You Need This Simple Principle to Achieve Your Goals
Cliff jumping taught me a precious life lesson. The less you think about doing something, the easier it is to just do it.
I still remember the first time I went cliff jumping. It was in a beautiful and hidden location of Lake Annecy in France. I was a teenager, and a friend of mine who knew about the spot organised a little excursion with other buddies.
The moment I was asked if I wanted to join, I was totally on board. It sounded extremely fun.
To get there, we took kayaks and crossed the lake. We arrived at a small rocky cove surrounded by trees where we could leave them.
From there, there was a path carved into the cliff leading to multiple levels to jump from.
I started at the smallest level which was around 2 meters high. I was unimpressed and I just jumped. It felt like a nice little warm-up and I wanted to go higher.
The next level was around 6 meters high. My current self would laugh hard at such a height. But for younger me, it was not as straightforward. The confidence and excitement generated from the previous level gradually disappeared as I was contemplating how high this was.
“Are you jumping?”
My friend almost made me startled. He was behind me and waiting for his moment to jump.
I replied:
“You can go first”
The mental chatter was amplifying in my mind.
“What if I slip when taking my impulse?”, “Come on man, everyone is doing it”, “What if I land on a shallow spot with a hidden rock beneath?”, “If everyone is doing it, I should be able to do it. What is wrong with me?”, “I could badly injure myself or worse”, “Damn, everyone is doing it”…
Another friend asked
“Do you mind if I go first?”
I tried to remain as stoic as possible to hide the inner conflict and replied:
“Sure, go for it”
Then a stranger jumped, followed by his kid, younger than me. The lack of doubt in the child triggered me to get out of that state of self-hypnosis.
My first friend was already back up.
“You still haven’t jumped? Come on, just do it. Stop thinking”
It clicked. I had invented a story in my mind which had nothing to do with the reality of the situation because of some irrational fear. I thought “F*ck this” and I jumped.
Life is full of comparable situations.
This is particularly true when going after big dreams or goals. The bigger they are, the scarier. But is this always justified?
In this article, I’ll explain why, similarly to cliff jumping, having a bias towards action is key to accomplish your goals.
The trap of analysis-paralysis
One of the biggest dangers when it comes to chasing big dreams is analysis-paralysis.
There is no doubt you should use your brain. But don’t over-use it or it will slow you down.
This is especially true for analytical people like myself. With my background in math, science and engineering, I was conditioned to find the most optimal solution and avoid errors via deep thinking and reasoning.
Billionaire Dan Pena describes the consequence of thinking too much quite well.
“You over analyse. You study things. You think of all the possible permutations. All the possibilities of what could go wrong. If you do that enough you’ll come up with enough reasons not to do it at all”
“Taking action isn’t doing a spreadsheet. Taking action isn’t listening to a podcast. Taking action isn’t reading a book. Taking action is actually taking action”
This Tweet from Justing Welsh illustrates the impact of over-analysing in the specific context of building an online business.
Don’t let fear take over
I don’t believe in being fearless.
Like all emotions, fear plays a very useful role. It serves as feedback to let you know of some danger in your environment.
The issue is not fear by itself. It is when your perception of reality is poorly calibrated.
What do I mean by that?
Problems will arrive if you under or overestimate the level of danger in your environment.
It’s obvious you don’t want to be the person who decides to swim with wild crocodiles.
But at the same time, you don’t want to be the person who refuses to take any plane because it could potentially crash.
Like most things in life, it’s all about balance.
So which fear is preventing you from taking more action towards your goal?
Here, it is critical to be self-aware and honest with yourself. Put your ego aside, then identify and acknowledge that fear. This is the first step.
Once it’s done, figure out what is causing the fear. There could be many reasons.
Challenge these reasons as objectively as you can. If being objective towards the situation is hard for you, look for answers externally.
In my opinion, the first people to reach out to are your mentor and the members of your mastermind group.
If you haven’t surrounded yourself with neither, I highly recommend you do so if the goal or dream is truly important for you.
Because they went through the same journey or are on the same journey, there is a chance they have already faced similar inner turmoil and can give you a valuable perspective on the situation. They can help you re-assess the level of perceived danger.
Let’s take an exemple I have seen countless times: You are hesitant to start your entrepreneurial journey because you are afraid of losing the security of a corporate job.
First of all, is your job as secure as you think? That’s probably what 80% of the employees at Twitter thought before Elon Musk bought the company and fired them.
No job is ever truly secure. Especially with the exponential progress made by AI.
What about financial security? Well, it depends on your situation: how much have you saved, can you relocate to a cheaper place, can you limit your expenditures while you are trying to make it etc.
The key is to look at the situation with as much distance and objectivity as possible.
It is also helpful to consider the long term consequences of both scenarios: you do it vs you don’t do it.
Just remember you will regret what you didn’t do more than what you did.
Lean Goal Achievement
Let’s assume you’ve done the following:
- Identified a goal that came from within and not influenced by external factors
- Broken the goal down into a roadmap of smaller SMART goals
- Implemented ways to reprogram your subconscious mind to make the process much easier
Then you’ve done most of the thinking. It’s now time to focus on 3 things: action, action and action!
There are certain things you can only learn by doing. This is not rocket science.
You can’t get good at cooking by just reading recipe books. You have to try those recipes, fail a couple of times, learn from it, iterate and get better until you become good at it.
If you don’t know how to start, start anywhere. Any step towards the goal is better than no step.
If you make mistakes, good. It means you are learning. The devil is always in the details and no matter how much time you spend “perfecting” a plan, there will always be something you didn’t think about. Some unexpected detail that you can only figure out if a mentor tells you or if you take action and get harsh feedback from reality. Basically, you don’t know what you don’t know.
A plan is there to set a direction, but you should be willing to go back to the white board once in a while and course correct if needed.
You are basically in what I call a Act-Measure-Learn loop where:
- Act: You act on a plan/strategy to achieve the goal
- Measure: You Assess how far you are from the goal. Since you’ve broken down the goal into SMART goals, they should be measurable. It is up to you to define the metrics which must be relevant to the goal.
- Learn: You learn from mistakes and real-world feedback to refine the strategy
This is a direct inspiration from The Lean Startup’s “Build-Measure-Learn” loop. The Lean Startup is a methodology for building and managing startups that encourages entrepreneurs to start small, learn quickly from real-world interactions, and adapt their strategies based on data and customer insights. It has revolutionised the way start-ups are created and companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, and Spotify were built based on it.
The same way the Build-Measure-Learn loop helps start-ups achieve faster product-market fit, the Act-Measure-Learn loop will help you make faster progress towards your goal.
Also, be careful to walk the walk more than you talk the talk. I have already covered the danger of talking too soon about your goals.
Try to limit the talking to only what is necessary. Talk to your mentor and your mastermind group, talk to people you need to achieve the goal or dream, talk to people who can give useful feedbacks, talk to people who truly want you to succeed and can offer support.
But don’t talk to impress or for validation. Especially, remember that premature positive feedback will kill your drive.
In a nutshell, let your actions speak for themselves.
Conclusion:
I see myself once again concluding an article with a quote from The Power of Now.
“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”
