Live your values. Define your goals carefully. Seek success beyond success.

First published on May 7, 2021

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my work with clients over the years, but one of the ones I regret the most is to create goals for our work which, ultimately, are outside of our control to create. While sometimes, the value of a vision that stretches us in undeniable, the crushing feeling of, week after week, knowing you are getting no closer to your outrageous goal, is something I would wish on no one.

The ambitious goals, of course, came from a good place. They came from knowing the importance of being the person in people’s lives who doesn’t question what is possible for them, who believes, who sees wonder and knows it can be reality. They come from knowing that if we don't try for the extraordinary, we don't know how far we can go.

They came from the possibility of the player mindset: that I can create my life. That life is within my control. That I can take action, I am not a victim of circumstance, I have agency, and I can take steps to make extraordinary things happen.

But the painful truth of the player mindset is that even if you stay in it – even if you believe life is created by me – you don’t always get what you want. The success you might define with an ambitious coach who believes in you, who holds and sees the possibility in you, who notices the wonder and knows it can be reality, doesn’t always come to pass.

And the beautiful truth of the player mindset is that there is always something we can control. We can control who we are in our lives. This is what Fred Kofman calls success beyond success. The wiser response to the ambitious goals that a client might want to set, could be this: yes, what an amazing goal. I believe that is possible for you. I see the magic in you and I know it can be reality. And, achieving this goal in the next six months is not within our control. Let’s aim at it, yes. Let’s do everything we can to be creative and resourceful and make this happen. But, let’s also define success beyond success. Who would you need to BE to create that result? What would you get from creating that result that is more important than the result itself? What will make it worthwhile so that even if you don't get that exact result, you will still be thrilled with what has happened?

We can’t always get the promotion, find the partner, create the clients or generate the income we want. But we can BE different. We have to believe that. We can act in alignment with our values so that even when we ‘fail’, we succeed.

It is always in our control to be the person we want to be, hard as that may sometimes be.

Promotion beyond being promoted. In a wholesome relationship beyond having a partner. Creating value beyond a sale.

If we know the kind of person we are, we can check, when we find ourselves ‘failing’, if we have really failed. Or if we have succeeded beyond success. If your values are, say, courage, honour, vulnerability and truth, then you can sit, one Friday morning, in the garden near your flat, and reflect on the sales you didn’t make in the last few weeks.

Did I act with courage, honour, vulnerability and truth in those conversations, even when it was difficult? Especially when it was difficult? If so, then that is success beyond success.

And, it turns out, I did. One of the best examples of this is when I notice the baser parts of me thinking vindictively, and then don’t speak those out.

I’ve made lots of mistakes in my work and some of them have been to speak, in those moments, from the baser parts of me, the ones driven by fear not wisdom.

But mostly, in the last few years, when someone says ‘No, but maybe we’ll work together in future,' I haven’t said ‘Yeah, right. I don’t want to work with you now. You’ll need to do some serious grovelling to get me to take you on’. Instead, I’ve paused, opened my heart, seen the wonder in the person in front of me, believed. And waved them on their way, honourable in defeat, smiling as the game ends with me on the losing side.

Live your values.

Define your goals carefully.

Seek success beyond success.