14. Aim to Achieve, Not to Please

TL;DR: Set time aside to decide on a goal you want to achieve whether it is big or small, and apply strategies to maintain your progress rather than allowing yourself to follow others.

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

– Albert Einstein [1]

Introduction

Henry Ford (1863 – 1947), the American entrepreneur who paved the way for the modern car met constant resistance along his path. He was the fifth richest person in the last five hundred years [2]

Everyone wants to achieve something whether they admit it or not. What differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful is the creation of a goal, a plan to achieve that goal, and maintaining the momentum to follow through with it in the long term. The easiest thing to do in life is to be passive, and to allow ourselves to fall into other’s goals and dreams, which does not make us happy.

More often than not, a person grows up with certain dreams, but then soon loses track of what it is they really wanted. Even if one keeps these dreams or goals in mind as they reach adulthood, they lack the decision to go after it. Furthermore, those who make it to the point of trying to achieve their goals even still fail more often than not because they lose their momentum towards this goal.

“Taking inventory of mental assets and liabilities, you will discover that your greatest weakness is lack of self-confidence.”

-Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich Chapter 2: Faith

How Do You Tie Yourself to a Goal?

Anchor yourself into a belief system

In some way, you need to make your view of the world around you clear first before trying to navigate it. This way, things that happen to you make sense in some sort of framework that helps you to maintain your emotional fortitude. Read more in the article Solidify Your Beliefs.

Know Yourself and Your Desires/Goals/Dreams

To achieve a goal, you must be clear on who you are. This allows you to really see what it is you want from your life and to set meaningful goals to you. Many do not know themselves well enough to set goals they really believe in. Read more in our article on Self knowledge.

Momentum

Most people know themselves enough that they know what they should be doing, they just don’t do it. Momentum and confidence in oneself relies on building smaller successes over time. To do this, you must build the right practices and habits.

Just knowing your own path is not enough to walk it, you have to be good at what you are doing, which takes practice. Whatever you practice, you get good at, and then you become confident in. This can be seen as some people are confident in narrow areas like their work life, but completely unconfident in their dating lives, or vice versa.

How

Set A Goal

Set a goal, and practice or work towards it daily. The key is consistency. You must have an aim to work towards, a North Star at all times to direct you.

Break the Goal Down

After setting the goal, break it down into smaller parts that can be completed on a weekly or daily basis.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs” ― Henry Ford [3]

Track the Goal

Next, use a planner or calendar, and write these smaller goals into the planner. Then, check this calendar on a routine basis and compare what you are doing to what you said you would do. If you can, use numbers to track your goal since this is the most truthful way to measure yourself.

Follow Through

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [4]

A lot of people don’t make it to this step because it’s hard. That’s true, but knowing efficient “hacks” helps a lot, and makes it very doable if consistent effort is put in over longer periods of time.

Here is a toolkit of the most effective strategies for following through on your plan:

Form Rock Hard Habits

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ― Aristotle

Habits form great results over time, much like a stalagmite forms from single drops of water. One drop doesn’t deposit much onto the stalagmite, but these drops over time create something substantial. It is more important to work on your goals consistently in small amounts than in large amounts without the consistency. Use routines to become more efficient, for example, work on your goal at the same time every day for the same amount of time. After a while, when that time comes around there is no resistance to working, you just do. For each of the strategies below that you use, form it into a habit so that you do it repeatedly.

A stalagmite reaching up to the ceiling of a cave, built by drops of water containing minerals [5]

“Quitters never win and winners never quit”

We all know and hear of persistence often in relation to success, and it’s worth noting that persistence in itself is a habit.

Read more in our article on building and breaking habits here.

Take Care of Yourself

You can’t do anything without strong health.

Setting big goals and following through is under the category of human needs Maslow would call self-actualization, and rests on our emotional and survival needs. Focus on these lower needs enough that you are at peak physical and mental performance for your goals.

Maintain healthy relationships and cut off those who bring you down, eat real foods and do intermittent fasting, sleep in sync with the sun, engage in a sport, manage stress levels with meditation and having fun, and do all of the other biohacks we talk about on UpRiver to keep you functioning at your peak. Read more in our categories on nutrition, sleep, and physical health to get into some of the practices we preach.

Malsow’s Hierarchy of Needs [6]

It’s also interesting that Maslow thinks this higher need for growth increases motivation the more it is met (with success). This means that once you get the ball rolling, it gets more fun over time. This leads to the next point, which starts the momentum off:

Discipline Yourself

Just as you can train your body for sports, you can train your mind for your goals. Control the mind by meditating for at least 10 minutes per day. Work up to 10 minutes if needed, and make it the same time each day so that it becomes a habit. One simple way, but not the only way, is to close your eyes and pay full attention to your breath as it moves up and down, bringing your attention back to this in and out cycle each time you get distracted. Pulling your attention back in is analogous to contracting your muscle when exercising: it may be hard, but it makes you stronger.

Example: Peter Thiel

A current example of someone who follows their own path regardless of others is Peter Thiel, who bought 10.2% of Facebook shares for $500,000 in 2004. He also co-founded PayPal and is worth over 2 billion dollars. He’s famous for seeing what others don’t, partly because he reasons for himself. One article even calls him a man on an island since he is so outnumbered as a conservative in Silicon Valley, where the vast majority identify as liberal.

He applies the idea of making your own path in business, even saying:

“The big problem with competition is that it focuses us on the people around us, and while we get better at the things we’re competing on, we lose sight of anything that’s important, or transcendent, or truly meaningful in our world.”

You can read more on this in his book Zero to One. He was inspired by the idea of mimetics from philosopher René Girard.

Peter Thiel speaking with New York Times in 2018, at one point saying that Silicon Valley is out of good ideas [8]

You could say any person who accomplished anything of importance did something original, from Ford to Jesus to Thiel, and that they all had to make their own path to do so. The corollary is that it takes work to maintain your own direction and resist the stream of culture, and it may not be for everyone.

Summary

Be clear on how you see the world, then determine what kind of person you are and what it is you want. After you determine this, it will be much easier to determine what you want. Set a goal based on what you want, make a plan to achieve it, and leverage strategies like habits, a healthy lifestyle, discipline, autosuggestion, and the mastermind group to stick to the plan. This will gain you skills and success in the process based upon your true desires, which will allow you to truly succeed and be happy with yourself.