How to think differently and boldly about your goals

If you feel your life is a little underwhelming and could do with a pick me up – here is some new brain food to get you fired up this January!

You may have leapt into 2022 with a sense of excitement and a clear path set down with plans and goals to follow. Or you might still be in discovery mode and  reflecting – uncertain of what to do as we emerge from two very different and maybe challenging years. You may have paused your life as events unfolded and are now concerned that you are not growing or evolving into the person you want to become and wondering what would have the most impact for you. Help is here …

If you need a kickstart to rediscover what you want and who you need to be, to get it, then Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book How to Begin: Start doing Something that Matters is a good place to start. It is not your typical goal setting book. I have just finished reading this really useful book and I am going to use it to delve deeper into what I want this year. The difference is in the depth of thinking it helps you have. It is the blueprint for anyone who’s felt stuck or stymied … and wants to be more ambitious for themselves and for the world in 2022. It comes out this week and will help you find, define and start your own worthy goal.

You may already know of Michael – he has written books that have sold about a million copies, including The Coaching Habit, a self-published book that’s become the best selling book on coaching this century. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and he founded a highly creative training and development company, Box of Crayons, that has taught coaching skills to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

I fell totally in love with Michael’s amazing brain over a decade ago. His brilliance in curating helpful thought provoking questions, the simplicity yet insightfulness of his words and his creative curiosity, come to mind. His new book is another gem to take your big and small  ideas, craft them into meaningful goals that matter and ensure they have real impact for you and others.

That love affair continues to this day having consumed all his books, podcasts and helpful resources he shares with the world. He recently said someone once described him as a mix between Mr Incredible and Fozzy Bear – he is comfortable with both, and I can relate to that, so am I!

The book starts with the premise that we unlock our greatness by working on the hard things and that worthy ambitious, helpful and powerful goals are much more exciting than SMART ones. He knows you are busy, so he worked hard to ensure the book is only as long as it needs to be to add value for you – no more. He sets out a detailed thought provoking 3 step process with the aim of you understanding it, getting it and using it. Each step causes you to pause and go a little deeper than you normally might do so – so that you buy into and commit at a different level. Michael also shares his own personal journey through the process to make it more real and share his own challenges.

In writing this, I remembered the great little video he shared with the world to launch his book Do More Great Work 11 years ago. A book about finding the work that will have more meaning and more impact. I think the two books work really well together and here is the video to inspire you to check out Michael’s great work!