FILED UNDER: STORYTELLING - INNOVATION - LEADERSHIP & TEAMWORK
Going Out On A Limb Is Easier With Firm And Friendly Support
This post originally appeared on Forbes, and highlights the incredible work of one of our Snow Academy instructors, Alden Mills. If you like it, please check out his Be Unstoppable courses!
If you're like me, the universe seems to throw you curveballs moments after you set an ambitious goal. New work goal? Here's a thousand urgent emails. New health goal? Surprise party with your favorite cake. Trying to hit those quarterly numbers? Guess what: a couple banks just collapsed and now the market is spinning.
This reality—that unforeseen obstacles can rise up in front of our goals at any time—is one of the reasons I am pleased to see a ray of sunshine that former Navy SEAL and author Alden Mills has just put out into the world: a social app called GoalBud that draws on psychology research to help people overcome obstacles on the way to their goals, using a "swim buddy" system taught in Navy SEAL training.
As any SEAL will tell you, when you're thrown into choppy waters (figuratively or literally), the best way to be resilient is to be resilient with someone.
Mills is known for the books Be Unstoppable and Unstoppable Teams, and for inventing the hit training product The Perfect Pushup. He's also the instructor of the Be Unstoppable Course Series at Snow Academy.)
When I first encountered Mills' work on goal achievement, I was struck by how the principles he teaches get at the heart of why working on big goals is often so hard: it's lonely trying to climb a mountain by yourself.
Entrepreneurs often feel like they're on their own; they've got to prove to people (and themselves) that they're not crazy for going out on a limb. Often, entrepreneurs just don't have the resources to build a team to lean on in the beginning, but even when business is booming, there can be a wall between the entrepreneur and their village.
And when a storm rises, staying the course can feel lonely and exhausting.
3 Principles Of Social Goal-Setting
GoalBud operates on the idea, as Mills puts it, that "by making a goal, building a team, and creating commitments, you can achieve anything," even when surprise obstacles would normally derail someone.
Those are the three steps that GoalBud walks users through:
1. Set a goal (whether entrepreneurial or personal, say, fitness-related).
2. Build a team of people who can be your "goal buddies."
3. Create commitments, and have your goal buddies help you meet them.
The Research On Why Social Goal-Setting Works
When I asked Mills how his principles from Be Unstoppable figure into the design of his app, he shared this with me:
Says Mills:
"Harvard University Professor Steven Kraus and Dominican University's Dr. Gail Matthews recognized a need to research why we fail to reach our goals. They conducted a study of 267 people over four weeks, and guess what happened? An alarming 118 participants failed to complete the study! The 149 people that finished had been randomly assigned to one of the 4(+1) groups that were asked to complete the following tasks:
- Write down your goals
- Write down your goals, and make a plan
- Write down your goals, make a plan, and tell a friend
- Write down your goals, make a plan, tell a friend, and commit to weekly updates
"As a part of their study, another group was asked to simply "Have a Goal," but I've excluded that one from our discussion since without a goal we would have nothing to discuss! Just telling yourself that you have a goal isn't enough to help accomplish it. If you are serious about reaching your aspirations, there are 3 essential steps necessary to ensure success. By a large margin, the most successful people in the study were the ones who created what I call a Goal Team. To stay accountable to their mission, they shared their objectives with a trustworthy partner or small group of friends, committed to a plan, and agreed to provide weekly progress reports to their Goal Team.
"Those three pieces of the puzzle: Making a goal, building the goal team, and creating commitments around daily action are the keys to becoming unstoppable. The greatest goal I've ever achieved is to become a father and raise four boys.
"It's one thing to tell people: I'm going to write a book. It's another thing to ask somebody: Hey, will you help me write the book? The final piece of closing that loop. Is them saying, I am committing to you that I'm going to write 250 words. Everyday. On Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Once you've done that, the commitment is a promise.
"You're going to have to understand and accept some human truths. We're imperfect. You will fail. You will make mistakes, and that's part of the journey and process on this. However, The more you can learn from why you weren't able to commit that particular day and use that as fuel to help you accomplish more of your commitments will only strengthen your resolve to achieve something that you had never achieved before."
The world has a lot of social networks already—online and in person. But GoalBud is the first social app I've seen that is oriented entirely around helping us get better together. And as next week's news will surely reveal (and the next week after that), unforeseen obstacles will always show up in our paths. Why not use a buddy system to help us tackle them?