SMARTER Dreams

Posted on 12 December 2007

I had a great session with a client yesterday. I love it when I come out of working with somebody feeling like its me that has learned something. I know that sounds like it’s the wrong way round and you’re probably thinking, “Hmm, not sure I want to hire a life coach that needs me to teach him his job”, but to me at least, life coaching is a practice. I feel I’m constantly evolving and learning and I will do until the day I quit the profession. When I worked in sales the people that would frustrate me the most (other than noncompliant customers that couldn’t see the brilliance if what I was trying to sell them of course) would be those that thought they were as good as they could be. They would nod off at sales training, mock anybody ‘dumb’ enough to be reading sales books and sneer as those people improved their results ‘knowing’ they just got lucky. Well as the old saying goes ‘the harder you work the luckier you get’

I have to add a caveat to that last sentence, because I actually don’t subscribe to the theory that you always have to work hard to be successful (meaning long hours, few vacations and even fewer smiles) but I do think you have to be constantly open to new approaches.

So I was in this meeting with one of my younger clients (he’s 21) and we were talking about goal setting. He had listened to and loved The Maverick Mindset cd series by Dr John Eliot.  I recommend that programme to so many clients and every single one that has splashed the cash to buy it has loved it. However, there is one drawback, Dr Eliot is against goal setting! I wish I could embed a soundtrack here that makes that noise in horror films that goes something like Dn, Dn Drrrrrrrrrrr after I made that last statement. Well I can’t so I need your help. I’m sure you know the sound I mean, so if you could rehearse it in your head a few times for added drama and then lets do that last bit again if you don’t mind.

Dr Eliot is against goal setting! Dn Dn Drrrrrrrrr

Brilliant! Thanks for that, I’m impressed with your Dn Dn Drrrrring ability, keep it up.

Back on planet earth we were talking about my client yesterday and as I was saying, he loved The Maverick Mindset. So when we started working through his goals I asked him to give me one to see if we could get it to fit the SMARTER model of goal setting that I use. Well what a choker, because we couldn’t

I stood staring at my whiteboard looking for inspiration but no matter how we tweaked it there were simply too many aspects of it that couldn’t be tied down. I’m not going to go into the goal per se because there is no need and that’s not the point. Then my client said that it was probably more of a dream than a goal anyway.

That’s it! Brilliant! Of course it is. Now I get it. Dr Eliot talks about aiming for dreams and not setting goals if you want to join the ranks of the super-successful. This was the one area in the programme that I’d had issues with because I love goal setting and I know that it works for many. BUT I do accept from time to time it can be a tad inflexible for those huge, monumental and esoteric life goals that some people quite rightly aspire to.

We talked some more and came up with the idea of having two lists. A goal list AND a dream list. Voila! How simple is that I ask you? The answer is very, so don’t give that question too much headspace we need to get finished here.

The former adheres strictly to the parameters usually associated with goal setting whereas the latter allows your imagination to run rampant like a horny bull in a china shop full of life size very attractive pottery cows.

I think that like goals, dreams should still be written down though. I know that may sound like it’s removing some of the romance, but if we can get the mind concentrating especially at an unconscious level, on what it really wants, then we exponentially increase the likelihood of it coming to fruition.

I learned a lot from that and I think I will start my own dream list to go with my goal list. Maybe a dream list isn’t really needed though, maybe just one huge dream statement that encapsulates all the good stuff is enough to get you up and running. It’s a thought.

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