One aspect of What’s Stopping You? generating troubling feedback is goal setting. I state that goals must reflect out true values – not those of others (such as parents, siblings, peers or rivals). Only then will we pursue them with enough energy and willpower to overcome the inevitable setbacks.
But of the goals we set, how do we know which ones are our goals – based on our values – and which are based on the values of others? And by others, I don’t mean just those around us. Values are thrown at us every day: from lifestyle advertising; from celebrity behaviour; even from the “worthy” statements of politically-motivated associates. Cutting our way through this lot requires thought and planning, which in the book I tried to encapsulate in the concept of generating “Our Constitution”.
I named it Our Constitution after the US Constitution, which is a document I have admired since studying it at university. It is brief, succinct, flexible and was a strong indication of the values of the new republic. Whenever the USA has veered from the path set by the Constitution – even with its original sin of slavery – the Constitution has eventually made it abundantly clear where it has erred. Such is the strength of the document that, when living in the US, I couldn’t help noticing that demonstrations of all political persuasion marched waving the stars and stripes flag and made references to the true American values they were fighting for – as enshrined in the Constitution. That’s one powerful document.
So we need our own constitution – a document far stronger than a mission statement that can end up being no more than a one-line goal-setting statement. This involves recording our most important values, which then directs our goal setting. Meanwhile, mission statements can still send us down the wrong path, which may simply line us up for a terrible reckoning once – perhaps a long way down the line – we realize we’ve been following goals not in tune with our values. Certainly, Our Constitution is a document that must remain valid no matter what. Our goals can change, and must. But Our Constitution is our mental totem – hence the need to make it strong enough, but also flexible enough, to carry us through both the triumphs (helping us retain judgement) and the setbacks. Indeed, only once driven by our true values are we able to cope with the setbacks – no longer seeing them as a reflection of our unworthiness but as simply a step towards our value-based goals, albeit one that, this time, failed to provide the optimum result.
Before any goal-setting exercise, therefore, we need to fully understand what motivates us, and this means taking a long hard look at our values and principles. Yet these maybe difficult to find – not least because they may be barely formed, which makes the exercise all the more important.
Perhaps my own story can help. As a schoolchild, I was fascinated by the wider world. While unable to focus on formal studies (taught by unenthusiastic teachers in a broken comprehensive) I was well versed in the geography and history of even the most obscure countries. And I had a strong handle on even local politics – knowing the issues that divided the parties and even the nuances of policy (none of which was taught in the school). Much of this initially supported fantasy game playing (seen as a little odd to outside observers such as my parents). Overtime, however, it also gelled into strong creative writing skills that took me way beyond any curricular activities (in which I struggled because of my poor spelling and grammar). My mother spotted this and encouraged me towards journalism. Yet my father dismissed such thoughts as irrelevant, unstructured and unprofessional. He was a structural engineer with letters after his name and that was his benchmark.
Of course, my father was the dominant character in the family so I pursued his values, yet never with passion. I left school with only one O’ Level (geography, unsurprisingly) and worked at a friend of my father’s as a trainee building surveyor. This mainly involved holding stripy poles in the muddy fields of east Essex but he also enrolled me – generously – on a day-a-week diploma course in order to help me along the tortured path towards qualification.
Yet I bunked the course in favour of days spent wandering the streets of London – a city that I was determined to know intricately. It was exciting, vibrant, historical, complex, cosmopolitan, and in the early 1980s a political powder keg: it had everything my true values cried out for. But the imposed values kicked in and I used the days searching for a trainee building surveying job in London, which I eventually found, and initially enjoyed. I was looking after the housing stock of the London region gas board and this took me to enough peculiar nooks and crannies and led me to enough personal drama to satisfy my own unformed values.
But time was marching on and my father wanted a plan. I shared the office with many young professionals – all of whom were graduates and none of whom seemed any more intelligent than me. Their encouragement convinced me that – despite my own disastrous academic progress – I was capable of a university career. So I enrolled on some evening A’ Level courses. One was history – and from the first lecture, my real passions were alight.
Finally, the scales fell from my eyes with respect to education. The depth of historical research and analysis required for an A’ Level history course at last tapped into my latent educational abilities. Finally I was pursuing something I truly valued. I was fascinated by the world and how we got here. I went to every lecture and soaked it up – staying late for the post lesson debate and avidly reading more deeply into the subjects than I needed to. I eagerly pursued sections of the curriculum the teacher warned against as too complex – such as the history of Ireland – and my essays, for the first time in my life, were winning top marks. I fell in love with learning. I needed no motivation, no focus on reward, no efforts at generating willpower: I had the lot because I was pursuing a goal in line with my true values.
Ultimately, I achieved an A and later won a high 2:1 from the University of Manchester. My values – to intellectually explore the world – were being pursued with vigour and love. From here the goals were obvious, desirable and achievable – and resulted in the journalistic career my mother suggested and which took me all over the world, meeting economists, politicians and bankers.
Yet everyone has that spark in them, whether formal education has brought it out or not. We just need to find it.
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