Eric Edmeades reframes goals as inspirational destinations, not rigid targets. He uses "wouldn't it be nice" to soften resistance, then walks through five goal categories: financial, social, identity, experiential, and legacy. The exercise: write one paragraph from your future self describing each area of your life.
Chapters
We're going to go through the areas here. The idea here is to be really clear that goals are just this possible destination. The journey is always more important. The journey is always more important. The goal is just something to get us to take the journey. And so this is not about attachment. This is not about setting goals that we feel like we failed if we didn't achieve. This is about saying, wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice if this happened? Wouldn't it be nice if that happened? Let's try the wouldn't it be nice if game before we get into this for a minute. And the way the wouldn't it be nice if game works is this instead of setting some super strong, mentally demanding goal, what we do instead is we go, wouldn't it be nice? So here's one I'm trying with you now, some of you, if I told you you have to set a goal to have $5 million, you, you have to set a goal to have $5 million. How many of you might have some resistance about setting a goal like that? How many of you might have some resistance? Yeah. And then how about this? I'm gonna be a billionaire who might have resistance to saying that. Yeah, I'm with you. I get it. What I want you to do is go, wouldn't it be nice to have $5 million pounds euros? How many of you can raise your hand to that comfortably? Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to be fully healthy and fit the way you really want to be? Wouldn't that be nice? Yes, that'd be nice. So we're looking at these goals not as something that we are so attached to that we feel like we fail if we didn't achieve them. We're looking at them as just destinations that are going to make us take really fun journeys. That's all it is. And so we're going to look first of all at the quality of life goals. Please take a look at this slide. You want to do this for financial, social. Let me describe these things. Financial, you want to look at, you want to look at your material goals, your income goals, your investment goals and your contribution goals. Alright then we're going to look at social goals. You want to look at your family, your friends and your romantic goals, your social life for your identity. We're talking about your professional goals, your development goals and your creative goals. For your experiential goals. You're talking about the type of experiences you want to have in your life, the adventures and the Experiences that you want to have. You know, there's that famous sushi place that it's like $500 to have sushi in the subway, like, and there are only five tables in a two year waiting list. That's an experience I'd like to have. Some of you might want to climb Kilimanjaro. Some of you might want to go to the Kruger National Park. I don't know what they are for you, but it's your bucket list items, your experience goals. Then we're going to look at our environmental goals. And in that case, you're looking at your home, your office and your environment. And we will post these slides in the Facebook group as well, in case you missed them. If I went a little too quickly for you. You want to look at those goals and then also you want to look at your legacy goals. And this is a different thing. This is about how you want to be remembered. This is about how you want to be remembered as a person. And so the idea here is to take a look and say, I really like. Imagine if somebody was writing a biography about you or making a movie about you. How would you ultimately want to be remembered? And by the way, this is such an incredibly powerful personal development tool. Because what happens when you start thinking this way and is when trouble strikes, when something difficult happens in your life? What's really interesting is you start thinking, well, how do I want to be remembered? Do I want to be like, for example, with that guy in the airport? Could I have been nasty to him? Could I have rubbed it in his face that he was wrong? Could I have rubbed it in his small little personality the way I was feeling about him? Yeah, I could have done that. But that's not how I want to be remembered. I don't want to be remembered that way. I want to be remembered as compassionate and kind and loving. And I can't pull it off every day of every minute, but I can do the best I can. And so this idea of understanding your legacy is a really fascinating exercise in creating this sort of true north compass about how you really want to be remembered in the world. It doesn't mean that you want to be like the greatest boxer in the world or the prime minister that steers, you know, England out of World War II. I simply have those images up there for you to get a sense that. I'll bet you. I'll bet you that each of those people had a sense of their legacy before they had a legacy. And so the stronger you can have a sense of who you want to be long term and how you want to be remembered, the more magnificent in existence, I think you're going to live. So for this exercise, you just want to spend a little bit of time on each of those goal areas that we talked about and the sub areas in a sense. So you're going to write one paragraph and I'll go back to them here again just so we can recap it with quickly. You're going to write one paragraph written from your future you about your. About your quality of life goals. So you're talking about one paragraph about your finances. A year from now, how will your finances be different? A year from now, how will your social life be different? And remember, in each of these areas, in case you want to grab the screenshots if you didn't, I'm going to go through them quickly one more time. In finance, there's basically four areas to be looking at. Material goals, things you want to buy and own income goals, how much money you want to have coming into you, investment goals, how much you want to be investing and how much you want to be creating in terms of your net worth and contribution goals, how much do you want to be giving? Then we're going to again look at social goals. We're talking about goals around your family and your friends and your social life and your romantic life. And then we're talking identity. Identity. Here is your professional goals. What do you want to achieve in your professional life? And development goals like who do you want to become as a person, what languages do you want to learn, what skills do you want to develop, how do you want to improve as a human being? And of course, your creative goals. Maybe there's a book you want to write or a movie you want to make, or a painting you want to make, or whatever it is. What are your identity goals? Then there's your experiential goals. What are some of the great experiences that you want to have, have in life? And of course your environmental goals. Ultimately, how would you like your office and your home and to be. And then I've also got on here the environment. And for some of you, the environment means your office and home, and some of you it means your garden. And some of you it means the larger community. And some of you it means the planet. And so whatever it means to you, you set the goals accordingly for how you want to affect these things in the future. And as we said, once we've done the quality of life goals, we take a quick look at our legacy and that is ultimately, how do we want to be remembered?
