Beat You to the Next Mailbox

I don’t like goals for the same reason I hate it when people say, “Do hard things!”

On one hand, we are often not smart enough to choose good goals for ourselves. Goals like making $10 billion, running a giant company, or looking like a movie star — are generally neither attainable nor fulfilling.

Likewise, saying “do hard things” is often a substitute for considering WHY something is so hard for someone. It’s like telling a kid with no legs to run a race. Obviously, he has different capabilities. But when you are dealing with something like neurodivergence, sensitivity, trauma – those different capabilities are just as real, but invisible.

Goals that don’t take into account a trajectory that actually feels meaningful and your actual capacity today are more like drinking a shot-glass of instant inadequacy.

But We Need Goals, Now More Than Ever

Because if we don’t choose our goals, we slide sideways into a life we hate.

As the pace of change quickens in the world, the way things were breaks, and the future gets increasingly uncertain, now more than ever we need to wake up and steer the ship. We need goals to decide where we want to aim, even if we never arrive.

Likewise, we DO need to “do hard things.” Choosing to face the creative fears, overcome resistance, stand in the unknown, be seen – all those things are the cost of admission to a life worth living. But just like the goals, our daily dose of fear has to be sized to our capacity.

What Even Is a Goal?

For most of my life, I thought a goal was a DESTINATION. It was a state or an action you absolutely planned to achieve. And then rest in, long term.

Like being rich, or famous, or buying a house, or becoming a stock broker.

All things that seemed like a lasting state of “having made it”.

But IRL, a goal is not a destination. It’s not someplace that you’re going to get to. It’s not something you’re going to achieve. (And unless you die, you probably don’t get to stay there gloating forever).

Instead, goals are more like mailboxes.

The best way to keep a bored kid walking is to race them to the next mailbox.

It creates a short-term, achievable mini-challenge, when the big goals are too far.

Goals keep you moving in a direction that you want to go, even though you know that the ultimate direction is going to change, and how we move is going to change, and why we do it is going to evolve over time.

All big goals evolve, just like a battle plan making contact with the enemy, or a new product you’re developing, or kid you’re raising. Reality presents complications. How we react changes. But the core trajectory remains the same.

So ultimately, the goal doesn’t have to be perfect when you start.

Instead, a good goal needs some felt sense of what you truly want, that feels real and meaningful, and that you can invest emotionally in long term.

What’s The Difference Between a Goal and A Growth Edge?

Goals are a big category. A goal can be something you aim for long term, like a 5 year, 1 year, 90 day plan. Goals can also be tiny or habit-based, like drinking more water or washing your tea cup.

But a growth edge is a specific kind of mini-goal that leads to your long-terms goal – something you care about, something that grows you, something that carries risk – something that is scary.

But not randomly scary. Not cause you’re risking your life, ruining your health, or overwhelmed.

Scary because it’s a step into the unknown.

It’s important to call out this kind of goal specifically because working at your growth edge are often the most beneficial goals. They are the ones that grow you the most, where you learn the most and make the most progress towards what matters to you.

And they are also where we have the most resistance to doing what we need to do.

If you don’t name and deliberately make a practice of approaching the growth edge, you will avoid it.

My Growing Edges – Visibility

In real life, my growth edge this year did not evolve the way I thought it would.

I started the year wanting to build a creative business, but torn between art and writing, and terrified of visibility. I ended going with the art because it felt joyful, safe, and regulating to me, something I thought would help long term.

So I invested in a couple of courses; I shared art in the courses and commented on other people‘s art to build the muscle. I eventually got up the courage to set up an Instagram sharing art. And something amazing happened! I didn’t die. Yay.

It turned out my fear of visibility was really more about my nervous system as a child than about my reality as an adult. It was definitely a mountain that ended up being a molehill.

Towards the end of the art course, the teachers kept advising: “Make the art that only you can make; Make your most real, your most risky art!”

But when I did, I didn’t feel anything. I realized that the edge for me was through the visibility issues; not the art itself. It didn’t feel like “I” was in there at all. No edge.

At this point, I found another awesome resource on writing, pivoted to writing, and I’m feeling much more comfortable with visibility. And when I do an essay, I do feel like no one else could have made that weird combination metaphors. Who I am – and who I want to grow into being – is in this.

Now I am terrified of building some kind of product or service I could sell and messing up. So yay, I’ve got a new mailbox.

What Makes A Good Growth Edge?

So there’s a couple lessons we could pull from this experience.

1. The best growth edge goal is often small, especially when you’re getting started and you don’t have much momentum. It might not really be your ultimate aim, but setting a small goal helps you get moving.

2. Movement can be oblique. Moving up “alongside” a goal, or leveling up skills in a related area, sometimes is a valid strategy. Dan Koe argues that building strength in one area of your life often helps you build the strength to get over obstacles in other areas. He divides life into mental, spiritual/relational, body, and business/financial. So if you’re blocked in one area — for example, money — working on your health or strengthening your relationships (i.e., increasing energy or networking) might help you in the business area. If you’re blocked consider how can you improve in a related area to build up the courage, the stamina, the focus, the intentionality, the proof, and self-confidence to work on the different area where you’re stuck?

3. What you get from an experience is often not what you think you’re gonna get. You may learn tons, but not the thing that you signed up for. For example, I learned tons from my art class, but less art, more on visibility, my ability to push myself, my schedule. I learned how marketing works, how classes work, what was effective for other students, and what wasn’t. None of which the class was teaching.

4. When the next step scares you on a nervous system level — pairing it with something calming and regulating can help get you through. But what you need to get through is often not something that you need to carry with you forever — once it’s served its purpose, you can put it down. It’s like the Buddhist boat analogy: a monk builds a boat to cross a river. But once across, does he decide to leave the boat, or does he carry it with him over the mountain in case he needs it later? He’s got to leave it. Likewise, we have to leave our coping mechanisms behind — or, in my case, art as a business plan.

Where Do You Find Your Growth Edge?

Learning to tell the difference between flavors of “OH NO!” is one of the hardest parts of the creative process.

Often fear is a nervous system response to keep you safe — your body is basically saying: this is new, this is different, we’ve had negative feedback when we crossed this line before, so let’s not go there.

But what kind of danger is it sensing? Is your body tired, overwhelmed, in actual physical danger, or legitimately sensing a wrong direction? Or is it just the ever present fear of the unknown, failure, or risk?

Often the best way to tell is to start. If you feel more energy 15 minutes after you’ve begun or more energy afterwards, it often means you’re moving through a growth edge.

If you still feel exhausted or overwhelmed 15 minutes in, it could be you need to give it a break or do it a different way.

If you’re nervous system is screaming NO! or your capacity is a problem, that’s a different situation. Often the answer is to shrink the task down to what you can safely manage.

It’s important to remember that a goal is a trajectory. It’s a long-term aim. It’s something that we build towards over time, even if we’re taking tiny steps.

And if your life is in a really difficult spot right now and you don’t have time, a lot of habits start best as five minutes, 10 minutes — something that you do while you’re washing dishes or driving the car.

Finding smaller, safer steps, paired with something that feels familiar to you, can be exactly what you need to get that ball rolling.

And on the other hand, if you’re NOT scared of anything, not pushing yourself to grow, maybe its time to start looking for something that requires a better version of you again, and build the courage to go poke it.

PS – I made a tiny planner to use with my kids to try to get them thinking about some of these entrepreneurial skills we need to support our creativity, find the edge, do the hard things. Feel free to grab it here and try it out! Let me know how it works!

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