If you’ve heard me speak, perused my website, or even just read my one-sentence bio online, you probably know my coaching specialization:
To help you work with meaning, live with purpose, and achieve bold + difference-making goals.
As a forward-moving, action-oriented endeavor, coaching in general is designed to help you get to where you want to be. This tends to involve goal-setting in some form, so both you and your coach know what you’re working toward.
My coaching in particular focuses on bold + difference-making goals – while keeping meaning and purpose at the forefront. Years from now, I want you to look back on our coaching with a deep sense of fulfillment at what you’ve achieved, knowing that you did so while honoring your core values, focusing on what truly matters to you, and making a positive, purposeful difference.
So, what constitutes a bold + difference-making goal? Let’s look briefly at the two components.
What exactly is a BOLD goal?
One thing I’ve noticed in my years of coaching is that even with an abundant track record of success, many of us still underestimate our full potential. Maybe our confidence has been knocked around a bit, or maybe we haven’t yet fully connected to the purpose behind our goals. Comparison can often play a bigger role than we realize, too.
Essentially, a bold goal is one that will stretch you, grow you, and purposefully challenge you. It’s not something you’ll achieve overnight; it will likely require practice, persistence, and some flexibility and course-correcting along the way. You might not even know if you can reach your bold goal (an especially tricky realization for the achievers among us!) – but it’s meaningful enough that you’re willing to try.
And like with any goal, it’s not even so much about the end result as it is about who you become in the process. A bold goal is reached through bold actions – helping you become a bolder person along the way.
Ultimately, you get to decide what constitutes bold for you. It doesn’t matter what a magazine cover says you should do (I tend to remove all ‘shoulds’ from the equation) or what someone down the road just did. What matters most to you? What feels bold to you? We’ll let that be our guide.
What is a DIFFERENCE-MAKING goal?
Or as someone recently put it, ‘What if I want to focus on a personal goal – not one that is out to change the world?’
Let’s start with this perspective: How will moving toward and achieving your goal make a difference for you? What will be different in your work or life once you accomplish it? What will you be able to say or do that you currently cannot?
Thus begins illustrating one way your goal is difference-making: It makes a difference for you, in your life.
That counts, you know. A lot.
Beyond that, I’m willing to bet your goal will make a bigger difference than you realize. Let’s say you set a goal to write your first book. You might think this is just something you personally want to achieve, a bucket list item perhaps, and don’t even know if it will ever get published. So how could this goal possibly be difference-making for others?
Let’s address that by asking a few more questions:
What about the people inspired by watching you achieve it? Your friends, family members, children, colleagues? The people who then say, “Wow, if they can dedicate time and energy to something like that, maybe I can too!”?
What about the people who support you along the way? The writer’s group you join and share ideas with, the writing mentor who offers their expertise, the early readers you entrust with your dream – how does your goal make a difference for them?
And if you do go on to publish in some manner, what about your future readers? The people they talk to about what they learned from you? Other aspiring writers? All those impacted by the butterfly effect?
I often share the example of Roger Bannister when talking about difference-making goals. Although it was generally believed that running a mile in under four minutes was impossible, Bannister set a goal to do so – and in 1954, he was recorded as the first athlete to achieve this goal.
Think about the people his goal made a difference for: his coaches, trainers, running partners, fellow athletes, competitors, friends, family, people watching his progress along the way, the crowd at the race … we could go on and on. Inspiration in abundance!
Not only that, but within a few years of Bannister achieving this ‘impossible’ goal, more than a dozen other people also ran sub-four-minute miles!
Seeing someone else accomplish a bold goal can open the floodgates of possibility for the rest of us. What may seem like ‘only for you’ may actually make a bigger difference than you realize!
Bold + Difference-Making = YOU
Let me be clear: You are already bold, and you already make a difference. We all benefit from the difference you make simply by being here and being you!
What goal, if you intentionally moved toward it, could help you feel even more bold? Using some of the examples above, how might your next goal make a difference – in your life and in the lives of others?
Now … what’s your first step?
Know that I am here cheering you on! And if I can be of help, contact me to schedule a Discovery Session. I’d love to coach you to your bold + difference-making goals!