SET SILLY DREAMS

Now, when I was a kid, a goal was really exciting, it was something that I celebrated, it was a fun thing! It was “A goal!” But somewhere along the line, maybe around Jr High School, or High School, it became “A goal.” Something that was a responsibility, something that I had to do, and it lost all that feeling. Maybe it had something to do with this- a lot of the teachers, they made me think I had to set goals in order to be successful. It was something that you needed to do. They even wrote it on the chalkboard. You can look at the steps here. Teachers made me think that achieving a goal was as easy as this: 1. Set goal. 2. Make plan. 3. Get to work. 4. Stick to it. 5. Reach goal. Following these steps, you’ll be able to be successful. Looks easy, right? But the reality is that achieving a goal is more like an obstacle course. There’s lots of pitfalls, lots of places where you can make mistakes. They don’t really teach this to you. So as a kid I was really frustrated. In fact, a lot of adults feel the same way. So I came up with something called the Silly Goals. Now anybody can do this, you can take goals that are really serious, and you just add a little bit of silliness into it. Makes it kind of fun, just don’t tell your boss about it. Now Silly Goals, let me give you an example:

… all the fantastic people I met along the way, the beautiful sights that I saw, the experiences that’ll last a lifetime, all because of a silly goal to drink a can of coffee at the top of Kilimanjaro. So what I want to leave you here is this: It’s not achieving the goal, but what you learn on the way to that goal that is most important. We put a lot of emphasis on winning the gold metal, on being at the top. But getting to that point, takes a lot of effort. And that really is what you’re going to remember the most. So if you have to set goals, make them silly. You’ll have a lot more fun.

Speech from: Set Silly Dreams: John Daub at TEDxTokyoTeachers