The World Needs More Inside-Out Goals

The world needs more inside-out goals, but we mostly have outside-in goals. Outside-in goals are goals imposed, the ones we take on for someone else, because we’re supposed to. Because we should. Because it’s in our job description. Because it’s the “right” thing to do.

Outside-In Goals look like this:

Get a degree in 4 years. Get a degree in programming. That’s a degree you can bank on.

Meditate every day.

Keep a clean house.

Earn $100,000 by the time I am 22.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound. I might want all these things on some level. I could probably write all the goals above in a S.M.A.R.T. format but that doesn’t mean my heart would be in any of them. Not entirely.

And if I died tomorrow, would I regret not having completed them?

What does an inside-out goal look like?

It’s potentially messy. It’s illogical. It’s off the mark. It’s madness. It’s all these things, to everyone but us. And only when we actually take the time to discover what goals are truly our own.

We don’t come by our intimate inside-out goals without a fight. We battle the outer voices that have somehow, over time, become inner voices, but are still not the still small voice we call Inner Genius.

It takes nerve to sit still in a room (inside our head) filled with those voices and still hold fast to something emergent and powerful from within ourselves.

The Best Ideas ARE US!

Marie Nemeth, PhD, says in her book, Mastering Life’s Energies, “We know, on some level, that the ideas we find the most exhilarating are an essential part of us; in a very real way, they are us.”

Your intimate goals ARE you! And I believe that you can only ignore them for so long, and at your own peril. I avoided mine for decades and suffered immensely for it.

“The ideas, dreams, and goals that inspire us speak clearly of the contributions we are here to make – that only we can make.” This is why intimate goals are “integrity-goals.” We can’t fudge them or fake them, not if we are being authentic. When we understand that w our intimate goals are intricately connected to who we are and indeed inseparable, then we will not abandon the intimate goal so easily.

This is an excerpt from a work in progress, a book about elevating SMART Goals to IMPACT Goals.