When I first started writing it on my list, we didn’t have that kind of money in our travel budget at work, and just because I wanted it to be true didn’t make it so. But after writing it down for about six months, I had an epiphany so dumb I wanted to punch myself in the face for not thinking of it earlier. You’re going to laugh. Or maybe you already know how I solved the problem, because it was so obvious to you. I started flying first class because I told people it was part of my travel requirements. Meaning, when companies reached out and said, “Hey, Rachel Hollis is the cat’s pajamas, and we’d love to have her fire up our sales force. What would it take to get her here?” my assistant would tell them my speaking rate and, right after it, she’d add the line “plus first-class travel and accommodations.”
In the beginning, I was so nervous that people would be annoyed and that I’d miss out on big opportunities or be seen as a diva. But nobody batted an eyelash. First of all, when you’ve worked to get to a certain place in your career, it’s not unusual to request perks you wouldn’t have been given when you first started out. Secondly, brands could either afford it or they couldn’t, but nobody got mad or sent the villagers to my house with pitchforks. Now I get to fly in the big seats, and I arrive at each work event feeling good and productive and ready to go.
In case you’re wondering, I still have that line item on my list. I get to fly first class for work, but I’m not at a place with personal finances where we could do that for our family—yet. Every day I’m reminded about where we’re headed.
Now that you have your ten dreams identified, I hope you take my advice and write them down every day. It’s a great way to remind yourself daily about who you want to be, but in order to get there you’ve got to tackle that list with action and focus. The next step is narrowing your focus down to one goal. 10, 10, 1. Ten years becomes ten dreams becomes one goal. Your dream is your ideal; it becomes a goal when you actively begin to pursue it.
ONE GOAL
I want you to ask yourself right now, What is one goal—one thing you can do—that will get you closer to the ten-years-from-now version of yourself the fastest? What is the one goal out of the ten you just finished identifying that you can work on this year? Think it over, then write it down.
To achieve a goal, you need to make sure you have clarity on two things:
1. What are the specifics?
2. How will you measure your progress?
“I want to lose weight” is not specific. Do you want to lose two pounds or a hundred pounds? That’s specific.
“I want a body-fat percentage of 24 percent.”
“I want to save $5,000.”
Those are specific goals that you can measure against.
“I want to do better with my finances.” That’s garbage. You’re already setting yourself up for failure, or you’re setting up to give yourself credit for work without making measurable progress. Paying cash for your latte instead of using a credit card could be considered “doing better on finances,” but where is it getting you? If your goal is something more along the lines of “I want to save $5,000,” you wouldn’t have a latte at all.
Your goal also needs to be measurable. You have to be able to judge whether you’re making progress or getting closer to where you want to be. A lot of people also say that a goal has to have a time limit, but I don’t like that for personal goals because I feel like it sets you up for failure. If you tell yourself you’ve got to be in shape by the end of February and then you get to mid-February and you haven’t done it, you beat yourself up. The intention here is that working on your ideal self is a lifelong process to become who you were meant to be. Lifelong processes don’t have a time limit. All that matters is that you keep at it. We’re not looking for perfection; we’re looking for consistency.
Now, it’s not enough to know what your goal is going to be. Many of you probably already knew what you wanted to achieve, and if that was all it took you’d have already claimed it as your own. You’ve also got to know why you want it so badly. You need to define why it must be yours and use it as leverage to motivate yourself when you want to give up. Remember earlier when I talked about how important your why is? Why will keep you going even if you don’t know how you’ll get there.
When I was a little girl, my parents fought a lot. These were extreme fights—punching-holes-in-the-walls kind of fights—and I would hide out in my room to get away from them. I would take myself into the only space that was mine alone—my bed—and I would escape by imagining a place where none of this existed. I would imagine a future where nobody screamed at each other. I would also imagine a future where nobody fought over money. As a child, the greatest vision I could imagine for myself was walking into a store and being able to afford anything I saw. I’m not talking about a watch or designer shoes. I mean being able to afford the brand-name cereal or a new pair of jeans for school. That was the best vision I could have for myself then: a home where nobody fought and the ability to afford things at Wal-Mart.
So that was my goal, and the underlying reasoning for it was something I remember thinking at a really early age: When I’m in charge, I can live whatever life I want. When you visualize your future, you have to know where it is you’re trying to get to, and you have to give yourself some motivation to keep you on course. Said another way, you have to know your why. Why does it matter to you?
It’s not enough just to want to be thinner. It is enough to want to lose weight so that you can be able to keep up with your kids or have energy for your life. That’s leverage.
It’s not enough to say, “I want to be rich because I think that would be awesome.” It is enough to know what it’s like to go without as a kid and to promise yourself that you’re never going to live this kind of life again once you have the ability to control it. That’s leverage.
You have to know where you’re going, and you have to know your why. For those of you who start and stop, start and stop, start and stop, if you’ve gone off your resolution fifty times before, it’s because your why wasn’t strong enough.
I used to smoke. I hate to even admit that to you, because it’s absolutely terrible. Smoking is the worst. It’s so disgusting; it’s so bad for your body. But I was nineteen when I started. I thought that cool kids smoked, and I wanted to be cool. Then one night at the company holiday party, I was chatting with this really rad girl who worked in the PR department. She was so hip! She was hipster before hipsters existed, and that night at the holiday party she pulled out a pack of American Spirits. If you aren’t familiar with American Spirits, they are basically straight tobacco, way stronger than anything I had ever smoked before, only I didn’t know that at the time.
I’d been drinking too much that night, and when cool hipster girl offered me a cigarette, I didn’t think anything of it and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening smoking one cigarette after another. I went home from that party and threw up again and again. Everything smelled like that cigarette. I barfed until nothing was left inside my body. I woke up the next morning in my bed wearing nothing but red Isotoner socks. Best I can guess, I had gotten myself undressed, down to the way I came into this world, and then put on those socks for—I don’t know—comfort? Then I puked for three hours before passing out. The point is, to this day I cannot smell cigarette smoke without wanting to vomit. I never touched another cigarette again. I had had such a bad experience, had gotten to such a bad place, that I went cold turkey and had zero issues giving it up. I will never go back there again. That’s leverage.
You have to have the leverage—you have to know your why—or you will never make change. You have to know what to focus on, or you will never make progress.
BEHAVIOR 3:
EMBRACE YOUR AMBITION