more you have to complete—you have a good system. Kind of like the gauges on a car dashboard. You don’t have to study them long to know how much fuel is in the tank, how fast you are going, and if the check engine light is on or not. Your system of reporting goals should be about that easy to understand.

To live with purpose is a remarkable experience. To see clearly a vision for where you are going, believe in why your mission is significant, and know what your goals will accomplish is an amazing existence. Wise people know this because their lives serve as proof. The testimony they present each day is of hope, and the witness they give brings hope to others. An aimless life does not do this. Only those who live with purpose can be certain to have made a difference.

TOMMY FORD’S FUNERAL

On August 9, 2014, an eighteen-year-old black man named Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The next day protesters gathered to mourn the racially charged shooting and march against dissimilar policing practices. In the weeks and months following the shooting and subsequent unrest, it became clear to leaders in education, faith communities, and elected offices that a strategy for healing Ferguson’s deep wounds had to include a long-term commitment to strengthening their youth.

One action the leadership network implemented was to create opportunities for Ferguson’s youth to meet and learn from experts in character, skills, and leadership development. One such figure was actor and comedian Tommy Ford. Best known for his role as “Tommy” on the mid-1990s syndicated sitcom Martin, Tommy Ford was a larger-than-life celebrity with a contagious smile and signature laugh. As a Hollywood veteran, Tommy had played parts on TV and film that gave him both the professional credentials and street cred to be admired by fans of all ages and skin colors. So when Tommy Ford appeared in Ferguson in early 2016 to talk with groups of the city’s youth and community leadership about the importance of seeing themselves as purposeful, powerful people, his message was well planned and a big hit. This made taking the stage after Tommy a hard act to follow, which is exactly what I had to do.

Thankfully my session was also well received. After I spoke with an audience of teenage guys and their dads on transforming boys into confident and capable men through mentoring, Tommy pulled me aside for a talk. We discussed the importance of boys experiencing rites of passage and learning from older male mentors. At the end of our conversation, the actor-turned-producer invited me to Atlanta, Georgia, to participate in a documentary film he was producing titled Through My Lens. The project would follow thirty inner-city youth involved in bullying. Some had been aggressors, others were victims. Tommy would provide the young men with mentors and training to become amateur filmmakers capable of capturing and examining the complicated world of bullying as it relates to urban populations.

Together they would attend sixteen weekly manhood-empowerment workshops with the goal of giving the guys the opportunity to practice the life skills and character traits they needed to break free from negative cycles and stereotypes. Tommy asked if I would come help him teach the guys a few simple tasks that would test how they saw themselves and strengthen their resolve to find real purpose in life. When I asked Tommy how “simple,” he smiled and said, “Hammer-and-nail simple.” So that’s exactly what we did.

It wasn’t long before I was driving to Atlanta equipped with a load of 2x4 lumber, a jobsite count of hammers, and a large box of nails. An hour after pulling into town, I joined Tommy on set, met his media crew, and got ready to film. With cameras capturing our every angle, Tommy introduced me to the guys and their mentors before we set into pounding some nails. I wish you could have seen it. A couple dozen guys standing there in a group, each holding a carpenter’s framing hammer, and not one was willing to admit he didn’t know how to swing it. Sure, anyone can hold a hammer, but it becomes obvious very fast who has a handle on the skill required to strike a nail square on the head. A few guys choked way up on the wooden handle and cautiously introduced the hammer to the nail like they were attempting to tap out a message in Morse code. Others held their hammer in two hands and swung it like a bat. More than a couple mis-struck, bent nails shot across the room, followed by a few choice words. Seeing their frustration mounting, Tommy instructed the guys to pause for a moment and pay close attention to some basic instructions. “Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through it,” he assured the group. “Hitting a nail square is a lot like life. Practice will make you better, and when you do it right, you can build about anything.”

Following a little training and focused practice, the guys’ hammer skills improved quickly. Within the hour, they were all landing their swings square and looking ready for the next lesson.

Of course, none of them were equipped to frame up a house by the end of our session, but they had changed from thinking I can’t, yet faking like they could, to knowing they can—and being able to prove it in a couple of swings. This is exactly what Tommy had wanted. He knew if the guys could change the way they saw themselves, they could begin to build a better life. After an hour of hammering nails, the guys were confident enough in themselves to say, “That wasn’t so difficult. What else you got?”

A few months later, I received a call with some tragic news. My friend Tommy Ford had died. At only fifty-two years old, Tommy’s death from a ruptured aneurysm delivered a sad blow to his family, friends, and fans alike. Particularly hard hit were the cast and crew of Through My Lens. Tommy’s passion project had become his final creative venture, but not before giving the guys involved a new look on the purpose of life.

I had never attended a memorial service for a celebrity prior to Tommy’s, so I had no idea what to expect. Thankfully that mid-October day was a sunny and warm one in Atlanta as thousands of people showed up to pay their respects. While standing in line beside other well-dressed observers, I felt a hand wrap around my upper arm. Turning in surprise, I realized I was being pulled out of line by one of the guys from Tommy’s documentary film. He was a large young man whom I had joked with on set about being even bigger than me. “Us tall guys have to stick together,” we had agreed during the filming several months before. Now walking away from the long line of people waiting to enter Tommy’s memorial service, he let my arm go and said, “I remember you. You’re the how-to-pound-a-nail guy, aren’t you? You’re in the wrong place. Come with me.”

I wasn’t sure what exactly was happening or where we were going. Still, I agreed and together we walked away from the line. As we approached the corner of the building, he slowed his pace, turned toward me, and stopped.

“Before we go in, I have to tell you something,” he said. “You remember the time Tommy had you teach us how to use a hammer? Well, that day changed my life.”

He continued as a smile stretched across his face. “When I got home, my mom asked me what I’d learned. I showed her your book The Manual to Manhood and how you wrote me the message on the inside cover, ‘Skills make you valuable, Character makes you invaluable.’ Then I opened to the pages about How to Swing a Hammer. I told her you and Tommy had taught us about different kinds of hammers and that we had practiced pounding in a bunch of nails.” His smile turned to a chuckle. “But my mom can’t leave anything alone. She said now that I could use a hammer, she had a job for me. Finally, she could have this big, heavy mirror hung on the wall. And you know what, I used the tools you gave us and I did it. I found a stud in the wall and I hung that mirror. That really made my mom proud of me.”

Just prior to leading me through a lineless set of double doors, he choked up a bit. “Before Tommy died, I told him that I’m going to become a carpenter. When he asked me why, I said, because it would bring meaning to my life. Since nobody in our family knows how to fix stuff, we have to pay someone to help us out. Since we don’t have much money, nothing gets fixed. When I become a carpenter, I can help people by fixing stuff. People like my mom,” he said. “So that’s what I want to do with myself. Swing a hammer to help people. I told Tommy and I thought you might want to know too.”

With that, he cleared his throat, turned, and walked me into the building. I followed the tall teen down a short hallway, around a corner, and to a door marked VIP room. Turning to face me squarely, he extended his hand to deliver a very confident handshake. With one final “thank you,” he opened the door and ushered me in.

There enjoying light snacks and memories of their friend were people I recognized as celebrities who had worked alongside Tommy. Known comedians, musicians, and a couple of pro athletes mixed about in anticipation of being seated for the service.

Feeling like I had stepped into the wrong room, I turned and looked at the young man with what I can only imagine was an expression of pure confusion on my face.

“Am I supposed to be here?” I asked sheepishly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll walk you through it,” he replied. “Us tall guys have to stick together.”

The way that I find my purpose is to change my lens. To change my focus. That is what a lens does. It gives us focus, it gives the right exposure, it gives us a beautiful picture.2

—Tommy Ford

CONSIDER THIS:

Our brains love to accomplish goals. When we successfully achieve a goal, small or large, our brain releases a chemical called dopamine. This chemical has also been nicknamed the “feel good” neurotransmitter because it does just that—it makes us feel good.

YOUR TURN:

1. Guiding young people to have the TIME of their lives will help them see what goals are worth pursuing. How can you assist them in converting vague aspirations into specific, achievable goals? Write down some of the aspirations they have shared with you and try converting them into goals that fit the model: from point A to point B in a specific time frame.

   Vague Aspirations:	Specific Goals:
   1. __________     __________	__________ __________
   2. __________     __________	__________ __________
   3. __________     __________	__________ __________
   4. __________     __________	__________ __________
   5. __________     __________	__________ __________

2. How can you encourage each of these young people to find an accountability partner who will support them in accomplishing their goals?
3. When they do accomplish their specific goals, how will you celebrate with them in a meaningful way?