Why You Should Put Yourself On the Hook

Imagine two different Olympic hopefuls, Reggie and Ronald.

Reggie has been burned in the past by setting goals. He’s set out to achieve certain things, and what he discovered, when he does so, is that he gets overly intense, aggressive, and the joy gets sapped out of his life.

As a result, Reggie doesn’t really like to draw lines in the sand for himself. Instead, he tends to set goals that focus on process, rather than on the end result.

Reggie’s goals tend to be loose, and hard to really pin down. When Reggie sets goals this way, he notices that he doesn’t tend to have that intensity show up, and so this is how he goes through life.

Reggie hires a coach, and when the coach asks Reggie what he wants to get out of their work together, he says “I want to improve at hurdling.”

Ronald, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same disempowered relationship to setting goals that Reggie does. As a result, Ronald is much more at ease setting a goal with some specifics.

This means that Ronald will have to account for how he’s doing along the way. As he gets closer to his declared date of success, he might have to really take stock of whether or not he’s on his way to achieve what he set out to do.

Ronald also hires a coach, and when the coach asks Ronald what he wants to get out of their work together, he says “I want to win the gold medal in hurdling at the Olympics in 2028.”

The goals Ronald and Reggie set might seem similar, but because of the way they’ve been established, there will be some very predictable results.

Reggie will likely achieve his goal of “improving at hurdles”. In fact, as long as you keep doing something, you’re almost certainly going to improve at it. Without any clear declared result beyond “being better”, we can pretty much 100% guarantee your success.

Ronald, on the other hand, may or may not win the gold medal at the Olympics in 2028. However, what will happen is that he will move ahead far faster and with more intentionality than Reggie will.

Both Reggie and Ronald will end up practising hurdles by virtue of their goal.

By setting a goal that has a clear measure of success and a clear timeline to it, Ronald is forced to take account along the way. Ronald doesn’t have the luxury that Reggie’s vagueness provides. Each week, Ronald needs to take a look and see if he’s actually moving towards his stated outcome.

Reggie avoids this kind of set-up, because he doesn’t like the way he shows up in relation to these kinds of commitments. Reggie avoids putting himself on the hook.

Ronald also gets overly intense and aggressive because of his commitments. But, as they show up, he brings them to his coach, and asks for support working on them.

In doing so, Ronald slowly transforms the way he shows up in relation to his commitments, and this allows him to put them to use for him, rather than being perpetually at-the-effect and needing to avoid them.

Reggie doesn’t get this opportunity. He’d like to, in theory, but in practise, Reggie is unwilling to push his chips into the centre of the table in a way that would force his hand and bring him to a confrontation with himself.

Reggie is setting goals, but his underlying way of being is that he is unwilling to risk the comfort of his homeostasis.

We’d all like to believe we’re Ronalds, but most of us are in fact Reggies. We want to have things sorted before we confront what is scary.

We move forward when we throw our hat over the fence, and put it on ourselves to go and retrieve it.

Practise making, and asking for, declarations. A clear what and by when.

Notice what this drives up for you, and those you lead.

That discomfort that shows up when you put yourself on the hook this way, is the beginning of transformation.

Chase that feeling.

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