4 Smart Ways To Achieve The Goals You Never Thought You Could
Pretend, for just a second, that you want to go to outer space. (Or, maybe you actually do. So just act normally.)
What steps would you have to take in order to get from where you are right now to orbiting around the planet?
99 percent of people have already disqualified themselves with excuses like:
“I didn’t go to space camp when I was a kid. I don’t know anything about space.”
“Only military officers/celebrities/aliens get to do that. I’d never be allowed.”
Most of these excuses stem from childhood and missed opportunities. You figure that your trajectory is pretty set at this point, and space travel is not in your path.
But you’re wrong. There’s four steps to ANY life goal.
Here’s how you achieve your craziest dreams:
1. Positioning: Get in the right place.
If you want to make it to outer space, make sure you’re in the places where other prospective space dwellers might hang out.
- It helps to start off in an aerospace or engineering-related major in college.
- Is Neil Armstrong giving a talk at a charity event? You better be there trying to meet him after the event.
- Adult space camp… yeah, that exists. You need to sign up.
None of these activities alone will actually result in you going to space. For this reason, you might even think they seem frivolous and stupid — but they’re absolutely crucial.
Why?
Because you need positioning to create good luck.
Action Step: List 10 places that YOUR people might be. Don’t discount anything because it’s too hard to “get into.” This isn’t supposed to be easy.
2. Get Lucky: Combine the right place with the right time.
Good luck is never a matter of chance. Though it can often appear that way. In this context, timing comes down to being in the right position OFTEN enough.
You know, funny things happen as you continually put yourself out there over and over again.
At first, you’ll get menial, seemingly unimportant wins.
But those snowball into bigger wins as you keep playing the game until you get a big “break.” From the outside, that break will look like luck. But you know it was just the snowball paying off.
This is exactly what happened when I leveraged 4 or 5 lucky connections to get a job hosting a TV show, then parlayed that into interviewing Shark Tank star Lori Greiner when I was an absolute internet nobody.
Resource: Read the breakdown of how I got “lucky” and connected with Lori here
3. How to make someone say yes
I’m not going to lie. The number one word you’ll hear on your way to the top is “No.”
“No, we can’t help you.”
“No, we don’t want to buy from you.”
“No… because I have no idea who you are.”
Just no.
If you’re trying to achieve something great, you’re going to get rejected. Repeatedly. That’s a fact.
But here’s something most “goal-setters” forget: It doesn’t MATTER how many times the door gets slammed in your face. It doesn’t MATTER how many times someone tells you that you’re not smart enough, good looking enough, successful enough, whatever enough.
All of the times you get knocked down, shut out or discouraged can be instantly eliminated with three simple letters.
“YES.”
That’s right — all you need is one “YES” to get from where you are to where you want to be. “YES” is the most powerful word on the planet. More powerful than a thousand “no’s” will ever be.
How do you go from constant rejection to getting your first “YES”?
Consistency. Ridiculous, obsessive consistency with your goals. Do something every day.
Even when you don’t feel like it. (ESPECIALLY when you don’t feel like it.) Let your work over time become a mountain that people can’t ignore.
Then, eventually, you’ll get an opportunity. It’s not a matter of luck. It’s a matter of probability. If you talk to 1,000 people, you’ll eventually get one who’s willing to listen to you.
It’s your job to recognize that opportunity.
4. Baby Steps: Make small improvements over time.
You’re in the right place. You make sure that you’re there often. Things are starting to happen for you.
Now it’s up to YOU to steer the ship and take advantage of the new opportunities in front of you. To make incremental progress, you have to be BRAVE!
Let’s say you’ve used positioning and good timing to get yourself to an event where Richard Branson is speaking.
You see him alone in the corner of the room after his presentation. Do you have the courage to go up to him and say hi?
If so, could you parlay that into a small bit of progress by saying, “Hey, I’ve always wanted to get more involved in space travel. How can I work for Virgin Galactic?”
Chances are, he might give you a lead. Maybe it’d be to a manager or HR person and go on his way.
Or maybe he’ll actually start talking to you, learn more about your story and give you a real connect.
Either way, you’ve now incrementally improved your situation because you put yourself in the right place (positioning) enough amount of times (luck) for you to create new opportunities for yourself.
You can see that your personal spectrum of possibility can actually grow “tendrils” that reach out in any direction towards your intended goal, as long as you put yourself in the right place, enough times, and have the courage to make situations happen when they present themselves.
Make YOUR Life Goals Fall in the Spectrum of Possibility
It’s up to you… so make a move
Life DOESN’T have to be linear.
You DON’T have to go through point “B” in order to go from “A” to “C.”
You can skip steps. You can go around roadblocks.
You can go off the map.
But you have to be willing to put yourself out there in the right place, enough times to actually activate some of the “luck” that’s bound to happen.