Reaching the top of Mount Kinabalu and gazing down at the clouds below me as the sun rose over the island of Borneo.Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
—JAMES J. LACHARD,
ON WHAT IS MOST SURPRISING ABOUT HUMANITY
Dreams, visions, aspirations, goals—call them what you will—these are essential to an extraordinary life. I call them forward momentum. When life doesn’t hold meaning for us, it’s like living in the desert, parched for water.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to embark on your own path toward the extraordinary by getting bolder and better with your goals. Every extraordinary mind I’ve ever met—including those mentioned in this book—dreams boldly and unapologetically. I’ll share a simple, enjoyable, yet focused system for setting goals and pursuing dreams in all areas of your life. I want you to wake up ten years from now and not say “What have I done?” but “This has been incredible—now, what’s next?”
Goal setting is an absurd practice that I gave up long ago. It simply is too dangerous when done without the right training.
See, modern goal setting, as it’s explained in countless college courses or to high-school kids, is really not about teaching you how to pursue what will really help you lead an extraordinary life. Rather, it’s about teaching you to pursue common Brules of the culturescape—Brules that often lead to your chasing things that you’ll ultimately find do not really matter. It’s about safety rather than about truly living.
The biggest of these Brules is the idea that you need to map out your life to move you toward some ridiculous idea called a career. As a result, when most people think about setting goals and their visions for the future, their dominant model focuses on career and money. Bullshit.
As Zen philosopher Alan Watts famously said:
Forget the money, because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living—that is, to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
Too many of us pursue goals we think will make us happy—only to wake up one day in our forties, wondering what on earth happened to us as we find ourselves stuck in uninspiring, boring, stagnant lives. How does this happen?
First, the big problem with life in many industrialized countries is that far too often, we’re expected to choose a career before we can legally buy a beer. As a nineteen-year-old college student, I was supposed to choose and pursue a career in computer engineering before I even knew what I truly loved. It took years of increasing misery and the drama of getting fired from Microsoft before I figured out what a rut I’d dug myself into. There is a fundamental flaw in our modern system of goal setting: With our minds clouded by Brules, we confuse the means and the end.
You’ve probably heard the expression “it was a means to an end.” It applies to goals, too. Often people confuse means goals with end goals. We choose college majors, career paths, life paths as if they were ends in themselves, when in reality they’re a means to an end. We may invest years of toil and money for means goals masquerading as end goals. This can get us into trouble. The difference between a means goal and an end goal is one of the lessons that I wish more people could learn earlier in life. End goals are the beautiful, exciting rewards of being human on planet Earth. End goals are about experiencing love, traveling around the world being truly happy, contributing to the planet because doing so gives you meaning, and learning a new skill for the pure joy of it.
End goals speak to your soul. They bring you joy in and of themselves, not because they confer any outward label, standard, or value attached by society. Nor are end goals undertaken for the purpose of pay or for material reward. They are the experiences that create the best memories in our lives.
My most amazing end goals were:
Reaching the top of Mount Kinabalu and gazing down at the clouds below me as the sun rose over the island of Borneo.
My honeymoon with Kristina in Svalbard, Norway, hiking through blizzards in Arctic weather.
Inviting my employees to witness a gorgeous, state-of-the-art new steampunk office I’d been dreaming up for years, and witnessing the look of awe on their faces when we opened the doors for the first time.
Seeing my baby daughter dance for the first time (to Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart”).
But for most of my life, I pursued means goals. Means goals are the things that society tells us we need to have in place to get to happiness. Almost everything I wrote down as a goal was actually a means to an end, not an end in itself, including:
Graduating from high school with a good GPA.
Qualifing for the right college.
Securing a summer internship.
Getting a job at Trilogy Software in Austin, Texas.
Other common means goals include hitting certain income levels, getting good reviews and promotions to a certain level at work, and being with one particular someone.
But when means goals become your focus, you miss the point.
I love this advice from author Joe Vitale: “A good goal should scare you a little and excite you a lot.” Scary and exciting are two beautiful feelings that good end goals often bring out. Scary is a good thing because it means you’re pushing your boundaries—that’s how you take steps toward the extraordinary. Excitement signifies that your goal is genuinely close to your heart—not something you’re doing to please someone else or to conform to society’s Brules.
My wake-up call happened in 2010. I had made a promise to myself that if I ever woke up two weeks in a row dreading going to work, I should quit and think of another job. In 2010 for the first time, I felt that dread.
Mindvalley was a different company back then, and I ran it with Mike, my cofounder and college friend from the University of Michigan. Mindvalley was a venture builder, a small start-up spinning off different small web businesses with the goal of generating revenue. We had launched several e-commerce stores, a software algorithm for calculating the quality of a blog post, and even a social bookmarking engine that we had sold.
Mike and I were both good at what we did, but our friendship had long ended and working together no longer had that certain spark. While Mindvalley ran on its own, I was pursuing other business ventures, and so was Mike. One of my goals was to start and exit a start-up, so I could notch another entrepreneurial win on my belt. And I was close. My second start-up, a daily deals site for Southeast Asia, was picking up steam and had just received a healthy round of venture capital funding. I was running two businesses at once, and according to my goal list, I should have been happy:
Funding. Check.
Press and media attention. Check.
Money. Check.
Titles and rewards. Check.
Yet I wasn’t happy. I was bored at work. I hated what I did and dreaded going to the office. I felt lonely. When most of your friends are your business partners or employees and you dislike your work, friendships suffer, too. Mindvalley existed to generate cash flow but not to fulfill any grand meaning for me or contribute to humanity.
How had things gotten this way?
I was bending reality: I had been happy, and I had visions pulling me forward. And I had become wildly successful and wealthy. But while I had hit all my goals as an entrepreneur, something was missing.
I had inadvertently fallen into the trap of confusing means goals with end goals. I had ended up as an entrepreneur with a business and cash in the bank. I was my own boss. But I had not bothered to set true end goals that went beyond this.
So, what did my heart truly crave?
I wanted to be able to travel to exotic countries and beautiful locations around the world.
I wanted to be able to stay at five-star hotels with my family and experience luxury.
I wanted to be able to travel with my kids and expose them to unique learning opportunities.
I wanted to have friends from all around the world who were amazing men and women driven by humanity-focused values and doing big things in the world.
I wanted to meet many of the business and personal growth legends who had inspired me.
I wanted to be able to teach and put down on paper my personal growth models for the world.
And I wanted my job to be spectacular fun.
In 2010 I wrote down these goals. It was no longer just about start-ups, making money, and growing a business. I wanted a life that was enjoyable and meaningful.
Something interesting happens when you give your mind a clear vision. Whether the goal is a means goal or an end goal—your mind will find a way to bring it to you. This is why I say that to the untrained mind, goal setting can be dangerous. You could end up somewhere you don’t want to be. But when you learn about end goals and their significance and do the exercise I’ll share in this chapter, you’re more likely to end up with what your heart and soul really crave.
When I made that list, I had no idea how those goals were going to come about. But the human mind, driven by an exciting vision, can be an amazing force for change. Sometimes the path to your end goal can be unexpected. It certainly was in my case.
Bored, lonely, and thirsting for meaning and adventure, I was definitely experiencing one of those life dips we’ve talked about in earlier chapters. And in the depths of those doldrums, I got the crazy inspiration to start a festival.
While attending a lot of seminars to invest in my growth, I had been turned off by how many hosted dodgy speakers pitching shady, get-rich-quick models under the guise of personal growth. But I was inspired by events that brought together tribes of like-minded souls for networking and learning. I had been invited to speak at events like Summit Series and loved the tribal dynamics I saw as people connected with each other outside the seminar room. How could I make these better?, I thought.
I was speaking on stage in Washington, DC, sharing some of the ideas in this book. At the end of my speech, I asked the audience if anyone wanted to come and spend a weekend with me exploring these ideas further. I had no date and no event plan—yet sixty people expressed interest. I invited them to a room and asked them what they would like to experience. What I learned was that people wanted to understand more about my unique models for personal growth, and they wanted to do it with a curated tribe, in a fun, paradise location. “This is going to be awesome,” one of them said.
“I like the word,” I replied. “Let’s call this Awesomeness Fest for now.” Then and there, with no date or location, I sold $60,000 worth of tickets. I now had seed funding.
Over the next several months, I put together the “fest.” I invited several amazing speakers, including hotelier Chip Conley, MBA professor Srikumar Rao, Summit Series founder Elliott Bisnow, plus a host of fitness experts, and other speakers. Working with just my assistant, Miriam, we planned an entire event for 250 people in Costa Rica. It was a wild success.
We later renamed it A-Fest—and that’s how it started. Now every year thousands of people from forty-plus countries apply for limited tickets to two A-Fests happening somewhere on the planet. I, along with a roster of world-class speakers and trainers on different aspects of human performance, share our latest learnings on personal growth onstage, with themes like Biohacking, Brain and Body, and Belief Hacking. In the evenings the guests experience spectacular adventures and parties that bring people together to connect and create profound memories.
We rent space at some of the most spectacular spots in the world, from paradise islands in the Caribbean to castles in Europe to world-class cultural spots in Bali. We bring in music, art, and other elements to create environments where people connect so deeply that best friendships, marriages, and business partnerships are formed. And in the midst of all this, I have some of the most incredible fun and adventure I can imagine—and get to share it with hundreds of extraordinary people who become new friends.
A-Fest grew and grew. It has become one of the most exciting things I do. Yet it fits in no category or box. But here’s the beautiful thing—it fulfills all the goals I set that were missing in my life at that time:
Friendship. Check.
Being able to stay in amazing hotels. Check.
Traveling to wonderful locations around the world. Check.
Exposing my children to amazing minds and learning opportunities. Check.
Meeting experts and business legends whom I admire. Check.
Spectacular fun. Double check.
A-Fest was never a goal in itself. Rather, it emerged as an evolution of all the items on my bucket list coalescing, merging, dancing with each other, and pointing me toward the creation of a model of reality that was completely new in the world.
And that’s the most important aspect of end goals. They help take you off the beaten path and move you away from the restrictive models of reality, systems of living, and Brules that school and society prod you into following. End goals help you step off the treadmill of the ordinary and get on a trajectory toward the extraordinary.
Today, 80 percent of my closest friends in the world are people I met at A-Fest. And it was just one thing in my life that emerged from focusing on end goals. But other things happened, too.
I sold my second business. It was making me miserable. I off-loaded shares to a friend and got out. The money was not worth it.
I decided I would either leave Mindvalley or remake it into something I felt proud of. And if my business partner and I did not get along, one of us would need to leave. Since I had started the company and felt it close to my heart, I decided to buy him out. I went into debt to pay him millions of dollars to buy back every share. By 2011, I owned my company again. I was broke—but I was happy. Fueled by this happiness, I grew the company 69 percent in one year, and I’ve not looked back since.
Correcting the way I set goals helped me shift my life from a mundane and tiresome slog to a life of adventure and meaning. I only wish I had learned about the idea of end goals sooner—I wouldn’t have wasted so many years pursuing goals that seemed great on the outside but that contributed little to what my heart felt was important.
So, don’t choose a career, lest you end up in a mind-numbing occupation. Nor should you just declare that you want to be an entrepreneur—lest you turn into a stressed out, bored one. Instead, think of your end goals and let your career or creation find you.
Now, how do you know if you’re on the right path? Here’s how you can check whether your goals are means goals or end goals.
It’s a simple distinction, really, with four hallmarks to watch for.
1.MEANS GOALS USUALLY HAVE A “SO” IN THEM. Means goals don’t stand alone but are stepping-stones to something else. They’re part of a sequence. For example: Get a good GPA so you can get into a good college. This often means that goals get strung together into (life) long sequences, like this one: Get a good GPA so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can make lots of money, so you can afford a nice house, car, etc., so you’ll have money saved to do all the stuff you really want to do after you retire. Does your goal have a “so” attached?
2.MEANS GOALS ARE OFTEN ABOUT MEETING OR CONFORMING TO BRULES. Is your goal one you think you “should” meet as part of achieving your ultimate goal—for example, thinking that you should get a college degree in order to have a fulfilling job or that you should get married in order to have love in your life? Many means goals are cleverly concealed Brules. You do not have to get married. Or get a college degree. Or be an entrepreneur. Or join the family business. What you really want is to be in beautiful loving relationships, to have consistent opportunities to learn and grow, and to have freedom. These can come in many different forms. See the difference?
1.END GOALS ARE ABOUT FOLLOWING YOUR HEART. Time flies when you’re pursuing them. You may work hard toward these goals, but you feel it’s worth it. They remind you of how fantastic it is to be human. When you’re working on an end goal, it doesn’t feel like “work.” You could be doing it for hours on end, but it genuinely makes you happy or gives you meaning. You don’t need to step away to get “recharged.” Working on the end goal itself recharges you—it doesn’t drain you. For example, for me, writing this book is an end goal. It’s so much fun that I’d do it even if I never got paid.
2.END GOALS ARE OFTEN FEELINGS. To be happy, to be in love, to consistently feel loving, to consistently feel joyous are all very good end goals. A diploma, an award, a big business deal, or other achievements can certainly bring good feelings, but they are not end goals UNLESS you’re happy AS you’re pursuing them—in other words, unless the act of studying for your diploma or closing the business deal itself brings you happiness. End goals have happiness baked into the pursuit.
How do we avoid the means goals trap? I developed this improved goal-setting technique to get you there. I call it the Three Most Important Questions. When these questions are asked in the correct order, this exercise can help you jump straight to the end goals that really matter in your life.
I’ve found that all end goals fall into three different buckets.
The first is experiences. No matter what you believe about humanity’s origins, one thing is clear. We’re here to experience all the world has to offer—not objects, not money, but experiences. Money and objects only generate experiences. Experiences also give us happiness in the now, a key component of the extraordinary life. We need to feel that daily life holds wonder and excitement to sustain our happiness—which fuels our movement toward our goals.
The second is growth. Growth deepens our wisdom and awareness. It may be growth we choose or growth that chooses us. Growth makes life an endless journey of discovery.
The third is contribution. It is what we give back from the wealth of our experiences and growth. What we give is the special mark we can make on the world. Giving moves us toward awakening, the highest level of happiness, by providing meaning in our lives, and it is a key component of the extraordinary life.
Think about these three essentials framed as questions.
1.What experiences do you want to have in this lifetime?
2.How do you want to grow?
3.How do you want to contribute?
As you do the Three Most Important Questions exercise later in this chapter, you’ll see how the Twelve Areas of Balance that you’ve been exploring and developing in chapters throughout this book match perfectly with the Three Most Important Questions. In fact, I derived the Twelve Areas of Balance from these questions. The graphic below shows how and where they fit.
Let’s play out these questions in more detail. I suggest you read through the process and finish this chapter (which ends with tips for doing the exercise). Then do the exercise when you feel ready.
In this section, you are asking yourself this question:
Let’s apply this to the first four items in the Twelve Areas of Balance. Each of these four items relates to experiences:
1.YOUR LOVE RELATIONSHIP. What does your ideal love relationship look like? Imagine it in all its facets: how you communicate, what you have in common, the activities you do together, what a day in your life together looks like, what holidays are like, what moral and ethical beliefs you share, what type of wild passionate sex you are having.
2.YOUR FRIENDSHIPS. What experiences would you like to share with friends? Who are the friends you’d share these experiences with? What are your ideal friends like? Picture your social life in a perfect world—the people, the places, the conversation, the activities. What does the perfect weekend with your friends look like?
3.YOUR ADVENTURES. Spend a few minutes thinking about people who’ve had what you consider to be amazing adventures. What did they do? Where did they go? How do you define adventure? What places have you always wanted to see? What adventurous things have you always wanted to do? What kinds of adventures would make your soul sing?
4.YOUR ENVIRONMENT. In this amazing life of yours, what would your home look like? What would it feel like to come back to this place? Describe your favorite room—what would be in this wonderful space? What would be the most heavenly bed you can imagine sleeping in? What kind of car would you drive if you could have any car you wanted? Now imagine the perfect workspace: Describe where you could do your best work. When you go out, what kinds of restaurants and hotels would you love to visit?
When you watch how young children soak up information, you realize how deeply wired we are to learn and grow. Personal growth can and should happen throughout life, not just when we’re children. In this section, you’re essentially asking yourself:
Notice how this question ties to the previous one? Now, consider these four categories from the Twelve Areas of Balance:
5.YOUR HEALTH AND FITNESS. Describe how you want to feel and look every day. What about five, ten, or twenty years from now? What eating and fitness systems would you like to have? What health or fitness systems would you like to explore, not because you think you ought to but because you’re curious and want to? Are there fitness goals you’d like to achieve purely for the thrill of knowing you accomplished them (whether it’s hiking a mountain, learning to tap dance, or getting in a routine of going to the gym)?
6.YOUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE. What do you need to learn in order to have the experiences you listed above? What would you love to learn? What books and movies would stretch your mind and tastes? What kinds of art, music, or theater would you like to know more about? Are there languages you want to master? Remember to focus on end goals—choosing learning opportunities where the joy is in the learning itself, and the learning is not merely a means to an end, such as a diploma.
7.YOUR SKILLS. What skills would help you thrive at your job and would you enjoy mastering? If you’d love to switch gears professionally, what skills would it take to do that? What are some skills you want to learn just for fun? What would make you happy and proud to know how to do? If you could go back to school to learn anything you wanted just for the joy of it, what would that be?
8.YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE. Where are you now spiritually, and where would you like to be? Would you like to move deeper into the spiritual practice you already have or try out others? What is your highest aspiration for your spiritual practice? Would you like to learn things like lucid dreaming, deep states of meditation, or ways to overcome fear, worry, or stress?
In keeping with His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s message, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to be happy, make other people happy. This question explores how all of your unique experiences and growth can help you contribute to the world. It doesn’t have to be a big dramatic gesture—perhaps it’s inviting the new neighbors over for a cookout or taking the new hire out for lunch, playing the piano at a nursing home, helping rescued animals get adopted, or spearheading a clothing drive at work.
In this section, you’re essentially asking yourself:
Again, notice how this question connects to the previous two. Imagine what you can give in these areas of the Twelve Areas of Balance:
9.YOUR CAREER. What are your visions for your career? What level of competence do you want to achieve and why? How would you like to improve your workplace or company? What contribution to your field would you like to make? If your career does not currently seem to contribute anything meaningful to the world, take a closer look—is that because the work is truly meaningless or does it just not have meaning to you? What career would you like to get into?
10.YOUR CREATIVE LIFE. What creative activities do you love to do or what would you like to learn? It could be anything from cooking to singing to photography (my own passion) to painting to writing poetry to developing software. What are some ways you can share your creative self with the world?
11.YOUR FAMILY LIFE. Picture yourself being with your family not as you think you “should” be but in ways that fill you with happiness. What are you doing and saying? What wonderful experiences are you having together? What values do you want to embody and pass along? What can you contribute to your family that is unique to you? Keep in mind that your family doesn’t have to be a traditional family—ideas along those lines are often Brules. “Family” may be cohabiting partners, a same-sex partner, a marriage where you decided not to have children, or a single life where you consider a few close friends as family. Don’t fall into society’s definition of family. Instead, create a new model of reality and think of family as those whom you truly love and want to spend time with.
12.YOUR COMMUNITY LIFE. This could be your friends, your neighborhood, your city, state, nation, religious community, or the world community. How would you like to contribute to your community? Looking at all of your abilities, all of your ideas, all of the unique experiences you’ve had that make you the person you are, what is the mark you want to leave on the world that excites and deeply satisfies you? For me, it’s reforming global education for our children. What is it for you?
This brings us to Law 8.
Extraordinary minds create a vision for their future that is decidedly their own and free from expectations of the culturescape. Their vision is focused on end goals that strike a direct chord with their happiness.
You can do the Three Most Important Questions exercise alone or with others. Schools in the United States and in villages in Africa have used it to inspire students. Companies use it to create more bonding and employee engagement. Many people do this exercise with a partner—sharing your answers creates instant connection. Try the exercise with your partner on your respective birthdays or on your anniversary. It’s fascinating to see how your own and others’ goals evolve and change over time.
The Three Most Important Questions exercise is so important that we do it with every person who joins the Mindvalley family. New hires go through a training in consciousness engineering, following a curriculum similar to this book. They end their induction by doing the Three Most Important Questions exercise. On a piece of letter-size paper, they draw three columns marked Experiences, Growth, and Contribution. Within the columns, they write down their visions and aspirations for each of the three areas. In the end, the sheet looks like this:
These are more than just sheets of paper to me. Each represents the dreams, ambitions, and motivations of someone who has joined our company. And so we lovingly call these sheets “blueprints for the soul.”
We post everyone’s blueprint, along with their photo, on a giant corkboard so we can see and share our dreams. Each floor in our office has a corkboard with the blueprints of the people who work there. Seeing all of those shining aspirations collected in one place gives off indescribable power. It’s one of the most beautiful things to behold at Mindvalley—the collective dreams of hundreds of employees on one giant wall.
It’s also the ultimate in transparency: Coworkers know what drives other coworkers. Managers know what drives their team members. I know what drives everyone, and they know what drives me.
Many success stories started as blueprints on this wall. Amir joined Mindvalley from Sudan. He did the exercise when he was twenty-two, and he had big dreams. He wrote about how he wanted to be a professional speaker and write a book. Those were incredibly bold dreams considering his circumstances, but by age twenty-six, Amir had scratched off most of them. He’d written that book: My Islam: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind—And Doubt Freed My Soul, which Foreign Policy magazine recommended as one of the twenty-five must-read books of 2013. Today he writes, consults, and speaks at top-tier venues, from Google to Columbia University.
Luminita Saviuc joined our team from Romania. On her list she wrote goals such as “be a world-renowned author and speaker” and “be a world leader in the field of spirituality.” The goals came to her in the most interesting way. She had written a blog post called “15 Things to Give Up to Be Happy” on her personal blog PurposeFairy.com. Somehow a year later the post resurfaced and went viral on Facebook. It touched a nerve and 1.2 million people shared it. Within months she got a book deal. Two big goals checked off.
These stories are not unusual. Time and time again I would see the big goals being checked off in the most unusual ways.
Best of all, this model is an opportunity for growing and giving: We can look at the board, see what others are doing, and say, “I love that!” and add it to our own blueprint. After all, there is no monopoly on dreams.
The wall also allows collaboration on shared visions. Mariana, a product manager from Ukraine who worked for us, dreamed of going to Nepal to hike the Himalayas. She scoured the wall for others who had Nepal on their blueprints and found three others. All four took a week off to hike in Nepal, bonding as they supported each other in striking an item off their list.
Talking openly about your dreams and end goals helps to make them a reality. It’s rare that people confide their dreams—or even admit them to themselves. The Three Most Important Questions exercise brings dreams to light for the universe—that’s you, me, and the mysterious beyond. That’s what makes the Three Most Important Questions exercise one of the most powerful ideas in this book.
As a bonus tip, remember that once you know the blueprint for your team members or a family member, you can always practice giving by offering them simple little gifts or reminders to help them grow. Over time, I developed a simple management technique that I consider one of the most important tools I use as a leader. I take a picture on my smartphone of every employee’s Three Most Important Questions sheet and carry it with me. I then read their blueprints and surprise them with a book to help them achieve their dream. For example, one recent new hire had written that she dreamed of learning public speaking and someday giving a TEDx talk. I bought her a copy of Talk Like TED and wrote a little note of appreciation inside the book. Something magical happens when you do this at work. You aren’t just showing that you care—you are making someone totally light up as they recognize that their dreams are supported by others. It’s a great way to build trust. Meaningful gestures need not be expensive; they simply need to be genuine.
BEGIN BY KEEPING IT SIMPLE. All you need is a place to write down your responses—it could be your journal, your computer, a smartphone, or anything else. For each category, set a timer or your watch for three minutes or so. Setting a timer helps shut down your logical mind so your intuitive and creative mind can come out to play before hairy old Brules or outdated models of reality can rear up and rain on your parade. With the timer, you can complete the entire exercise in ten minutes.
DON’T OVERTHINK IT. Trust your intuition to know the answers to these questions. Don’t spend too long, and don’t worry about being grammatical. Just let your words flow. Draw pictures if that helps. This is why the three-minute timer works. It forces your logical mind to shut up so your intuitive mind can be allowed a free-flowing expression of what you truly want. You can always go back after the three minutes are up and spend time analyzing and sorting out your list. But start with the three-minute rule.
REMEMBER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MEANS GOAL AND AN END GOAL. The quickest way is to focus on feelings. What feelings will a goal bring? For example, a feeling-focused end goal about your environment might be: “I want a house I’m blissfully happy to wake up in every morning” or “At least twice a month, I get to go out for a delicious meal with friends or family I love to be with.”
FOLLOW THESE FIVE STEPS TO STAY ON TRACK. Use this quick guide to double-check your goals to see if they’re in full alignment with what you really want. Mia Koning, our chief facilitator at A-Fest, designed these five steps, which added further clarity to the process:
1.Identify a goal.
2.Answer this question exhaustively until you have no more answers: When I achieve this goal, I will be able to __, __, __, [etc.].
3.Answer this question exhaustively, until you have no more answers: When I achieve all this, I will feel __, __, __ [etc.].
4.Identify the true underlying objectives of your goal, based on your answers to questions 2 and 3.
5.Compare these objectives with the original goal and ask:
Is this original goal the only way/best way to achieve these objectives?
Is this original goal enough to achieve them?
Can I achieve them in a more effective way?
When you do this, you will often find that what you think is an end goal is really a means goal. You will also get clarity on what the actual end goal might be. This will free you to ensure that you’re really pursuing the right end goal.
WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIST. Stick it up on a wall where you can see it and keep consciously and subconsciously working toward your goals. Share it with others for all the reasons I mentioned. You’ll be empowering others to grow and giving yourself new opportunities to grow as well. I cannot express how powerful this is as an exercise for companies. It’s one of the most important exercises for cultivating great culture at Mindvalley, and thousands of companies are doing the same. Why not introduce it to your workplace?
The good news is that you’re already on your way. Something amazing happens when you set big, beautiful end goals. Your brain latches on to what you’re seeing and feeling. It goes to work, hacking its way toward your goals. Steve Jobs said it wisely:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.
When you ask the Three Most Important Questions right, you’re “believing that the dots will connect down the road.” You will start noticing and discovering the paths that bring you closer and closer to where you want to be. Scientists may call this one thing (such as the brain’s reticular activating system); mystics may call it another (the universe, God, fate, synchronicity, the law of attraction, or thoughts create reality). Steve Jobs calls it “your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
I call it the extraordinary mind.
Use this weapon wisely.
To provide you with additional resources for the Three Most Important Questions, Mindvalley has produced several short videos that you can access on www.mindvalley.com/extraordinary:
A guided summary of the brainstorming process
How to bring the Three Most Important Questions to your own organization: Watch how Mindvalley applies the process within its own organization. (I strongly feel every company should be doing this and every manager should take an interest in the blueprints for the soul of the people they lead.)