Creators Don’t Set Goals
Creators dream and most of them dream big, really big. In fact creators aren’t afraid to dream enormous dreams. They know that dreams are the seeds of what will eventually become their creations.
One thing though that creators don’t do is set goals. Now before you go off thinking that I am a complete fool in saying this, please give me a chance to explain myself.
You have no doubt searched many self development products throughout the years, and probably would agree that almost every single one of them in one way or another talks about goal setting. Am I right? Many of those self development products are tremendously powerful self development tools. I’m not writing this to disagree with goal setting. There are many great things to be said about goal setting.
Recently I read an article in the Early to Rise newsletter written by Michael Masterson which spoke of setting goals. It spoke of a study that was done by the Harvard Business School.
Harvard Business School did a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:
- As many as 27 percent of them needed financial assistance.
- A whopping 60 percent of them were living paycheck to paycheck.
- A mere 10 percent of them were living comfortably.
- And only 3 percent of them were financially independent.
The study also looked at goal setting and found these interesting correlations:
- The 27 percent that needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal-setting processes in their lives.
- The 60 percent that were living paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals (such as managing to live paycheck to paycheck).
- The 10 percent that were living comfortably had general goals. They thought they knew where they were going to be in the next five years.
- The 3 percent that were financially independent had written out their goals and the steps required to reach those goals.
Pretty powerful statistics in favor of goal setting wouldn’t you agree? Like I said I am not writing this article to disagree with goal setting. It’s just that for creators goals are too weak, too wimpy. Goals give too much wiggle room. Goals don’t carry enough umph to propel a true creator to the completion of their creation.
Creators create – plain and simple. It works like this: A creator dreams of what he would love to create, and then something almost magical occurs. The creator begins to love the creation. There begins to be a burning desire inside the creator to see the creation live. The creator will stop at nothing to bring the creation into existence. The creator begins to create. As the momentum increases the creators desire to see the creation exist increases as well. Passion, diligence, even obsession begin to drive the creator forward.
So you see goals are simply too weak to push the creator towards the creation. So what do creators do if they don’t set goals? How do creators ever accomplish anything of any significance if they don’t have goals to push them along?
I hope that I can explain the answers to those very important questions. Creators don’t have goals to push them along; instead creators have the creation that is pulling them towards its completion.
It’s kind of like this: Imagine a mountain climber trying to scale the side of a mountain. Below the climber is a goal that is trying to push the climber up the rock wall. Above however is a creation that has lowered a sturdy rope called structure (in later article I’ll describe what structure has to do with creating) that is pulling with great force. Which do you think will have more success in fulfilling its purpose, the goal or the creation? Which do you think is in a better position to bring the climber to its desired destiny?
As I hope you can see, goals simply aren’t powerful enough. And they are positioned in such a way that they cannot make use of powerful tools like passion, diligence, and even obsession. Creators create creations because they are driven towards and pulled by the creation itself.
The power to create is immensely more powerful then goals can or ever will be. In a further article I will explain why this is so. Come back soon to learn just how powerful this power is.
