Chapter 4
The Future Myth
Josh immediately regretted his decision.
What the hell are you doing?
He stared longingly, almost desperately, at his car as they swung onto the driveway on the tiny motorcycle.
Today you missed a mortgage payment. Then you found out your business is about to collapse. Now you're clinging to the back of a 70 year old man who's driving a motorcycle that's just as old. Would it be safe to say we've bottomed out, Josh?
Josh glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye, and looked over in time to see Amy laughing at him.
Apparently not.
There was barely enough room on the seat for one it seemed, and Josh could only imagin how ridiculous the two of them must look. Cor, in his greasy coveralls, ancient leather helmet and goggles, and Josh clinging to his back in a mixture of fear and shame.
Oh God. Please let me die swiftly in a head on collision instead of slowly of embarrassment.
By the looks of things, though, there was no way this bike was going to go fast enough to hurt anyone. Not with two of them on it, headed uphill. Josh had never felt more ridiculous in his life. Death by embarrassment it was, then.
To his surprise, though, Josh actually began to enjoy the ride. It was beautiful country, and the weather was perfect—just warm enough to enjoy the breeze as the bike hummed steadily down the road. With nothing to do, no ringing phone, no computer screen, and no one to talk to—he was sure Cor couldn't hear him over the wind and engine noise—Josh actually began to find the ride relaxing. For the first time in ages, and despite the day's chaos, he found his mind clearing. I need to come up for air once in a while, Josh thought.
A few minutes later, Cor slowed and turned onto another long driveway, and sped toward a distant home. Flanking them were row after row of green plants, and Josh realized they were at one of the vineyards he had seen during the drive to Cor's.
Cor stopped the bike, and cut the engine. Josh climbed off.
“Well, that's a first for me,” Josh said.
“Well you're going to love this, then,” said Cor.
Before Josh could ask him what he meant, a loud laugh rang out.
“You still pulling this same stunt?”
Josh looked over to see a tiny woman—well under five feet tall—standing with her hands on her hips, smiling broadly at the two of them.
“Eloise,” said Cor, “this is my friend Josh.”
“Josh,” she said, walking forward and extending both arms. “Let me take you away from this old man and his frat house initiations.” She shot a reproachful look over the top of her glasses at Cor. “You should be ashamed, making this man ride on that ridiculous contraption.”
Cor just laughed. “Eloise, you can live in denial as long as you like, but I know you can't wait to take a ride.”
Eloise took Josh's hands. “Don't listen to him. Let me take you somewhere sensible.”
“Now that's denial if I've heard it,” Cor chuckled. “You'll be wishing you were still on the bike, Josh. Mark my words.”
As Eloise led Josh across the yard toward a large barn in the distance, Josh began to wonder again what he'd gotten himself into. As they approached the building, Josh could see that while it may once have been a functional barn, it was now anything but. There was a parking lot beside it, with several vehicles lined along the building's edge. Josh could see the windows had been replaced, and as they drew closer, he saw a sign that said Agents of Change, Inc., near a porch like entrance.
“Have you enjoyed your visit with Cor, so far?” Eloise asked.
“It's all a bit overwhelming, to be honest,” said Josh. “I'm supposed to be learning…” Josh broke off. “Well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be learning.”
Eloise cackled. “Cor can be a bit cryptic. I think he fancies himself to be some sort of enigma. Once you get to know him, though, he's like an open book. At any rate, we'll see if we can make things at least a tiny bit clearer for you today.”
Josh followed Eloise inside and experienced a moment of dislocation. Where moments before he had been standing in a farmer's field outside a barn, he now stood in a quiet, climate controlled, modern office space. Like Cor's shop, Josh realized, the outside and inside of Eloise's barn were very different places.
Josh followed Eloise as she crossed an open lobby toward the reception desk. Her footsteps echoed, and Josh's gaze floated upward to the high ceilings where he saw that the beams of the original barn still held the restored roof and ceiling.
As he brought his eyes back down to the desk, he noted a large sign over the desk: Today is December 19th. He felt the strange sense of dislocation again, and it took a brief moment for him to realize it was the sign that was wrong, not him. It's mid October, he thought. Looks like they haven't changed the sign in almost a year.
That thought was immediately followed by the sense of doubt he'd felt earlier in the day. How much help can these people be when they don't even know what day it is?
“Josh?”
He blinked. Eloise and the receptionist were both smiling at him.
“I'm sorry,” he began, “I…”
“No apologies necessary,” Eloise said crisply. “Happens all the time. The sign is not incorrect.” The sign is not incorrect? What is that supposed to mean? Before he could open his mouth to ask, though, Eloise was walking ahead. “Follow me please,” she said, without looking back.
Josh looked to the receptionist, who simply grinned. “Good luck,” she said.
Josh caught up with Eloise, who led him down a hallway. She stopped in front of a closed door. “Please keep your voice down while we visit this room, Josh,” she said, and without waiting for a reply, she turned the handle and entered.
Josh could see they were in the opposite corner of the building from where he had entered. A huge expanse of windows let bright sunlight into a large open room that held more than two dozen people engaged in different activities. In one area, a number of people sat at easels painting. Against the far wall was a kitchen area where a man ladled soup from steaming pots into stacks of containers, while behind him two more people ferried the sealed containers into a large walk in freezer. In the opposite corner of the room, a larger group sat cross legged on the floor in meditative silence.
It struck Josh that even the kitchen workers seemed intent on their tasks. There was virtually no conversation at all.
Josh took all of this in within a few seconds, then turned toward Eloise. She was watching him carefully.
“Who are all these people?” he asked softly.
“They're our clients, Josh.”
“Why are they here?”
“They're all addicts. Substance abuse of some kind—drugs, alcohol, or food, typically.”
Josh looked around the room at the odd cross section of people and activities. He turned his body away from the room to face Eloise directly. “Look,” he said in a low voice. “I'm not sure what Cor told you, but I'm not an addict. I'm not even a workaholic, never mind an alcoholic. I think there's been some kind of mix up.”
“No,” said Eloise bluntly. “No mix up.”
Josh opened his mouth, but closed it again. Okay, he thought, I'm here. I may as well see this through. “Right. So they're all addicts. I guess this is a treatment facility of some kind. What are they doing? Drying out? Detoxing? Retraining?”
“No,” Eloise said quietly. She motioned toward the door. “They're goal setting.”
With that, she simply turned on her heel as she had outside, and marched from the room. Josh was skeptical. This isn't any goal setting I've ever seen. He followed Eloise into the hall, but as he left the room he felt himself deflate just a little. Goal setting? he thought. If I had a nickel for every time I've done goal setting exercises. Once again, he found himself doubting Cor.
Eloise led him across the hall to a smaller kitchen, and Josh watched her tiny frame bustle about as she prepared tea for them both.
“Disappointed, Josh?” she asked bluntly as she set the cups down on the table.
“I'm sorry—it's just that…well, I was hoping for something a bit—”
“—a bit more original?” Eloise interrupted. “Don't worry. This isn't the same old, same old.”
“But I'm really not an addict. And that's not denial. You can ask anyone.”
“Don't worry. You're not being committed to a twelve step program. We look at goals a bit differently here.”
“But I don't see the relevance. And I have to warn you, I've been to more goal setting workshops than I can count on both hands.”
“Excellent,” Eloise said brightly. She set her cup down and leaned forward. “Please tell me about some of your most ambitious goals and how you achieved them. What did that feel like?”
Josh looked at her for a moment. Her expression remained unchanged.
“Is that sarcasm?” he finally asked.
“Yes.”
Josh cracked first, breaking into a grin. “Okay. Fine. Perhaps I don't know everything about goals.”
Maybe you don't know anything, said the voice in his head.
Josh ignored it and smiled at Eloise. “Could you enlighten me?”
Eloise smiled back. “I thought you'd never ask.” She settled back in her chair and took a sip from her cup.
“Achieving goals is really about two things, Josh. The first is goal setting. That's what the people you saw in the other room are working on. You can't achieve a goal if you don't define it.”
“That seems pretty clear to me, but I have to say that's the most unusual goal setting I've ever seen.”
Eloise pulled a small card from her pocket, “Let's clarify the first part—the goal setting—a little further.” She placed the card on the table between them. Josh saw that it contained three blank lines.
“To understand goals, you need to appreciate that goals are about a future achievement.” Eloise wrote briefly on the card, then turned it around to face Josh. It now contained a single word:
HAVE
“Goals are about what we want to have achieved—whether that's losing weight, hitting a sales target, building a dream home, or saving for retirement. Goals describe something we want to have achieved at a point distant from now.”
“That makes sense,” Josh said.
“To you and I, sure,” Eloise said. “But in order to set a great goal—to define what you want to have”—she tapped on the piece of paper—“you need to be able to envision something in the future. That's something addicts can't do.”
“They can't?”
“Not as far into the future as good goal setting demands. Some severe addicts are seeing only hours into the future, Josh. Days at the most. Their immediate needs are too demanding. What might seem obvious to you is far more difficult for people who struggle with addiction.”
“So, what are they doing here? How is all this helping them set goals?”
“They're learning to see into the future.”
Eloise smiled at Josh's expression. “I know it sounds strange. But it's really straightforward. Once they get through their physical withdrawal challenges, they come here. We teach them to look further and further into the future. You just saw a small slice of that. Remember the sign in the lobby?”
“Sure. You said the sign was not incorrect.”
“Right. The date was wrong, but on purpose. We're creating a whole environment focused on the future. We call it Future Focus. We take care of every immediate need, and encourage them to be focused further and further ahead. The people you saw cooking? They're preparing meals for a week from now, and freezing them. Each one is dated, by them. The painters? They have to paint an image of their life months from today. The meditators? They're imagining their future selves years from now.”
“How does that help?”
“The basic activities—like preparing future meals—help our newest clients learn to shift their focus a small amount ahead in time. They're not accustomed to thinking beyond a few days or hours. They're looking for the next drink, the next hit—whatever it is that their addiction demands. But as they progress—as they do things like paint a future several months away, or imagine their lives in ten years—they have to be able to ask themselves big questions. They have to ask, what do I want my life to be like? What do I want to have accomplished? What do I want to have? Who do I want to have in my life? What does it look like?”
Josh looked down at the paper at the word have.
“Okay. That makes sense. But I'm still not an addict. I really can see further ahead than a few days.”
“Fair enough. So what are some of your future goals?”
Josh thought. “I try to set sales targets at work. And my wife and I have talked about what we'd like our income to be. And…” he trailed off. “There are vacations we look forward to.”
She nodded. “Then let me ask you this: how many of your goals have you accomplished?”
Josh felt his cheeks flush. “Not many,” he said after a pause. “At least, not many big ones. I do feel like I've accomplished many things, but when I try to set my sights higher, things seem to fall apart…” he trailed off. “You know,” he said after a moment, “it almost seems like when I set goals and don't achieve them, that I feel even more unsuccessful than before.”
Eloise smiled. “Cor never sends me any dummies.”
Josh laughed. “I'll take that as a compliment,” he said. “But…why is that? It seems crazy; I thought the whole idea behind setting goals was to help you reach them.”
“That's the idea. But it doesn't work when you're missing half of the equation,” Eloise said.
She reached out and turned the piece of paper on the table back towards her.
“You've been taught that the mere act of setting goals—identifying the have—sets great forces in motion to achieve them. That's the first part of great goals. The setting. There have been entire books written about this. An entire belief system that says that setting goals will change your life. The problem is that there's a trap there—a myth. We call it the Future Myth. If I'm the first person Cor's brought you to, then it's the first thing you need to stop believing; that the act of goal setting is what makes things happen. It doesn't.”
Josh looked at the card on the table. What she was saying seemed to fly in the face of what he'd been taught. “What about people who say they were inspired by a great goal and it changed their life?”
“That may be true—goals can be inspiring. And should be inspiring. That inspiration is the fuel that keeps us going. It's a key ingredient in any great goal, as you know. The problem is that it's not enough.”
Eloise motioned to the card on the table.
“Typically, goals are focused here,” she pointed at the Have. “We describe a future state—what we want to have, or have achieved. When you set a sales target, for example, one that you can clearly define, and see in your mind's eye—when you do that, you're here.” She tapped the card again.
“And you're saying that's not enough?”
“It's only part of the picture. If that's all you do, then you fall victim to the future myth by thinking that setting a goal is enough to make it happen.”
Josh thought back to his attempts to reach his sales targets.
Eloise continued, “What's missing is defining what needs to be done in order to get there.” She wrote one more word:
DO HAVE
Josh looked at the card. “And you do this with your clients, too?”
“Of course. Once they've developed the skill of defining clear have's, we ask them to answer a simple question: What do I have to do to achieve that result?”
“And that helps?”
“It does more than help, Josh. It makes magic.”
“That's no small claim,” Josh said.
“Let me give you an example.”
Eloise stood up and took a framed picture down from the wall and brought it to the table. “This is one of my first clients.” The photo was of a strikingly attractive woman, standing hand in hand with a man on a tropical beach.
“She seems happy,” said Josh. “What was her goal?”
“To lose weight.”
Josh looked at the picture. “You're kidding me. There's not much to lose, there. That's like me wanting to earn $10 more a year.”
“This photograph was taken after we worked together,” Eloise said. “When I met her she weighed over 350 pounds. She was different from our addiction clients. She had a relatively ‘normal’ life. When we began to work together, I could see she could easily visualize her goal. She was passionate about losing weight. She knew how much and by when—in other words, she had goal-setting figured out.”
“So what was the problem?”
“She'd had the same goal for a decade, and had gained weight every year. Not only was goal-setting not working, it seemed to be making things worse.”
“So what did you do?”
“What she did, with our help, was reverse engineer her goal,” Eloise said.
“Reverse engineer?”
“Yes. That's how we get to the next step,” she tapped the page. “We work backwards from the goal—the have in the future—then what we need to do in the present to move toward it. That's the second key ingredient in goal achievement. We set the goal, then we need to set the behaviors to reach it.”
“That makes sense in principle,” Josh said, “but what does it look like in practice?”
“In her case, we asked a single question: What did she have to do every day to move her closer to that goal?”
“Every day…” Josh mused. “Well, I guess she'd have to weigh a little bit less every day, and then after a certain amount of time, she'd reach her goal.”
“No.”
Josh looked quizzical. “But…it makes sense. If she weighed a quarter of a pound less every day for months, she'd reach her goal eventually. It's just simple math.”
Eloise tapped the paper on the table. “You're still stuck in the have, Josh. ‘Weigh less’ isn't a do. It's not an action. What we did was direct her toward behaviors. Things she could do. Using your answer, she'd just get up every day and step on the scale and look to see if anything had changed. That's more like wishing.”
“What she did instead was create a list of key daily behaviors that were aligned with her goal. Things like walking every day for twenty minutes. Shopping for a week's worth of healthy foods each Sunday. Making a lunch for work each morning. Even things you might not think of, like saving a little money every day for new clothes that fit properly.”
“Once that was done—which took some time—she had in her hands a list of small, repeatable behaviors to get from where she was, to where she wanted to be.”
“Why the focus on repeatable behaviors?”
“The key to success is to do things. The trouble is that the Future Myth fools us into skipping that part. But at the root, every success story is one of action and persistence. It's about doing, and then doing again. Breaking down big, overwhelming goals into simple, daily actions or behaviors is how we achieve them. In your job there are probably a handful of things you need to do every day, over and over, in order to get where you want to go.”
“It seems like there are a million things.”
Eloise laughed. “There are. But there are likely only a few that drive your business, that help you find clients and drive sales. The ones that add up to do the most to drive you toward your goal.”
Josh perked up. “So what are mine?”
“In sales, Josh, you probably know you need to have a certain number of leads, which generate a certain number of appointments, which, in turn, result in a certain number of prospects, who then turn into a smaller number of prospects, who then become clients.”
Josh knew the protocol well. “We call it the sales pipeline or funnel.”
“Right. Each part of the funnel is like a sub-goal to reach the overall goal of more sales. That's fine, but the problem is that even though you've defined the goals, you probably haven't defined the behaviors required to reach them. You haven't reverse engineered your goals.”
Suddenly, the lightbulb came on for Josh. “In the case of my sales goals, all I did was define where I wanted to be in the future. Not how to get there. I didn't define the actions.”
“Take it one step further,” Eloise prompted. “Not just how to get there, but the precise, repeatable behaviors that will bring you right to that goal. That's what the Future Myth reveals. Goals don't just tell us where to arrive tomorrow, or next month, or next year, Josh. They tell us what to do today.”
The lightbulb in Josh's head began to burn brighter.
“Like making calls. Or setting appointments?”
“Exactly. Only more specific. Making ten calls every day is a precise, repeatable behavior that can drive you toward your goal. Setting one sales appointment each day before noon is a precise, repeatable behavior. It's something you can achieve, and it's guaranteed to move you closer to your goal.”
“But why have I only been taught to set goals? When you explain it, it seems…obvious, really. Why doesn't everyone teach this?”
“This isn't the lost secret of an ancient tribe, Josh. There are many people—coaches, for example, or people like me—who understand that setting goals is really about setting behaviors. In sales and business in particular, where there's so much emphasis on the goal itself—the money, usually—the idea of setting behaviors has been lost. The goal-setting has become the means instead. If you want to get somewhere new, you need to focus on setting and managing behaviors.”
Josh thought back to the seminars and courses he'd taken. He'd never once been taught to set behaviors as well as goals. “I like the idea of getting somewhere new, but every seminar I've been to seemed to cart out the same story about not being able to get from New York to Los Angeles without knowing where you're going. They put a lot of emphasis on the destination—the goal.”
Eloise smiled and took a last sip of her tea.
“People often use that old goal-setting example about a road trip. That you can't get to where you're going unless you know which direction to head in. ‘Define your target,’ ‘set your compass,’ etcetera. It's true—you really can't get where you want to be if you don't know where that is. Goals are important. Critical, in fact.”
“But what makes the destination so important? Why don't I just skip the goal part altogether and just work on my behaviors?”
“Ah! Great question!” Her eyebrows rose above her glasses, and Josh knew he had asked the right thing. “Without the inspiring goal, we can't change our thinking. It's the goal that ignites us. And that drives the change in thought that in turn drives our actions.”
Josh flashed back to his time with Cor: You can't change your life overnight, the old man had said, but you can change your mind. “The goal changes how we think,” he blurted out. “It changes us inside.”
“Exactly! That's why the goal is still important. It changes your internal state. A great goal doesn't motivate us from the outside in; it inspires us from the inside out. The problem is that most people have been so conditioned to define only the goal that they're not doing anything at all to move toward it. They don't take the next step. They're not driving. They might research the route and buy a few maps and get excited about the trip. But until they put in the mileage every day, a goal is just that: a distant point they never reach. The undeniable truth, Josh, is that you can't drive from New York to Los Angeles without actually getting in the car and driving.” And with that, Eloise stood up and took Josh's cup to the sink.
A few minutes later, she walked Josh outside, where Cor was waiting, wished him good luck, and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Josh said. “What about the other part of the equation? We only talked about Do and Have.”
Eloise smiled. “Today's only Monday. One step at a time.” She nodded curtly at Josh, looked at Cor sitting on the idling motorcycle, shook her head in mock disgust, and disappeared inside.
Josh figured he wasn't driving to Los Angeles, but his wheels must have been turning when they left the property—he barely remembered getting on the back of the ancient Honda, and he had certainly felt no sense of awkwardness riding the tiny bike and clinging to Cor's back.
His brain was working. It felt similar to the way he'd been pumped up after leaving the success weekend, but it was different, too. Instead of being pumped up about fat commissions and increased business, he was feeling something else: the drive to do the things to get there.
Josh realized he was grinning. He watched the fence posts fan by as they sped down the road. He looked down long laneways at the magnificent homes, the expensive cars twinkling in the sun. He was sure he even saw what looked like a helipad at one estate.
How much money would I need for one of those? Josh began to visualize what his life might be like if he could take his business to a whole new level. By the time they'd reached the shop, Josh was like a coiled spring, full of energy. “I can't believe how simple that is,” Josh said, climbing off the bike and stretching his back. “I feel more energized than I have in a while. I really feel like I can see my future clearly.”
“The important things usually are simple,” Cor said. “Remember, though, that success is about practical application, too. You need to put your knowledge of the Future Myth to work.”
“Oh don't worry about me,” Josh said. “I'm on it. I can almost taste my goal.” He thanked Cor, noticing again the little smile playing around the older man's mouth. I can never quite tell if he's pleased with me, Josh thought as he got into his car, or laughing at me.
But when turned to look again, Cor had disappeared into his immaculate shop, leaving nothing but tall grass and rusted metal in the afternoon sun.