11 Jul 2014 · 13 min
In this episode of The Charged Life, Brendon Burchard critiques the prevailing culture of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time‑bound) goals, arguing that they limit ambition and stifle the bold, visionary thinking that drives historic breakthroughs. He contends that most people set goals that are too small, becoming distractions rather than pathways to a meaningful life. Burchard introduces an alternative framework he calls DUMB goals, composed of four pillars: 1. Dream‑Driven – start with a massive, almost impossible vision that ignites the soul (e.g., going to the moon, eradicating malaria). 2. Uplifting – phrase goals positively, focusing on gain and the vibrant, attractive outcomes rather than loss or deficit. 3. Method‑Friendly – design repeatable practices or a “method” that makes progress automatic (e.g., specific workout schedules, martial‑arts forms). 4. Behavior‑Driven – embed triggers into everyday moments (e.g., after dropping kids off, go to the grocery store; when pulling into the garage, visualize positive interactions) to reinforce the goal. He explains how each component works, provides concrete examples (fitness, martial arts, personal presence), and emphasizes that while SMART goals have a place for execution, they should not dominate one’s life narrative. The episode ends with a call to adopt reckless, dream‑fuelled ambition, set uplifting and methodical goals, and use behavioral cues to live a “charged life.”
Chapters
Welcome to the Charged Life. This is Brendan Burchard. It's scary to me how our culture got so wrapped up into smart goals. You know, specific and measurable and attainable or realistic and time bound, you know, just very awesome left brain goal thinking stuff, you know. But I think the problem is we have this culture now where we're dominated by these very realistic goals and we're dominated by spreadsheets and checklists and all these great left brain things that maybe are supposed to help us accomplish things. And yet we have an entire culture now. We're setting too small of goals. You know, where are the moonshot dreams and ideas? You know, where's the walking, putting the person on the moon dreams? Where's the build a big business, an empire, the takes over the world dreams? Where's the things that says I want to serve millions of people dreams? Those aren't realistic. It was not a smart goal for Columbus to sail across the ocean. It was not a smart goal for Martin Luther King to say, let's march on Washington. It was not a smart goal for us to say, hey, let's put a man into orbit or let's put a man and a woman into a container, a tube, metal container, and, and fly them across the sky. These were not smart goals. There was nothing at all attainable or realistic or even necessarily timely about those types of things. They were impossible dreams. And we have to fire those up in our lives again if we're ever to experience the zest. There is no sexiness and joy in being. I'm a smart goal person. Like, come on. Yes, we have to at some point bring a goal down to earth and measure it out and think through it. But that's where people automatically go. They're scared to think about a goal that's measurable, not just in terms of can I get it done? Measurable in terms of their life, destiny, their mission. They're scared to think at that level that is ambitious and full of fire and dreams and hopes. So I'm here to tell you, set some dumb goals. Okay, let me tell you about a dumb goal. A dumb goal. The D. Let's make this up. Okay? The D stands for dream driven. Let's start there. Let's start way up here. What would be the ideal, the perfect, the magical thing that's even beyond maybe even your immediate comprehension? To think way outside the box, to think about something that fire you up and really feel like if I attain that, that would be my dream. Cause you know what? Smart goals for most people that's not a dream. That's just like, check. Did that. Moved on. Awesome. No, we want you to move, like, to a whole other level. A new stratosphere of yourself, of your work, of your contributions, of the service you give to the world. What would be so amazing? You know, Bill Gates doesn't say, well, I'd like to just accomplish. He says, we're gonna eradicate malaria. We're gonna eradicate these types of diseases. They're going to be gone. Now that is just not realistic. But soon as you said something huge like that, you have to start thinking, well, how would we put that together? Same way they did with saying, hey, let's go to the moon. We had no idea how to do that. We didn't have the technology, the tools, the materials. We had to invent things to be able to travel through time and space to get to the moon. I mean, it was unbelievable. So you start with the dream. The how will come later. It is the what. It is the why that fires the human soul much more than necessarily the how. We'll get to the how, but the dumb goal that's gonna start with your dream. If you don't like the word dream, then implant destiny. What would you feel like at the end of your life? Achieving these sets of big things would make your life meaningful and alive and feel like you. Like that was something. That was something. That was magic, man. Because if you have none of those. All the goals, what are they? They're all distractions. Lots of people set lots of smart goals and they become distractions, alleyways of accomplishment in their life that never led to the boulevard of their dreams. They are distractions. They are detours. Yeah, they're accomplishing a lot. But, you know, a lot of people, you know, they have a lot of busy work in their life, but there's a difference between busy work and knocking off goals and checklists, doing lots of busy work, achieving the things. But sometimes your busy work is not your life's work. A mission, a dream, a desire, Something big and beautiful and bold. Let's get back to that. Dumb goals. Start with that. Dream driven or destiny driven. I think that you. Let's just put something in there. Let's call it uplifting. You know, a lot of people, as they're setting a goal, even if they have a big. The wording and the labels they use for their goals, they're not sexy. It's like someone wakes up and says, I'd like to lose some weight today. It's like, come. What? Lose weight? That Is not uplifting. Right? It's not. It's deficit driven. It's the attention of the negative. It's like, I need to lose this thing. No, how about we gain something? How about we have a goal that it's attractive to us Again, see, if your goal is a checklist, it is not sexy and you're not gonna do it. It has to be something that's compelling and important to you. An uplifting goal is something like, you know, I am going to feel so fit and vibrant that literally my skin and my aura is going to shine to people. I'm going to make myself so beautiful in who I feel that I am and how I portray myself to the world that I'm just going to attract people. I mean, they're going to be blown away. I am going to be a sexy person. Is a whole lot more than I'd like to lose five pounds. It's like, come on, what is uplifting? What will fire you up? Word it, phrase it, put it in a way that's so positive and compelling to you that you can't wait. When you look at that goal, you're like, man, here we go. Because it's attractive to you, it's fun to you, it's important and meaningful to you, and it's aligned with that dream. You'll get there. You're much more likely to take action on it than just a simple little thing that you have not connected to the dream. Make it uplifting, make it a positive. Label it and word it in a way that's focused. Not on loss, but on gain. Not on how hard it's going to be, but on how good you'll become because you do it. Not on, oh my gosh, if I do it, it might not turn out well. But rather visualize and see what happens when it does turn out. That's a different way of thinking about all of this. So we've got the destiny driven stuff. We've got being uplifting and then m. I love to call it method friendly. Set a method friendly goal. What does that mean? I want you to think about if you're going to start on a path to something, how can you set up something that is friendly to creating a practice around it? A method, if you will. Right. Sort of a map, a way. I just like to use the word practices often. What practices can we create around this goal that makes it happen easier? Right. If it's to become incredibly fit, okay, great. Becoming incredibly fit, that's uplifting. I like it because I want to Feel vibrant and passionate and fully alive. I want to know I lived my life. That's the dream. Great. You want to be fully alive and vibrant. Great. Well, to get there then we need to create a set of practices or a method that allows us to live in that goal consistently. That means all of a sudden maybe your method is as simple as, you know, three times a week you're going to be going to yoga and three times a week you're going to do a 40 or 2040 minute HIIT training, you know, high intensity based type of training, a weightlifting, a kettlebell, a cardio blast type of thing. You're going to do something very intense. There's great method you can put all around that, right? You want to change the way that you eat. Great. Add a new method to how you're cooking. Add a new way of going about things, a set of practices that you repeat over and over and over again. That's what the method is. You do it over and over and over again. Let me give you a comparative example. People who want to become suddenly very skilled at not only defending themselves, but being in total control of their body and their psyche. So they're studying martial arts, right? Well, in martial arts everyone wants to become very highly high, highly skilled at martial arts. So what do they do? Well, they have this method or these set of practices that they do over and over and over again. They call it their form, right? Their forms. They're going to practice the set of movements over and over and over again every day or every time they practice martial arts. That makes it automatic, it just comes up, it makes it more easy. They discipline themselves to do a set of practices, a method, forms that helps them accomplish their dream, their desire, that uplifting power. Not only to be in control of self and situations, to protect ourselves, but also to master our physical body and our mind. That's what they're doing. To have that big goal and that dream. They implant a method around it that they do over and over and over again that allows them to now achieve that thing. And the last piece of this model of dumb goals is it has to be behavior driven. And what I like to say is behavior driven in a way that there's triggers set up to make you do this, right? So what you do is say, okay, I'm going to eat healthier so I can feel vibrant and powerful in my body again. Great. So the behavior driven things that you can do there, not only the big method, but the behavior trigger driven things that you can do is say, okay, every Time I drop the kids off, I'm going to immediately go to the grocery store and I'm only going to shop the produce aisle where there's vegetables and green things that are alive and not packaged. And then I'll go home. Or you say, okay, every time I pull in my garage, I'm going to think these five things to myself before I go in to see my spouse. Because I want to be amazing and present and loving and caring and vibrant with them, right? So you set that up, you pull into the garage, turn off the engine, close your eyes, think about incredibly positive ways to interact with your loved one, then walk into the house. That's a behavior driven trigger to help you accomplish that goal or dream, right? Just every time you do something, that happens for me, every time I wait in a line. So if I'm waiting in line at a grocery store, if I'm waiting in line at a store, if I'm waiting in line in traffic, anytime I'm waiting in line there, that's my cue, that's my trigger to think. What level am I right now in terms of my presence and what am I focused on right now? So what kind of physical vitality do I feel and could I up that up and what am I focusing on right now? I ask myself that over and over and over again. Every single situation that I'm waiting in line, triggers in my mind, what am I focusing on, how do I feel and to generate it and to create better thoughts, to create better feelings in my body. It's just a trigger. So you set yourself up, all these little triggers. You pull in the driveway, you do this, you see somebody in the, you meet somebody for the first time, you think this or you do this, you go into the business deal, you're going to think this and do this, whatever it is, you're going to walk in that conference room, you go into your creative mode, whatever it is, it's a trigger for you, right? Some people, they walk through their doors at work and their mind immediately goes into a specific place. That trigger helps you accomplish the that goal over a long time. It's a behavioral driven trigger. You have to set those up all over to accomplish those dreams. I hope that helps you just think a different way here. It's not that we don't have to have our little checklist or our little goals, but you know what, if that's the focus, we'll never be dreamers, we'll never be bold, we'll never be builders and innovators and entrepreneurs, people who change the course of the world because instead we'll be focused on doing the status quo. The simple things, the straightforward things, the goals that are realistic. I don't want you to be realistic anymore. I want you to advance with reckless abandon towards your dreams by just being dumb. You know, setting up those very simple dream driven, uplifting, method friendly, I mean behavior trigger driven goals that fire you up and get you out of bed every single day because and when you do that that's when you know, you feel and you live the charged life. Hey everyone, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe to the next one and tell a friend about us. If you want free books and world class training on on motivation and high performance visit me@Brendon Burchard.com and enter your name and email for our newsletter list. Until next time. Stay charged and go out there every day of your life and live fully, love openly and make your difference today.