Expand Your Bag Of Tricks: Why Unfamiliar Goals Allow You To Achieve Unfamiliar Results
I used to design websites.
I wasn’t great at it — but I was good enough to earn some money on the side.
Each time I sat down to design a website, I had a set “bag of tricks” I was working with. There was a certain way I would style text, a way I would layout an About page, a way I would design the sidebar on a blog.
My websites certainly weren’t cookie-cutter but they also weren’t great acts of creativity.
Along the way, I learned that there were browser plug-ins I could use to see behind-the-scenes of websites that I liked. I would peer into the code, even manipulate it, and discover new tricks I could try with my own websites.
I learned all sorts of new techniques I had never even considered just by keeping my eye out for cool things I didn’t know how to do. As time went on, my bag of tricks got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Now, just like I used to design websites based on my small bag of tricks…
You tend to set goals and make plans for your business based on what you know.
You figure out what you think is possible. You project what’s likely. You fill in the details with things you generally know how to do or can easily figure out.
You’re a freaking self-reliant person, after all!
Unfortunately, as you continue to rely on what you know or feel confident figuring out already, you’re stunting your growth and the growth of your business. You unconsciously avoid goals you don’t know how to achieve and you continue to take the same or similar actions month in and month out (or year in and year out as I once did).
What you end up doing largely looks and feels the same as what you’ve done before.
Now, you’ve probably heard someone say:
“You don’t know what you don’t know.”
That might be true… but it’s also a big problem. If you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you ever learn? More importantly, if you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you ask for help?
Yesterday, I kicked off a new mastermind group and I gave the group a goal for the 6 months we’ll be working together:
Become more aware of what you don’t know.
When you see others’ successes, techniques, creative projects, strategies, or initiatives, don’t think, “Wow. That’s incredible,” and move on. Think “Wow. That’s incredible. I don’t know how to do that but I could learn!”
What if that success was your success? What if that creative project was your project? What if that strategy was your strategy? What if that initiative was your initiative?
Each time you ask “What if?” you become more aware of what you don’t know. Each time you see a “wow” kind of accomplishment, it’s an opportunity to add to your own bag of tricks.
Goal-setting gives us a reason to pull out that bag of tricks. It’s an opportunity to push past what you know and enter truly unfamiliar territory — so you can achieve unfamiliar results.
When you set a goal, you can reach deep into the bag you’ve been busy adding to by noticing all the things you don’t know how to do. You can pull out something that you really, really want. You can own that new “trick,” you can talk to people who have already used it, and you can close the gap between where you’re at and where you want to be.
Now — I get it — the very thought of that may be anxiety inducing. Maybe it pushes your upper limits to want things that don’t seem possible right now. Maybe it feels like a bad gamble to assume that you’ll rise to the occasion if you set your sights higher or become inspired by others’ successes.
I have felt this many times as my idea of “what’s possible” has been expanded by others’ successes. I’ve shivered at the thought that there was more I wanted to learn, more I could accomplish. I could stay comfortable or I could choose to accept what I didn’t yet understand.
Choose to love what you don’t know.
I came across author and founder of Unmistakable Creative, Srinivas Rao, thinking about something similar on Instagram the other day. He said:
“If we accept the gap between our expectations and reality, it doesn’t mean that we decrease the likelihood of bridging that gap. We end up approaching the gap from a place of peace instead of anxiety, from abundance instead of scarcity.”
Becoming aware of that gap — or “what you don’t know” — is a tool you can use to discover a different way forward. When you bring what you don’t know into your conscious thinking, you can look for ways other people have learned, you can ask for help, you can accept new ways of operating. I’ve learned to love discovering what I don’t know.
Becoming aware of the gap gives you a chance to fill your bag of tricks.
Don’t set a goal you know you can achieve. Set a goal that gives you a huge gap between the starting line and the finish line. Then, make yourself aware of everything you don’t know how to do so you can seek help, inspiration, and new learning.
Let yourself venture into unfamiliar territory and then ask for directions. Commit to learning a new trick and then find the instructions. That’s what is standing between you and unfamiliar results.
If you’re ready to expand your bag of tricks and set more powerful goals, join me for an upcoming, free, 90-minute workshop on creating potent plans and powerful goals for your small business. Click here!
