Win Today
Win Today is a performance enhancing podcast filled with actionable insights and inspiration to come out on top in life. Through captivating interviews and solo episodes, a powerful tool is created and given to listeners to be able to push through any situation in life.
Hosted by Ryan Cass, he delivers messages that align to his purpose of helping people establish a foundation for sustained success, break trends of adversity, and chart desirable courses for life. Win Today!
Win Today
#189 | The Real Science Behind Goals: Unlocking The Secrets of Goal Achievement Ft. Caroline Adams Miller
Examining the power of hard goals reveals that authentic self-esteem and fulfillment come from overcoming challenges, as discussed with Caroline Adams Miller. By understanding the roles of relationships, investments, and grit through the Bridge Framework, listeners are empowered to pursue meaningful aspirations.
• Emphasizing the importance of hard goals in building self-esteem
• Distinction between learning goals and performance goals
• The significance of surrounding oneself with supportive relationships
• Criticality of identifying necessary investments and resources
• The impact of decision-making and flexibility in goal pursuit
• Promoting grit and resilience through focused efforts
• Importance of continual growth and reassessment in personal goals
Join Caroline Adams Miller and gain the tools necessary to take your goals to the next level by utilizing the Bridge Framework!
Connect With Caroline!
Website
Book - BIG Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life
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You asked me about challenging and specific. I just want to quickly say this one thing the research is very clear that at the end of every day we scan our days for what we did that day that were hard, because those are the things that actually give us authentic self-esteem and there's no other way to get it. It's by going outside of your comfort zone in pursuit of meaningful goals and doing hard things. That allows us to become the best version of ourselves, and the world rewards that behavior. The world rewards that behavior.
Speaker 1:The world does not reward people who set easy goals and that is fascinating, and Locke and Latham grappled with that, because they kept finding people who were setting low goals were happier as they went along, but the real and they were like why? Why are people having this sustained well-being as they accomplish these short term goals? But the longer term goals are a little bit miserable while they're pursuing it. And then they went bingo. Because the world rewards hard goals that you're not always happy about while you're pursuing them, because you're acquiring skills and you're failing at times.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Wednesday podcast, a weekly resource thoughtfully crafted to help people build and refine discipline, accomplish their goals, fortify their mindsets and be of service to somebody in this world. My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my mission and commitment to deliver amazing episodes to you every week where you will learn from myself or a renowned expert in their field. We love helping people win in every aspect of their lives, and you can help us win by sharing the show with somebody that you believe will benefit from it, subscribing and leaving a rating and review. We believe that everybody in this world is meant to do something great with their lives, and we're here to help play a role in that. Thank you for tuning in and let's win today. Thank you.
Speaker 2:They knew a secret that could make your life happier and more successful. Would you want to know what it was? Of course you would, and today is your lucky day because this chapter contains that secret. And, unlike the runaway bestseller, the Secret of the 1980s, this secret isn't one of magical and fantastical promises about how to make your dreams come true. This secret is the elusive knowledge that I learned in October 2005 that had been in academic and management textbooks for years, but it hadn't reached the mass markets until my book, creating your Best Life, was published in 2008. 15 years later, there are still only a few books that have shared this secret with the public, so let's make sure that you and those around you learn it now. And that's exactly what we're going to learn today, as we have the queen of grit and goals with us today, caroline Adams Miller, who is the author of nine books, including the one that y'all just heard from Big Goals, the Science of Setting them, achieving them and Creating your Best Life, caroline, welcome.
Speaker 1:Amen. Thank you, what an opening Wow.
Speaker 2:We just heard some cool stuff there and if we went to your website, we can see that you've been a successful author. You've worked with prominent companies, organizations. Author. You've worked with prominent companies, organizations, athletes all over the world, but what's really the most important thing for people to know about Caroline Adams Miller?
Speaker 1:and how you serve the world. I've never been asked that question, but the first thing that comes to mind are my children, because I'm so proud of them and I can't call them goals. But I have three remarkable children who have all achieved amazing goals and they've also had amazing failures which ended up being so important in their later success. And they've all married their, their people, and I have to say, as a parent, I'm not sure it gets a whole lot better than that. So I'm just going to say that.
Speaker 2:I love that. I always love to start with that question, caroline, because I believe in creating meaning before content, meaning that we could go straight into business and straight into books. But I believe it's important to get to know really what makes somebody human. And what I find to be so amazing is that the vast majority almost every single person that I asked that question to that's done a lot of amazing things in this world and continues to do amazing things. Is they go back to their family in some way, shape or form? Isn't?
Speaker 2:that interesting and it's neat to see that many folks, regardless of what they've achieved, what really matters to them isn't the you didn't say well, it's really important that everyone knows I'm an amazing author. You went back to something deep and I can appreciate that and it's my wish that every time that question is asked, that you know listeners can understand. Maybe it's not all about the things, but it's about the heart and what really pushes us there.
Speaker 1:May I say two things about that, because it's such a moving way to start this podcast, can I say two?
Speaker 2:quick things, please, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So in that first year of positive psychology. So I was in the first ever in the world Masters of Applied Positive Psychology class at the university of Pennsylvania, so I got to learn from the most amazing professors. Um and anyway, this science of happiness is fantastic, but what we were told over and over it boiled down to was, no matter what angle you looked at happiness from, it all boiled down to three words other people matter, and that is the foundation of all well-being in life is your relationships with other people. And that reminds me, because we just had this horrible crash here in DC of a Black Hawk helicopter and a commuter plane and we lost these amazing figure skaters and other men and women who were on the plane.
Speaker 1:But I went to the most undervisited national park in the country a few years ago and it's the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, pennsylvania, and there is an exhibit in this very silent national park where all you hear is people crying and you're invited to pick up the phones that include the last messages people left for loved ones. They knew they had 90 seconds to live, they knew they were going to die and I just embraced myself to go listen to them. Every single message people left was about their love for their family. And I get choked up. But it's just you know to start our conversation this way. Just you know we're going to talk about goal setting and getting things done and all the rest of it, but really at the heart of happiness are people, the right people.
Speaker 1:And so again and again and again, you see the lesson if you look for it.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's beautiful. Other people matter and I sat there and just envisioned for a second what it would be like picking up those phones. And yeah, it's often. I feel as if it can be often for some people that it's not until the last moment that we realize or reflect on what's really the most meaningful thing in life, and I believe hearing what you said is a reminder and maybe even a call to action for people to do some inventory. What are you really placing the most value on right now? So it's a beautiful starting point and I appreciate you offering those two contributions there and wow, we're already rolling so with that.
Speaker 1:Where do we go from here? What do you say, say hello.
Speaker 2:One thing we didn't cover before we started well, I understand from you is what led you down this journey of being so passionate about helping people achieve their goals and also develop the frameworks that you did, but more so around goal achievement of all the things that we could do in this life and the endless possibilities. What led you to land on this Like for me personally and we talked a little before the big reason why you see that goal board behind me really goes back to my earliest years and from a very traumatic place and goal setting for me and discovering that is my way of ensuring that the generational curse of alcoholism and trauma and abuse in my family dies and it's done and the more I focus on that, the further I get from ever creating that possibility. So if you could go into the origin story of Caroline and goals and where do we go there?
Speaker 1:Gosh. Wow, this is a deep conversation. First of all, congratulations on all that you've done to distance yourself.
Speaker 1:I have been sober for 40 years, so I understand that journey as well. I guess, if you reverse engineer my life, it really all started when I overcame bulimia, when I was 22. So in the early 1980s I just graduated from Harvard, which was filled with other people with heating disorders. I mean, it was truly an epidemic. I was a swimmer Swimmers were notorious for this, runners, gymnasts, whatever and I thought I was going to die because there was no cure, there was no hope, and I thought getting married would take it away. And sure enough, I was purging on my honeymoon in Jamaica and I just remember looking in the mirror, thinking this thing is going to kill me, I don't even have a future. And I stumbled into a 12-step meeting for compulsive eaters in Baltimore a few months later and that was where I heard this sentence that changed my life, and the sentence was my name is Betsy and I'm recovering from bulimia, one day at a time. And I remember my head jerked up. I had never heard all those words in a sentence and I didn't know people talked about it. I mean, you got to remember this was Karen Carpenter died, and it was just shame, and that was the day I knew I was going to get better. So something inside of me kicked in, and so overcoming bulimia and then writing the first autobiography by anyone who recovered my Name is Caroline is the book.
Speaker 1:I realized I could do hard things and I realized that I could cultivate grit, and I did. And so I think that that, all piled together with Olympic athletes or Olympic gold medalists in my family, et cetera, I just realized that I am a competitive person. You can take it to the dark side, which I think I did. But how do you become your very best self without developing stupid grit? And how do you help other people raise their profile of who they think they can be? How do you help them dream bigger? And that's what I love to do more than anything. So, discovering goal-setting theory when I went back to school at midlife, oh my God, it was like I don't know. It was like a match to a torch. I just I could not believe there was science to goals, and my whole life changed in 2005. I honestly couldn't believe there was a science to goal setting and I thought I knew it and then I found out I knew nothing. So that's been the mission since 2005, but probably earlier than that, in a different form.
Speaker 2:I appreciate how you've converted we'll call it a trauma into triumph as well. And then it led you down this road and perfect segue, as you brought up the discovery in 2005, which is what I opened up with at the start of chapter three the 800-pound gorilla. And this is what I've been most excited to talk with you about, because up until this point, up until the very recent future of getting this book, I figured I know plenty about goal setting and share some stats and figures and love to talk about it. And then I'm sitting here scratching my head like how the heck did I not know this? What is going on? So what do we get wrong, we being society, and what do we fundamentally get wrong about goal setting and its classic teachings, or the lessons that we hear the most, or the acronyms such as SMART, which we were talking about before?
Speaker 2:starting what's fundamentally wrong with those things.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I think we get a lot of things wrong. But, like you, I really thought I knew goal setting. I owned all the books Zig Ziglar, brian Tracy, blah, blah, blah, blah. I quoted from them. The Harvard study of 1950, write your goals down. 3% of people write their goals down. Then they, I mean, I really thought I knew science because these books had it.
Speaker 1:Then I'm, you know, I'm assigned goal setting theory by Locke and Latham and I realized what there's a science that's stuck in academia. And then I went home and looked at every book not one footnote, not one reference, all urban legends and snake oil. So I went on a mission to start sharing this. And what we get wrong is that we don't realize there's a science and it's not our fault because I think it has been stuck in academia. I've done my best to bring it to the world. But as a woman, I tell you, the one area where women have made zero progress in the last hundred years is in being seen as agentic. We are not allowed to be agentic and goal-directed because we pay quite a penalty from both men and women. So I'm walking into the mouth of the lion by being a woman writing about the science of goal-setting.
Speaker 1:But what we get wrong is there's goal-setting theory. It divides goals into two goals and if you get two kinds of goals, if you get it wrong, you know you're you're off on the wrong foot right away. And that's. There's learning goals things you've never done before. You have to acquire skills and knowledge. It's a whole different process for proceeding. And then they call it performance goals. I call it checklist goals, because those are things you have done before that fit on the checklist.
Speaker 1:So we get that wrong. And what we've all fallen for are these acronyms like SMART goals, which was created by a consultant in 1981. He didn't know science and it was published and it was sticky and problem is there are 55 definitions for it. Outcome to any goal learning or checklist is challenging and specific. The minute you look at the SMART breakdown, you realize it's doing you a disservice when it says attainable or realistic. That's not how you're going to get your best outcome. So that's just one thing that we get wrong. And then there's so many others that we can go into. But first is you got to know goal setting theory and I hope I've made it easy and readable for people to learn in this book.
Speaker 2:Let's break it down a little bit, because you described goal setting theory as the engine for your bridge framework, which I believe this will lead us into, and you mentioned that the research from Locke and Latham breaks goal setting theory down into learning and performance goals, and what I really interpreted from it as well in the book and through some additional research is that it sounds like the harder the goal or the more difficult the goal, that's actually better because it's going to bring the best out of you. Am I misinterpreting that at all?
Speaker 1:No, you're right, so you shouldn't be attaining all your goals. That shows that maybe you didn't stretch hard enough, you weren't creative enough in the ways in which you went about pursuing your goals. But they did find, over and over hundreds of studies. This is why it's ranked number one of 73 management theories, number one with no replication, crises, no challenges, no cheating, no made-up data. I mean that's really roiling the field of psychology and sociology is all this made-up data. They've never had a challenge. So what's super important is that you set the goals and that you break them down, and I'll just give you a great example of a learning goal and a performance goal. That happened yesterday. Was it yesterday the Super Bowl? Okay, so if you are pursuing a learning goal, it's the first time you've done it.
Speaker 1:What I was looking at and thinking about Patrick Mahomes or any quarterback there's a reason why there's training camp is because when teams get together in the spring to start training together, it's a learning goal. They haven't played with each other before. Maybe it's a new offensive coordinator. You know how to play football, you're there, but you're learning new ways of interacting with people. A new playbook, a new quarterback, whatever. That's a learning goal, a performance goal. I was listening to how the NFL goes about picking the cities for hosting the Super Bowl and they said they have a checklist. So they have a checklist of all the things you have to do, starting two years before the Super Bowl, because it's a checklist goal. But you know each city, kind of you know New Orleans is different from Denver or whatever. But that is a great example of why some goals are checklist goals and you can say there's the date by which I'll accomplish it and here's the excellence I'm striving for. And then learning goals are. You know you're learning how to do it and by the time you're playing the game or whatever, you will have adapted to a certain level of excellence that you can keep pushing yourself on.
Speaker 1:But when you asked me about challenging and specific, I just want to quickly say this one thing the research is very clear that at the end of every day we scan our days for what we did that day that were hard, because those are the things that actually give us authentic self-esteem and there's no other way to get it. It's by going outside of your comfort zone in pursuit of meaningful goals and doing hard things that allows us to become the best version of ourselves and the world rewards that behavior. The world rewards that behavior. The world does not reward people who set easy goals. And that is fascinating, and Locke and Latham grappled with that because they kept finding people who were setting low goals, were happier as they went along and they were like why are people having this sustained well-being as they accomplish these short-term goals, but the longer-term goals are a little bit miserable while they're pursuing it?
Speaker 1:And then they went bingo. Because the world rewards hard goals that you're not always happy about while you're pursuing them, because you're acquiring skills and you're failing at times. So you develop self-esteem, authentic self-esteem, and the world rewards that. And that's why when you watch the Olympics, there are no participation trophies. It's first, second, third, I and what I see a lot of now, is you know?
Speaker 2:just 10X, your goals and whatever you think is challenging. Multiply that by 10 and now that's your goal. And because even if you don't get there, you may achieve 5X, which is still monumental versus maybe what was easy at 0x or at baseline. So are there validity in those things or is it a little bit more intricate or simple, as it relates to where do we draw a line between making something hard? Where do we draw a line between making something hard?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really good question. So I'm not a fan of just saying 10x your goals or double what you did last year. It has to be based on something specific. So too often venture capitalists, for example, or investors they'll buy a company and they'll say 5x your profits by the time we cash out in two years or whatever, but it's not based on any real conversation.
Speaker 1:Is there some learning going on? Do you have to build artificial intelligence into how this company operates? We've just had a black swan event the coronavirus. How are you going to deliver groceries to people if nobody's accepting deliveries? How do you sell a car when you can't see people? So to just go, oh, let's 10 exit without any kind of conversations, like is there anything new here that we have to learn? We got to take the time to actually do that. That's what you really have to have are nuanced conversations, and I just finished reading the Mercer Global Workplace Report, which is a lot of fine print.
Speaker 1:But one of the things every corporation, like over 90%, say is they're going to have to have learning goal conditions, because they have to stop and figure out how is this artificial intelligence going to make them more excellent and efficient? And they have to stop train people. There's upskilling going on. You can't just say 10x what you had last year. You got to add a lot of skills and knowledge to see really what you can be capable of. But still make it hard. Just don't automatically say it's got to be this number.
Speaker 2:Or pieces of the puzzle, rather. So going to People will disengage. Is there any research that suggests a percentage breakdown between learning goals and performance goals? Because what I heard is learning goal is something you're doing for the first time, and then performance goals. They're not new things, but they could be those checklist items, as we're still relatively fresh into 2025, caroline, is there an ideal breakdown that 30% of your goals should be first-time learning goals and 70% performance, or is there not really an ideal mix between the two?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what Locke and Latham found is that most of our goals are learning goals, and learning goals become performance goals or checklist goals. I'll call it checklist for the rest of the the rest of our interview, because you get a performance out of both kinds of goals. So it gets confusing for people. But the reason why learning goals are so important is because when people are engaged in the process of curiosity and acquiring knowledge and being open to the learning and it's okay to fail, it's okay to take some time to add this knowledge they're more engaged at work, and disengagement at work is one of the biggest problems that companies have because it leads to a lack of productivity. So you want to be able to identify your goals correctly at the outset, whether you're in a company or these are your personal goals. Because in the process of giving yourself the grace to find a mentor on YouTube, to find, you know, maybe just whatever a class on YouTube, a mentor out there that you reach out to you really have to take the time to figure out what's this platform I'm building for myself. So I don't think there's an ideal breakdown, but I think it's far more learning goals than people even suspected and even if let's say I've got a great story that I always tell in speeches about one of the top car salesmen or Dodge Jeep salesmen in Pennsylvania, and when coronavirus hit, the whole showroom shut down and he didn't know how to sell a car because he had always been a back slapper.
Speaker 1:He rode in the cars with people and he went home and said to his kids teach me how to text, get me on Facebook. I got to figure out a whole new way to sell cars and so he gave himself time to understand technology. And then you know what's so interesting when you read the story about him in the newspaper because this is where I found it he had his best month ever after he gave himself time to learn these new things, to get on the computer, to text people, to go on Facebook Instead of going in a car with them. He would FaceTime them while they were driving, and so, yes, that was a checklist goal for him, but he had to add some learning components to it and it became a checklist goal for him again and he's having his best year ever and continues to have best years.
Speaker 2:What's interesting about what you said there is that he took time, and I believe in the world that we live in now, it's often suggested that we shouldn't take time to maybe slow down, to speed up If we're thinking about incorporating this goal setting theory into our playbook and as this episode will likely release in second quarter of 2025. So if we were to break down the year into quarters, we'll call it a new quarter. Maybe first quarter didn't go so well for people, but folks are listening now and they're thinking okay, I want to go ahead and test some of this stuff out. Is there some sort of question inventory that you go through Like, okay, what are some, what are, what's one thing that I want to do differently this year that I didn't do in 2024? Or how can we really prep ourselves to adopt goal setting theory?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really good question. So the first thing you want to say is why am I pursuing this goal? What's its meaning in my life? So the first thing you have to make sure is it's it's got some relevance to your values and who you want to become and what you want to be remembered for. So these, these are really important goals that we have to consider every year.
Speaker 1:So let's say, you want to quit smoking and you have tried to quit smoking two other times and it didn't succeed and you're wondering well, why didn't I? That is still a learning goal for you because you have not quit successfully yet. So what you want to do is go back and say what parts of it did work for me With being around a different group of people. Did I abstain longer? Was there a gum that I used? I mean, what pieces that worked for me before can I bring back in? And then, what's new? What's out there that I could try? That's different. So it could be acupuncture, it could be anything.
Speaker 1:But what you do when you have a learning goal is you cast the net wider for information, you find more mentors, you find more sources of knowledge, but you always ask yourself what's new? What have I not tried before? Make it a high goal for you to try a new approach to learning this, but make it aggressive. By Friday I will have, for example, you want to learn how to salsa dance. By Friday, I will have gone to three different studios to look at the teachers and I want to see if the classes speak to me. It's not like, hey, I'll go on the internet and just check it out. By Friday I'll go to three places and I will have an opinion at the end of Friday. So you want to make it hard for yourself to you know, acquire the knowledge and then begin to experiment. Will this help me accomplish that goal? So that's, that's the first thing.
Speaker 1:If it's a checklist goal, if it's something you've done before, go back to your checklist. If you're missing the mark, go back. Is there something you did before that you are skipping now? Because we find, like surgeons before, they had checklists going into surgery, these highly skilled doctors. They were sure that they remembered every step that needed to be taken in order to successfully remove a gallbladder, but people were still dying on the table until they found.
Speaker 1:Checklists matter. So when you're packing your suitcase, when you're doing surgery, when you're a pilot taking off, make sure you have a checklist and then again ask yourself what's new? Is there a way to improve your checklist? Check it out with other people and then you want to set a hard date and a hard outcome so that you're seeking excellence and I really believe in my bridge method, ours relationships you really have to have the right group around you, holding you accountable and cheering for you and holding your feet to the fire, so it's more than just the learning and performance. Once you get that, you go into this next set of steps you have to go through in order to really make it possible for yourself to succeed.
Speaker 2:Do you ever find that and perhaps have you even struggled with this yourself at times? Being a high performer and us ambitious folks, sometimes we may wrestle with hard not being hard enough, Like, do you ever look at something and you know that somebody else where you have a strong sense that somebody else would say, holy smokes, that's insane, Caroline, but to you it's not hard enough because you're a high performer? And if so, how have you overcome that? Discipline is a key component of this podcast and a key thing that we preach. We view discipline as the fuel to help you create the life that you ultimately desire, and discipline being the fuel that gets your habits and systems in check so that you can actually accomplish your goals. If you're looking to level up in 2025, I am happy to be a part of that and encourage you to join the Unshakable Discipline Mastermind Group. This has been my baby for a couple years and we're finally launching it here in 2025. The group consists of a self-paced course that teaches you how to form core habits and mindset that will allow you to accomplish your goals, a daily accountability channel to keep you on track, motivated and in alignment with our members, and weekly mastermind sessions where you're going to learn from either myself or a suite of renowned guests many who have been on the podcast that are going to share pieces of their winning playbooks directly with you. I've learned that being a part of groups over the years has helped propel me to so many new levels in life.
Speaker 2:If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, then go together, and it's my wish that the Unshakable Crew is a choice that makes sense for you in 2025. We are growing up to 100 members this year and have limited time founding member pricing for 12 more folks before we permanently increase pricing to $97 a month. You can get in now for $67 a month, locked in for life, and be a part of the adventure that we're creating with our members. If you're somebody that craves discipline, seeks it or wants it this year, and you're really committed to making lasting changes in your life and being around others that are committed to winning and serving the world and sharing what they learn with others so that we make this world a better place, then join the Unshakeable crew. Go to unshakabledisciplinecom and you can sign up. It is also in the show notes Unshakeable shake, as in milkshake, unshakabledisciplinecom, and we're excited to have you in 2025. Let's go.
Speaker 1:You know that's such a good question. So around the corner from me is Katie Ledecky.
Speaker 1:She grew up in my neighborhood, right, and so just this adorable little swimmer I choose to take to swim practice, um or just you know she was in the same swim practices as my kids and I just watched this ebullient little girl set ridiculous goals, starting at the age of six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And she had goals that other people would say were completely unattainable. Except Katie was made of something different. Katie had a mindset and a work ethic that her coach recognized and he pushed her to set those kinds of goals. So if you know somebody, or somebody who knows you well and whose judgment you trust, thinks that maybe you are undershooting the mark because you haven't really given yourself credit for what you really are made of, then you might want to go a little bit harder or seek the kind of advice from a board of directors that would help you to do that. Sometimes I do that, but I think it's also important.
Speaker 1:There are times when you don't have to set just the hardest possible goals and when you look at the research on resilience and stress, sometimes when people have had a big failure, an epic fail, they just have to get back on the horse that threw them and they just have to get a win, and maybe it's a quick win, but it's a win.
Speaker 1:It's a feeling of mastery. We all have to have that. So I think that when you know people are judging other people's goals, they don't always understand what's hard for me may not be hard for you, and it may not be hard enough because you don't believe in yourself enough and someone else does. So mastermind groups can be incredibly helpful in helping people to dream bigger, go bolder and celebrate. So I know you're into mastermind groups too, but I do think everyone should be in one or two mastermind groups of the right people who help them to answer these kinds of questions. But you have to have a board of directors people who look at you and you're willing to have them look at you, which requires humility, and humility is a key ingredient of grit, and I don't think most people understand the link between humility and grit.
Speaker 2:Amen to that and we're going to get into the bridge framework, but I'll speak on the relationships piece and board of directors, as you mentioned, as maybe something that will help at least one person.
Speaker 2:And one thing I do every year is I obviously write out my goals and then I type them up and I write a personal letter to myself and I send that out to my board of directors or a bunch of my mentors.
Speaker 2:And because I also believe in the fact that, if one stat that I love to share is my two favorite stats in the world, dr Abigail Matthews did a study on people that write their goals down versus don't write their goals down and found that just by writing your goals down, you're 42% more likely to achieve them.
Speaker 2:Additional studies showed that when you share your goals with a group of people, your odds of achieving it increased to roughly 70%, because now you know there's a group of folks that not only are they informed, but you, being a person that values your word, probably wants to work a little bit harder now that somebody's involved and there's always one mentor of mine, bill Bill Stephens, that I know when I send my goals out and they're often very lofty he'll either. Yep, that's definitely a stretch. Or sometimes he'll come back and say did you think about that? Or are we leaving a little bit on the table and I can speak to the benefit of having those folks around, because there's been some where I've increased, because my board of directors say, hey, you got more in you than you think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's humble to do that, to send that out. Let me make a comment on writing goals down. So I would love to have you send me that study, in particular the Abigail Matthews, because chasing down some of the research on writing down your goals is really elusive at times, because it's usually writing down your goals and then the other piece is specifying the when and where you're going to do that. So it's not enough to write it down, you have to actually go that. Next step. You know, if this happens, then I'll do that the if, then implementation intentions. Next step If this happens, then I'll do that the if-then implementation intentions.
Speaker 1:Also, people get into what's called positive fantasizing, and that's really destructive. So when you write your goals down and don't back it up with any kind of work or accountability, what you often find is people begin to believe they've done more to accomplish that goal than they've done. That's Gabriel Ottingen's work, and so it's called mental contrasting, and so you don't want to dwell too often in like visualization boards or you know all these things that we've been told. Imagine yourself on the top step of the podium. That's actually destructive, and so you, you, if you do too much of it. So you want to imagine yourself. It's like you write this letter to yourself in the future. You want to imagine yourself in that place, that place you want to be, but not for long. You want to then turn around and go back to the present day and go. What are the obstacles in front of me, what are the evils I'm about to meet on this road? And that's what the ancient Stoics called premeditatio malorum premeditate the evils that are going to happen as you walk down the road towards your destination. And so that's what Gabriel Adagin this whoop method, she came up with. But that's basically what it is Wish you know, and then you've got these obstacles, and then you overcome them, and that's your plan. You overcome them and that's your plan. So that's why I think we got to take a little bit of a grain of salt.
Speaker 1:When you write it down, there is a way to write it down and when you tell people here's the other piece this is really, really, really important. There's research on what's called goal shielding, and goal shielding is when you share your goals with the wrong people, and it has the power to dissuade you from pursuing your goals if you share them with the wrong people and if they do not respond. With this form of responding that's been studied, active, constructive responding, curiosity and enthusiasm you may very well have dug the grave for your goal before you even start. So it's not just sharing it with other people. It's sharing it with people who you know have a track record of curiosity and enthusiasm about your goals. They're happy for you.
Speaker 1:There's very few words in the world, in any language, that mean I'm happy because of your happiness. That's because people don't always do it. There's a lot of schadenfreude. I spent years and years looking for the opposite of schadenfreude because we were asked in 2005 to find it. I found it in Australia and it's um fear gun. It's an untranslatable Yiddish word. I'm happy because you're happy. And then there's mudita, in Sanskrit Um. But you know what? What you really have to be careful of is who are the people who are privy to your dreams and goals? It shouldn't just be anybody, and maybe it shouldn't even be people in your family, because maybe you're shaking up the family by having these big goals and people are going wow, how am I going to look when he achieves that running thing that he's doing? So you got to be careful.
Speaker 2:This is fantastic, caroline. This is absolutely fantastic. On that last note, is it fair if someone doesn't avoid doing that and getting the wrong person on the bus? Is it a fair question to ask? Do I believe that this person is genuinely curious and invested in me? Challenge that with some additional inventory that we should take before we, before we shoot this off to somebody I know unknowingly, potentially unknowingly, dissuading ourselves from the goal and and killing any chance that we have of getting there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple of things. One is the research is by a woman named Shelly Gable at the University of California, santa Barbara, and she talks about doing an experiment. And it's like the red button on the smoke detector Don't just assume somebody is going to be curious and enthusiastic because you know they should be. You know it's your sister, it's your mother, it's you know it's somebody who should be happy for you. She said push the red button on the smoke detector with a fake piece of good news or a big dream fake and see how they respond, because if they don't respond with curiosity and enthusiasm, they just told you who they are. Believe them, believe them.
Speaker 1:So goal shielding means shield your dreams and goals, particularly in the nascent stage, in the earliest possible stage, like a tree that's just been planted and it's got the wire around it to keep it from blowing out when the big winds come. Treat your goals and dreams like that, don't just willy-nilly share it with other people without that proof. And then the second thing I want to say is women are really, really bad at being happy for other women who succeed at their goals, and that's for all kinds of reasons. It's called biosocial theory. There's a lot of reasons why women are not happy for other women. There's scarcity theory, et cetera.
Speaker 1:84% of women admit they're surrounded by friends who are enemies, frenemies, and for that reason they do not take care of their goals. And so well, two things happen. One is, if they share their goals and they're surrounded by frenemies because they want everyone to think they're nice, then it's a good chance that your dream will be rained on. And the second thing is there's so much research showing that women who are agentic and goal-directed are going to piss both men and women off and they're going to pay a huge penalty. So women in particular have to be very, very careful about who knows their dreams and goals and who's going to celebrate with them.
Speaker 2:Wow, now I'm going to go ask my girlfriend, who all she's told yeah.
Speaker 1:Or ask her how often does she put something on LinkedIn or Instagram, something she's proud of and not get likes?
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 1:You'd be surprised how wounding it is, because women are wired to need other women. It's called tend and befriend, and what women do so well and so cruelly is they ghost other women and they shut them out of the tribe by ignoring them or shaming them. Because that's what little girls learn to do. While boys learn to fight, little girls learn to fight with their words and with shaming and ghosting other women. And it goes on for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:I hate to say goes on for the rest of your life. I hate to say, as I was doing my prep and listening to other podcasts that you've been on. You talk a lot about what the latest research shows as it relates to men and women and goals, and so I'd love, since we're on that track right now, what are some of the not nuances, but we'll call it fundamental topics or things to consider as it relates to men and women and goals, Because I always envisioned that it was universal, that, hey, everybody should have goals and they're likely motivated in the same ways. But you've showed that that's not the case and it's important that we bring this to the forefront, in addition to things like goal setting theory, because they're not discussed enough. So what are some of the key things that we should understand here?
Speaker 1:So there's a couple things. One is we're just starting now to ask the questions of the research and parse it in new ways. To say, does that finding hold for women as well as it does for men? One example I gave you before we started was Adam Grant's book Give and Take, which talked about being a giver, and if you're a giver and you give without strings, you will reap all the rewards in terms of success, because other people will be at your side. And then, if you overgive and you give to takers, you end up at the bottom. So that was designated the business book of the year in 2017.
Speaker 1:The problem is, the research does not show that women who give get rewarded. Women who give are expected to give, and so if they do not give, if they guard their time, if they have boundaries because they have their own work to get done, they will pay a social penalty again. They will be seen as they're all kinds of words you know self-absorbed mean cruel, cold, whatever, but men who have boundaries, they never pay a penalty for it. So that's just one thing that happens when men and women are onboarding at the same company and they're um, they are asked to go to happy hours to meet their new colleagues, et cetera. Women who follow through and go to those get to know you. Events are seen as cold and self-absorbed and abrasive and whatever. Um and too ambitious. And men who go to the happy hours they're seen as well. That's what men do. Ambitious and men who go to the happy hours they're seen as well, that's what men do. That's just another example. So women pay a price, even when they're told to go do this. When men and women are given the same tasks at work and women finish on time and do it well, but men take longer maybe do it as well, but always take longer work nights and weekends they're actually rewarded for that behavior. They're seen as more dedicated to the company. So when women finish things on time, they're penalized as well. Women don't have role models the way men do.
Speaker 1:So we know that self-efficacy comes from reading stories and hearing stories about women who've succeeded at things, and Wikipedia has acknowledged that only 18% of the biographies in there are of women. 82% are of men. And that's because there's a huge problem with men deleting women's biographies, and even one woman who got the Nobel Prize for physics, they deleted her biography the year she won the Nobel because they said she wasn't noteworthy enough, and that matters, because you begin to shoot too low in goal setting if you don't see and hear examples of success that sound like you, that look like you, and that just isn't happening enough. I told you that there's this problem with dude podcasts. I mean, I've listened to success podcasts for hours at a time and one day I realized for seven hours all I'd heard were men talking to other men about men. You know, ceos, presidents, special forces, special forces, special forces and there wasn't one example used that was about women. So women end up shooting too low, shooting too low.
Speaker 1:And then there's one more thing I'll just say. There's so many things to say, but in the workplace, women do not get feedback that matches their efforts. So in performance reviews, they're told very general things, whereas men are given leadership kind of feedback, and feedback is a huge moderator in goal setting theory. You have to get accurate feedback in order to know if you're on the right path. So women have to seek out people who will give them real, accurate feedback or at least challenge the feedback they're getting if it doesn't match what they've actually done. So the deck is very much stacked against women and Mark Zuckerberg, when he said the workplace has to get more masculine just recently, said he's talking about the kinds of behaviors that are not rewarded in women, that are rewarded in men. So the workplace is now tilted more against women. So there's a lot of ways in which women's goal setting is penalized, and it's just tragic.
Speaker 2:Is this something that you often bring up with the companies that you're speaking to or work with, and if you are consulting with any companies to combat that, what does that look like?
Speaker 1:to talk about it, because they see, let's say, one woman getting onto a board and never pulling other women along with her, or there's a mean girl in the office. There's something called kicking and climbing. That's very common in male-dominated professions law, medicine, et cetera where, as women rise, they don't climb and lift, they kick and climb. And so, pointing this out, there is something called climbing and lifting where women look up in a company and they see other women at the top and it's a female dominated company. What they see are climbing and lifting.
Speaker 1:So you need to educate people, you need to bring it up. It is painful because there is a myth that the sisterhood supports all women. So you have to at least talk about it, and I have all kinds of ideas about how to deal with it, but one that I hope will stick is ampli-ship. I think that we are missing a term when it comes to talking about whether or not we help other people or women helping women. We've got mentorship, sponsorship and allyship, and they're not muscular enough because they don't determine whether or not that behavior actually took place with witnesses. So I talk about ampli-ship. I think it's important to amplify the good news and successes of other women in front of witnesses, because if you don't, if it's not witnessed, it's too easy to say it happened when it didn't happen. And so those are the kinds of tough conversations you have, but people are forewarned. They bring me in if they know I'm going to talk about it, because I think it's the hidden hand that holds women back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate you being an advocate and voicing this out and educating us, because you know, and again, one thing I truly, truly appreciate about you, caroline, and your work, is that this is, this is so profound and I and I wish that I'm like, why the heck didn't we learn about this earlier? And I'm excited for where your work takes you, as specifically as it relates to the opportunity that we have with women and goal setting. Now, one thing that I want to make sure we don't miss is that we've danced around the bridge now and we threw smart out the window early on and you developed the bridge framework which we can apply to our goals, with goal setting theory being the engine, bridge being brainstorm, relationships, investment, decision-making, good grit and excellent. So how can we apply the bridge method? And let's break that down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for circling back to this. So I do think Locke and Latham's goal setting theory is just a fundamental, important piece of setting any goal. You start there and then build from there. What has happened since they published goal-setting theory in 1990 and then updated it in 2013 with the work on priming is that there's been a lot of newer research on things like.
Speaker 1:There's a really powerful finding in positive psychology that happiness precedes success, which is stunning. When you think about it, you know success doesn't follow. Success doesn't come. Wait a minute. You don't become happy because you're successful. It's the opposite, which means that when you're studying goal setting, you have to take a look at wellbeing and what are the wellbeing measures that we have for ourselves. So we're looking at things like character strengths. So there's a whole world of new feedback, including this gender work, that has come out since goal setting theory, and I've been I was pondering for 15 years how do I integrate this new research and put it on top of goal setting theory?
Speaker 1:And finally, um, a man, um, a professional colleague of mine woke up after having a dream, but he saw a bridge in his dream and it was like my method and I'd been playing with other acronyms and he called me out. He's bridge, caroline's bridge. It's the gap it's from here to there. It's like, oh my God, you're brilliant. Okay, so it is what it is is it's a series of prompts. It's like artificial intelligence. If you go through prompts around, brainstorming, what's new? If there was a Star Trek solution to this challenge, what would that look like? You have to ask yourself out of the box questions that I have in the book. You have to brainstorm effectively, not just sit in a room with people who look like you and sound like you and all went to the same school that's dead on arrival. So there's brainstorming, and the brainstorming includes is this a learning goal or a performance goal? Actually, you start right there.
Speaker 1:Relationships who needs to be part of my goal setting pursuit? Who do I need to keep away from me? That's just as important, if not more important. You have to have boundaries around people who will take your energy, be Debbie Downers, whatever you want to call them. But you also have to look ahead and say do I need this person in this department of my company in a month or two to be part of my solution? If so, I got to tell that person now. So relationships matter.
Speaker 1:Investments People don't always think about how much time do I have to invest, how much energy, how much money Do I have to get into therapy in order to be able to face that challenge? Do I have to invest in that? Do I need a coach? If I want to speak publicly, do I have to get a speech coach? I mean, people don't think through the investments.
Speaker 1:Then the really cool thing was decision-making. I got way into the rabbit hole in decision-making science because most people don't know their decision-making tree and they haven't thought through when have I made my best decisions and when have I made my worst decisions? And then I started to look at in the book Annie Duke's work on poker and things like resulting and having quit criteria. So you have to have a decision-making process. When are you going to pivot? When are you going to turn around? You're heading up to the mountain and the Sherpas say the whiteout's coming. When are you just going to abort? So you got to have all that in place too.
Speaker 1:Good grit Do you have the passion, the persistence, the purpose? Do you have the ability to self-regulate, to have this good grit? And then excellence you got to shoot for the excellence. That's going to help you have the right kind of self-esteem and self-confidence. So if it's too low, if your excellence bar is too low, you're going to end up feeling mediocre and not as purposeful as you might otherwise. So you have to set the excellence and off you go from there.
Speaker 2:I love the framework, and so if someone were to set a new learning goal, they would get clear on okay, here I'm going to choose. Let's say, my learning goal is going to be what's something? I've never competed in a triathlon. Okay, so I'm going to compete in an ironman triathlon, so that's my, that's my learning goal, because I've never done that, I've never competitively swam, never competitively cycled, and and it's and it's important because this will be a new way to challenge my body and mind, in which I can then inspire other people to challenge their body and minds and do hard things, and ideally also to raise money for families that have a loved one battling cancer, since I tie a lot of my ultra marathons to that.
Speaker 2:So that's my learning. Now do we go into the bridge from there? Is that kind of the progression path?
Speaker 1:Yes. So you get. You say, yeah, it is a learning goal. What's so interesting is you're a runner, you run a lot of miles, but so you're not just saying I'm going to do this Ironman thing and boy, it's a performance goal. I got to get. I got to finish my first one by October because I know how to run. Yeah, you know how to run, but you've never put it all together in a race. So the first thing you say is okay, it's a learning goal. I can't have a specific outcome by a specific date, but I got to give myself time, got to give myself time to learn. How have other people trained for it? There's lots of books, there's websites, there's conferences. So I'm going to go learn from people who look like me, who have my body type, who have my age, whatever. And so you figure out how to flatten your learning curve as fast as possible that way. And then you always say what's new? Is there a new way to do this? Well, there's augmented reality. Gosh, maybe I can wear Google Glass and I can go in augmented reality and simulate what it's like to do the whole thing. So you always say what's new? That's part of brainstorming Relationships who will I need.
Speaker 1:I may need a coach, I may need someone to help me with my stroke. I'm going to have to get a bicycle. Well, that's the investments Bicycle. So the relationships.
Speaker 1:And there's a guy in my book who swam the English Channel last year. We went through his whole relationships thing his nutritionist, his acupuncturist, whatever. Who do I need? Who do I need to keep away from me? Investments yeah, you're going to need a bike. You're probably going to need a bathing suit. You're going to need like 10 pairs of goggles. You're going to need the right kind of shampoo to get the chlorine out of your hair. If you train, you might have to join a pool, you know. So you just go through all of that really carefully.
Speaker 1:Another thing is this guy, dennis, who swam the English Channel. One of the investments he had to make to swim the English Channel was he had to hire, he had to pick a slot two years ahead of time and pay for it two years ahead of time. So sometimes investments in Ironman triathlons involve putting a lot of money down right there, okay. So there's investments, and then there's decision-making. Well, when do I want to do the first one? How will I decide when I'm ready? So you go through all of that process. Does that make?
Speaker 2:sense so far.
Speaker 1:Okay and okay. So, and how will I know when to pivot? If I have a broken ankle, am I going to keep training for it or am I going to pivot and do something else? You got to have your quit criteria as part of your decision-making Grit. Do I have the right self-talk? So when I want to quit because something's getting really hard and I want to quit because I just want to quit, do I have a place I can go in my brain like a pain cave that will get me through this? I'll bet you have a pain cave. I'll bet you've got a heck of a pain cave. And then excellence what is excellence to you? It might mean just finishing, you know, finishing your first one. And then, after you do a bunch, it becomes a checklist goal and that's when you can say, by next October, I can shoot for this particular time because I've already, you know, done all the learning.
Speaker 2:Right Right. That's so well illustrated and understandable and I appreciate you breaking it down and providing that context. One thing I love about the brainstorming portion and folks. This book truly is packed with tons of research, studies, stories, a lot of supplemental resources and there's 24 brainstorming no, 30 brainstorming questions. I'll pick out my favorite one or unique one. If an intelligent alien civilization offered advice on our goal, what unconventional wisdom might they provide based on their unique perspective? So there's so many different questions we can go through in this brainstorming process to help us create clarity. It doesn't need to be this one question. Think a little bit Right, Think outside the box a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, can I give you a story about the Star Trek question in there, please yeah, can I give you a story about the Star Trek question in there, please yeah. So I worked with Nadine Haram, who is the CEO of a company, proxime, and she was doing Doctors Without Borders. She's a surgeon, she's in England, in London actually, and she would go do these trips where she would fix cleft palates and do all this, you know, surgery for free in these third world countries or places where they didn't have access to surgery, and she would come back and be on a high for a few weeks and then she'd go. My God, I'm barely moving the needle. So what if?
Speaker 1:And then one day she had watched Star Trek as a kid. One day she saw like all these operating theaters connected like Star Trek and she saw holograms of surgeons in all these operating theaters connected like Star Trek. And she saw holograms of surgeons in all these operating theaters and damned if she didn't turn that into a company. So now, Proxima, doctors can beam into third world operating rooms and their hands can hover over the hands of a surgeon who's doing surgery for the first time. So, from this Star Trek thing, how could you solve this. If it was Star Trek, it was like beam me up, scotty. She beams in surgeons all over the world and this company is changing the face of hospitals now and surgery. Because she asked herself that out of the box question what if it was a Star Trek solution? I find that so cool.
Speaker 2:I love the story behind it. That's amazing. Caroline. Do you have anything exciting coming up or things that you'd like to share, and how can we keep up with you and all of the amazing work that you're doing?
Speaker 1:Gosh, thank you. This has been a really moving interview. So I first want to thank you. I am creating a certificate I realize I can't get to enough people with books and interviews so certificate system where people are going to come virtually learn this process, then go teach it in your school, your athletic team, whatever in a company, so that I've already created it. Now I have to film it. So that's happening. I'm writing a fuller book on women supporting women, because I really do believe that we have to learn ampli-ship. So that's coming up and then I just, you know, keep doing the work I'm doing. I'm just really excited by sharing this knowledge. And Locke and Latham are still alive and gosh, those decades of scholarship. We all need to salute them. I'd love to see them get their just due.
Speaker 2:Yes, Amen to that. It's customary on the podcast to end with a rapid fire session and this is called One Gem, One Step, One Book. So imagine that we get to meet face-to-face someday and we're going to lunch at a cool spot in DC and we're going in an elevator. We're going up three floors and a new person is going to enter the elevator on each floor and they're going up one floor. They recognize you and each of them is going to ask you a question. So the amount of time you have to answer the question is the amount of time it takes to go up one elevator floor. All right, so the first person, the first person gets in the elevator. They recognize you, they've read, they've read your book, they've read one of your nine books and they they come in and say, Carolyn, what's one gem that you have, whether it be a quote or a mantra that you live your life by? That I can put in my back pocket and live my life by as well.
Speaker 1:You can't keep what you don't give away.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:That's what someone told me at a 12-step meeting for compulsive eaters when I was getting better from bulimia, and she went that's great, but you can't keep it if you don't give it away. You better go give away your recovery if you want to keep it.
Speaker 2:That's so beautiful, next person gets on. What's one step that I can take today to begin my goal-setting journey using your methods?
Speaker 1:my goal setting journey using your methods. First thing I would tell people to do is make a list of things they will regret not doing if they don't pursue them. Start pursuing them now. They're looking back on their life. What are the things they would regret not pursuing? Pick one and then walk through the bridge method and goal setting theory and go after it this year with the right set of accountability partners.
Speaker 2:The last person gets on, and this might be the most challenging question what's one book besides yours that you recommend reading in 2025 to help us reach our goals, improve our mindsets and our way of being?
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you a weird answer. I read Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington last year and it was one of the most extraordinary books I'd ever read and I didn't realize the fragility of our democracy until I read how we almost lost. I didn't realize how close it was. And there's true leadership examples in that book, humility, and I just thought every American should read this book and every American should go to Normandy and see what happened at D-Day. I think we need to expose ourselves to exemplars of awe, and when we find books that evoke awe in us, like I'm reading a Harriet Tubman biography right now, that's where I want to live is in a state of awe.
Speaker 2:It's a very unique offering there and one we haven't had, and I appreciate that. Caroline, this has been an absolutely fantastic discussion. I've truly enjoyed it, truly enjoy your work, and if I had any regrets, it's that I didn't discover it until just recently, and it's my wish that this conversation prompts many people to really dig into goal setting theory and apply the bridge method, because it is going to help them win today. Thanks so much, you.
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