+1: Self-Concordant Goals (#1328)

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic One. In our last Plus One, we talked about how I read a book. More specifically, we focus on how I choose the books I read, which I believe is always the most important first step in how to read a book. In short, I said that I follow Joseph Campbell's wisdom to read the right books by the right people. As you may recall, Campbell tells us that when you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he's done. Don't say I want to know what so and so did. And don't bother at all with the best seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you and then you can go and read what he had read and the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem, but he hasn't said anything to you. Now, scientists would agree with this approach of trusting yourself and doing what really grabs you with books and with other things in life. In fact, Tal Ben Shahar connects the academic research on what's called self concordant goals to Joseph Campbell. To make his point, here's how Tal puts it in his great book Happier I quote, as research on self concordant goals illustrates, Campbell's belief is much more than a superstition. When we follow our bliss, we not only enjoy the journey, we are also more successful. End quote. Now in the book, Tal walks us through the importance of goals in general and the importance of what psychologists call self concordant goals in particular. Self concordant goals, Tal tells us, are the goals we pursue out of deep personal conviction and or strong interest. And as it turns out, Angela Duckworth echoes this wisdom in her great book Grit. We talk about the four practices to build grit in a plus one called the Science of Grit. Check that out. Here they are. In short, interest, practice, purpose and hope. Four practices. The first most important aspect of grit is interest. If we want to cultivate the sustainable passion required to cultivate grit, whether that's for important long term goals or simply getting through a book, we need to be intrinsically drawn to what we do. It needs to be, as we just discussed, self control concordant. All of which leads us to today's plus one. How are your goals? Are they clear? Are they self concordant? Do they fire you up? Let's not read books or do other such things because we think we should. As Tony Robbins would say, let's not should on ourselves. And as Rory Vaden puts it, let's not be should heads. Those plus ones are linked in this one. Let's do the things that grab us with gritty joy today.

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