Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (18 page)

Over the last twenty years I have gone to my share of goal-setting workshops.
In the 1990s, I learned how SMART goals could make me a better student and employee. Theoretically, goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound get more of our attention and, therefore, are likely to be achieved. In the last decade, I also learned the hard way that juggling too many big goals undermines progress. One big goal at a time is a good rule of thumb, but it has to be one you care about deeply.

Most of the clients I work with, whether in psychotherapy or business consulting, are familiar with the kind of goal-setting rules I was taught. So I try to give them a new way to think about their aims. “Which goal are you most excited about?” I ask. “Excited?” they often ask. “Yes, excited. If you could spend your time all day on a single goal, what would it be?” One client responded, “You don’t hear those kinds of questions in a goal-setting workshop.”

She was right. Most people consider goal-setting to be work for diligent ants, not freewheeling grasshoppers. But the truth is, our rational, strategic thinking about goals is guided and spurred on by our emotions. As a result, we invest the most resources and make the most gains on goals we are excited about. And what if the goal that creates energy in you is not the goal your teacher, boss, or family needs you to work on right now? You do what you can to focus on two goals: one for them
and one for you. You also do your best to find something that excites you about the goal that has been assigned to you.

This is where a clear and specific goal can help, because it automatically calls up more energy than a fuzzy one. Take a vague goal like “I want to feel better.” How would you know where to start or what tools you need to make it happen? You can get closer to it by futurecasting. Ask yourself: “If you were feeling better, what would you be doing?” “How would your typical day change?” “How would your behavior change?” Finding workable goals is like bringing a distant object into focus with a pair of binoculars.

You boost your energy when you state goals positively. In other words, a goal should
add
to your life rather than
subtract
from it. “I want to fight less with my coworker” is clear enough, but its negative focus makes it difficult to find a workable pathway. You’re looking for positive behaviors that can help change your situation. “I want to get along better with my coworker” is an additive goal. What do people who get along do? They spend time discovering common interests. They say hello and compliment good work. They laugh at the latest office absurdity. These are some ideas you can act on.

“Find out what you do well and do more of it” was Don Clifton’s advice to me and many others. Gallup chairman and the father of strengths psychology, Don thought many people invest too much time and energy in overcoming our weaknesses and not enough time doing what we do best. I find that to be true of some of my clients when I talk to them about their goals. They spend much of their effort on goals that require them to work outside their strengths. I try to help these clients—individuals, schools, and businesses—figure out what they do best and find ways to do more of it.

Recently, thanks to meetings with my own strengths coach, Cheryl Beamer, and through my study of super-hopeful people, I figured out
that a very hopeful person almost always outpaces a less hopeful peer because, in Cheryl’s words, they “only accept A-plus opportunities.” That means they dedicate themselves to goals they are excited about, that align with their strengths, and that make a big impact on themselves and others. These criteria work when choosing which sports to play as a kid, which roles to take on at a job, and which activities to engage in during retirement.

Too many of us make life-altering decisions based on images that live only in our minds (and may not be shared with anyone else on the planet—including friends and family affected by the decision). We are much better off when we upgrade our time travel to bring the future as close as we can. Here are more ways to use futurecasting to explore and refine your goals.

“People have trouble seeing their future,” says Eva Quinn, vice president of corporate relations for the Principal Financial Group. “When a financial advisor says ‘what are your financial goals?’ people can’t figure it out.”
That’s why Principal built a simple, free mobile app called Dreamcatcher.

When you open the app, you are prompted to “[c]ollect your dreams for the future.” This means taking new photos or uploading pictures that symbolize your dreams from your phone or tablet, or pulling them from other websites, and sorting, prioritizing, and labeling them. You can also add text, making your picture of Paris or an isolated trout stream even more specific. Once your Dreamcatcher reflects what you want from your future life, you are ready to start on your financial plan.

When I asked Eva Quinn about her own Dreamcatcher, she said, “There is a pottery wheel, I have a log cabin in the mountains, I want to spend my winters on the beach. There is a college graduation photo.
I need to get my little kids through college.” Sharing these images with her own Principal advisor could help Eva get closer to reaching her goals.

Alli Rose Lopez, my wife, has a knack for getting students excited about reading, writing, and the future. As the founder and former director of the Omaha Young Writers Program, her capstone project grew out of visits with seniors at Omaha South High School.
The resulting book of student essays,
In My Shoes: Teen Reflections on Hope and the Future,
captures the seniors’ thoughts about what they wanted from their futures, and the many challenges that made the good life seem very distant.

As Alli was getting to know the seniors, she asked them to join her in a guided imagery exercise called the Future Day Fantasy.
This exercise subtly reminds students that they are the heroes in their own life stories and primes their imaginations to create a vivid picture of a future life worth living.

Alli started by helping the students relax, prompting them to close their eyes and breathe deeply. Then she began reading the imagery aloud:

Imagine that as you fall asleep one night, a golden, glittering grid of light suddenly surrounds you. You realize that you are in a time machine that is taking you to your own future. It is the year 2012. Two thousand and thirteen. Two thousand and fourteen. Two thousand and fifteen. . . . It is ten years in the future; you are now about to live a wonderful day, the best day in your life so far.

Most of Alli’s forty-five seniors had hopeful visions of going to college, landing jobs, and starting families. A few described dreams of opening their own businesses, becoming performers, or moving to exotic places. These goals became more real when each student shared
them with an adult mentor—twenty-nine volunteers Alli had recruited from local businesses, arts agencies, and colleges—and then, with a little help, drafted an essay illuminating their paths to the future. The exuberance and concerns of the students were matched with the excitement and support of the mentors, and a shoulder-to-shoulder editing process helped develop their writing skills. Even more important, the mentors listened and asked questions about the seniors’ day-to-day lives, and pushed them to identify pathways to their desired futures. Over six weeks, many of the students thought harder about these issues than they ever had before.

This exercise is not for students only. Try listening attentively to your own thoughts, and then put your future fantasy on paper. You may find yourself opening up and charting a new life course. The complete Future Day Fantasy script is at
www.makinghopehappennow.com
.

On a visit to see my uncles in California, Alli and I decided to rent a small SUV so we could all travel together on day trips and still have room for our luggage. When the agent asked if we had a preference among the available cars, I said, “Not really. What would you recommend?” That’s how we ended up in a Ford Escape.

This scenario is repeated thousands of times a day, and every business or vacation rental is a chance to take your future car for a test drive. Is there room for everyone and the kids’ car seats? Is it easy for the kids and the grandparents to get in and out? How do you like the handling? Would it improve your commute?

Alli and I were surprised by how much we liked the Escape, which hadn’t previously been on our short list. After a long drive to Lake Tahoe, Alli said, “Maybe this is our next car.” And just over a year later, there was an Escape in our driveway.

I first realized the value of test-driving the future when I had to pick a college. As a first-generation student, only the second person in my family to go to college, I knew that there was a lot I did not know
about this process. I had comparable scholarship offers from two state schools, University of Louisiana–Lafayette (ULL) and Louisiana State University (LSU). Many factors were tugging me first in one direction, then the other. I wanted more than a standard campus visit (too structured and too salesy) or a night on the town (too unstructured and too boozy). The plan was to travel to each school during the early spring of my senior year in high school, go to an afternoon’s worth of classes, eat campus food, spend the night in a freshman dorm, and then see how I felt about the college the next morning. And I would do this without a parent, sibling, or good friend in tow. Though I wanted their opinions (and had already consulted many of them), I needed this preview to approximate a real day and night on campus. I wanted to get as close as possible to how I would feel six months later, when the fall semester started.

The college previews did exactly what I needed them to do. While I felt lonely on my visits to both schools (I didn’t know anyone in the dorms where I stayed), the students at ULL seemed friendlier. Though all the classes I attended were large, I also noticed more professor-student interactions at ULL than at LSU. Finally, the advisers and counselors at ULL did a better job of helping me think about how to max out my scholarship by finishing in four years.

Taking your future for a test drive is the best way to see if it is right for you. You really want to know if a vacation spot is peaceful? Take a real or virtual tour during peak periods. Considering retiring to a different community from where you have been living? Search
homeaway.com
for rentals that will help you sample the new locale. Interested in pursuing a new line of work when you retire from your job? Talk to people in that town who created a second act for themselves and find out how the city supported their pursuits. Test-driving the future certainly helps you make decisions in the near term. It also can help you invest more in your long-range plans.

Sometimes you have to make a decision without a test drive. If so, find people who are living the future you imagine and get their take on it. Say you are considering moving to a new neighborhood. Talk to a number of people who live there and some who recently moved away. This will give you a more unvarnished assessment than you’ll get from a Realtor or from one chat with a community advocate.

If you’re hunting for a new line of work, talk to as many people active in the field as you can. Who sees the work as a calling, and what does it mean to them? Who is doing it just to make ends meet? If possible, talk to people doing the same job at different companies. What satisfactions come from the work itself? Which come from the particular work environment? This kind of information is usually just a phone call, text message, or cup of coffee away.

You build on positive expectations by visiting the future.
Then you go beyond visiting by actively contrasting the now—your present reality—with the then—your hoped-for future. This forces you to come to grips with the obstacles in your present. What might keep you from making that desired future possible?

For Andy DeVries, the possible future unfolded in vivid images: playing golf again, standing up with his team at the Senior Olympics, walking Sarah down the aisle. The stark contrast with his wheelchair-bound present motivated him to stick with the grueling physical rehabilitation program that put him back on his feet.