Hope Is Not A Strategy

Creating a better life for ourselves is actually pretty simple. Rather than overcomplicating things, my mentor Jim Bunch has it broken down into 3 tiers of thought that support us in actually making meaningful progress in our lives.

Those 3 steps are: Goals, strategies, and tactics.

When we have a goal, we have defined the end result that we want to create. It’s a possible reality that we believe will improve the quality of our lives, and we dedicate ourselves to achieving our goals.

The way you do that is by having a strategy. Just like you need a strategy to win a game, we need strategies to achieve our goals.

And once we have a game plan, then it’s just about taking the specific tactical actions that serve as the implementation of the strategy.

Something that I have seen often in others and in myself is having empty goals. This is basically setting an intention for something you want but not really doing anything about creating it. Going back to the 3 steps, a goal needs a strategy and too often we don’t have one. And that’s where I want to highlight something…

Hope is not a strategy.

If we haven’t committed to a specific game plan, that we believe will lead to the desired result if executed, then we’re just hoping it happens on its own.

And while hope is a powerful force in life, in a more practical sense it’s not a true strategy. When you rely on hope you forfeit the idea that the result is within your control, and therefore you're way less likely to take the necessary actions required to make it so.

Let’s say you want to double your business’ revenue this year. What’s the strategy to make that happen? Double clients? Double life-time value? Create another product or offering? All of those are perfectly acceptable strategies that lead to very different daily action items. Hoping that your business will double without a specific idea about how… That’s unlikely to change anything.

Or let’s say you want to decrease in weight. It’s great to set a goal like that, especially if it’s connected to a powerful why. Is the plan to exercise more, change your diet, or both? Or is it just an intention that you have and you don’t know how you’ll do it, you just know you want to?

Anyone who has tried to decrease in weight could tell you that just wanting to will not make it happen and that there are certain strategies that work best for them.

To elaborate on that last example - Of course achieving your goals takes more than just the strategy. There are many people who tell themselves that they want to exercise more and eat healthier, but they don’t. Having the discipline to execute the strategy is what actually creates the results you’re after.

If you want to start achieving your personal and professional goals, and not let your own lack of self-discipline or follow through get in the way, I encourage you to learn learn more about the 9 Super Habits. These are the daily small actions behind the scenes that help you live out being the best version of yourself on autopilot.