5 Surprising Signs that You’re Fighting for a Worthy Goal

You’re overwhelmed.

You feel like your to-do-list is getting longer every single day.

You’re a slave to your own resolution, but you can’t help wondering if you’re even on the right track.

What makes this goal different from the hundreds of other goals that you’ve achieved or failed to achieve before?

Maybe you’re 90% there and just need one last push. Or maybe it’s time to give up and avoid further sunk costs.

But how do you know when to stick with it and when to give up?

You could keep working at every single goal on your list, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best

Good luck with that.

A smarter way is to look for signs — signs that reveal the worthiness of the goal — and focus all of your resources on the few worthy ones.

Conventional wisdom that’s misleading…

We’ve been taught all our lives that the path to success is to put in hard work and never give up. With enough hard work and a bit of luck, you will be successful regardless of where you start.

All of us have, to some degree or another, bought into the idea that hard work is all that separates success from failure.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we were taught that sometimes the result is determined from the very beginning, before we’ve even started?

Why, the world would be full of lazy people. No one would want to put in any effort, and everyone would be using this as an excuse to skip the hard work.

But not all goals are created equal

Which of these is a worthy goal?

A. I want to be healthy.

or

B. I want to build a habit of eating paleo and exercising 5 days a week during this year.

Rather than just tell you the winner, let me describe how you could know in advance, once you understand how to recognize the signs of a worthy goal.

First, you must understand why some of what you have been taught about goal setting is wrong, or at least misleading.

Most of the few good techniques and books on goal setting were written with the lesser of two evils.

Most well-intentioned authors would rather that you fail (and learned through the hard work) than stayed safe (but never learned a thing).

Their main teaching: perseverance, strong perseverance, is the only key to successful goal.

Makes sense. But here’s the problem. Not all goals are created equal. Some goals never had a chance to be completed. And there are other goals that you wouldn’t be proud if you did achieve them.

So, yes, you’ll still reach some destination if you keep on driving regardless of direction, but is it really somewhere you want to be?

The bad news?

There isn’t a script for worthy goals. Yes, you can write a set of standards and instructions, but there’s no guarantee that it will become a worthy goal. Everything “you thought” will change the instant rubber hits the road.

The good news is, there are signs you can look for that are commonly shared by worthy goals. Just as you can train yourself to find clues for solving problems, you can also train yourself to find signs for identifying a worthy goal.

Here are some signs to get you started:

Sign #1: You are terrified, and it keeps you awake (tossing relentlessly in your bed) at 2:00 a.m. in the morning

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Were you brought up to believe that you should solve the easy problems first? You’ll get a better score if you skip the difficult essay question and work on the easier multiple choice questions first.

Yeah, me too, but here’s the problem:

Our job as entrepreneurs is to do the things other people are unable or unwilling to do. Sometimes that means being smart about our solutions, but more often, it means taking on the challenges — changing careers to live your passion, reaching out to A-list influencers, writing a guest post and having millions of people criticizing your work.

Instead of running away from all of those terrifying things, throwing in your white towel as a sign of defeat, embrace your fear. Learn to appreciate the barriers. As Seth Godin says in his book, The Dip, “Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the dip.”

Yes, it’s hard, and you might feel like running away. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it already.

If you are nervous about certain actions that you need to take, imagine how your competitors must be flinching at the challenges, too. This is the necessary dip controlling the success rate of a worthy goal.

Nervousness is a good place to start, because while it’s frightening, it’s also a clear sign of fewer competitors.

So the next time you can’t fall asleep because you’re scared to take action, be grateful.

Sign #2: The goal is finite and progress can be measured with small successes

I’m a big proponent of having a measurable, finite goal. It’s very tempting to set infinite goals because you don’t want to limit yourself in any possible way. Common examples are goals like getting as many subscribers as possible, living healthily, writing every day.

Sure, it sounds great. But a goal without measuring KPI and a distinct endpoint is doomed to failure. Maybe you feel great at the beginning, but the pressure of fighting with no chance of winning will soon wear you down.

Perhaps Gary Bencivenga, titans of Direct Response Advertising, said it best, “To reach a destination, you must first have one.”

The most important sign of an achievable goal is having absolute clarity about the final vision and the small successes that can lead up to it.

Gary once told a story about Louis Rukeyser, founder of the world’s largest financial newsletter.

Louis sought Gary’s counsel on how to continue to grow his list, when he already had about 500,000 paid subscribers.

Gary told Louis that the only way he would ever be able to reach a million subscribers would be to strictly limit subscriptions to one million.

Louis rejected the idea because he didn’t want to place any limitation on growth, unfortunately but as predicted, Louis never reached anywhere near the million mark.

But it’s also not enough to just have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.”

— Earl Nightingale

Worthy goals require lots of effort and time to pursue.

We need to motivate ourselves and avoid throwing in the towel in the face of challenges. We all know that pains and difficulties are inevitably during the process, but if we are to persevere, we all need the encouragement of small successes along the journey. Or else.

Sign #3: Your audience is excited even when there are technical hiccups

I know it’s weird for me to say, but it’s not always a bad thing to have technical glitches.

Well, of course we all want our website to be bug free, the presentation to be flawless, and our product to be 100% perfecto. Maybe you’re even holding back on that blog post so that you can have it error-free before publishing.

But it’ll never be 100% flawless. No matter how hard you try.

And the good news?

The technical glitches can actually highlight the worthiness of your goal for you.

Why, because your audience may be so excited about your vision that technical hiccups are no longer an issue for them.

Your audience is smarter than you think. When you are committed to something worthy, they’ll jump for the chance to be part of it.

Nothing starts out perfect; but you need to start somewhere.

If you are fighting for a worthy goal, your believers will follow regardless. It’s surprising, but they will be even more excited to participate and to shape the goal with you when it’s imperfect.

Sign #4: You are changing someone’s life (even if it’s your own)

Ever seen a testimonial for a fitness program, the kind with before and after photos?

Why do people still fall for the testimonial, even when we all know that there is more going on behind the scenes — diet, Photoshop, camera angle — than just the program.

It’s because we secretly pray for a change in our own lives, too.

Any goal that involves changing someone’s life, in a good cause, is worth pursuing. Even if it’s just your own.

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

— Zig Ziglar

Sign #5: There are people hating you for pursuing the goal

Let’s face it.

You’re never going to be liked by everyone.

Even the most valuable brand in the world, Apple, is hated by billions of people.

Sure, some people (like me) refuse to use Apple for a particular reason: they dislike the architecture, they can’t justify the price, or they’ve had a bad experience.

But a large percentage of people hate it simply because they know someone else who loves it.

And the truth?

The raving fans are even more fanatical in their support of the brand when they know someone else hated it.

Why? Because this brilliantly differentiates them from others and identifies them as special insiders.

Next time you’re frustrated by all the hate comments, just keep this in mind: haters hate, especially when you are fighting for a worthy goal.

They hate you because you have the courage to fight and they don’t. Because they failed, and they don’t want you to succeed. Because they are stuck in their unhappy life and yours is remarkable.

If you don’t see anyone hating what you’re doing, it means that you are not doing anything worth talking about.