Achieving Goals Through Sacrifice
I believe that achieving goals through sacrifice is the best plan of attack for goals with binary success or failure outcomes because sacrifice is intrinsic, measurable and 100% within your control. I came to this conclusion after writing about the two types of goals I learned from my favorite blogger Seth Godin yesterday.
- Give up goals: goals that require giving up something through sacrifice
- Go up goals: goals that require going up to the next level to achieve something
Today as I was sharing this concept with my son, I had this “aha” moment. This moment came as I asked him what he was willing to give up to reach his go up wrestling goals this season. As I listened to him try to answer, I realized he needed more time to reflect because of how important he took this question.
I also realized that this was the perfect question for planning out how to achieve a go up goal.
If you aren’t willing to sacrifice something in order to achieve a go up goal, then that goal is not as important to you as you think. Sacrifice is intrinsic, and is 100% within your control.
What’s more, sacrifices are measurable. So having them as part of your plan is critical. Especially in cases when go up goals have binary outcomes of success or failure. For example, winning or losing a state or national championship. Often times you get one chance at achieving these types of goals. In addition, during the season it’s difficult to measure if you’re on track.
This is specifically why it’s important to have give up goals that require a measurable sacrifice directly mapped to your go up goals.