We can make as many goals as we want, but they won’t do anything to change our lives unless we see them through. In the last article we talked about how to escape the cycle of putting out short term fires and extend our vision to a Transcendent There guided by our values. Making goals that stem from our values can help provide external motivation to get There, but we still have to take steps along the Path to help us reach the end.
Nesting Theres is a mental model that can help us envision how we reach our goals along the Path and take steps to get There.
Vision Casting
In order to escape the short-term cycle, we need to plan from the top-down. Start with your Transcendent There, or over-arching vision. Think of this as the mountain.
Then move down to Strategic Theres. These are the hills that you climb on your way to the mountain. They are large achievable goals that will take a long time to reach.
The boulders that make up the hills are Milestones. These milestones help you know that you’re on the right path to achieving your Strategic Theres.
Finally, the Goals are the rocks that make up the boulders. These are the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that help you get There. We often only focus our attention here. But we need to know where we’re going in order to know how to get There.
Here’s an example of how this could play out:
Transcendent There: Continue to learn, grow, and improve in skillsets
Strategic There: Complete a higher degree or certification
Milestones: Finish each course
Goals: Weekly readings and essays
Simply having a vision is not enough. If you want to get there, you have to follow the steps along the way. That brings us to the other side of Nesting Theres.
Vision Implementation
You do your vision casting from the top-down, but vision implementation happens from the bottom-up. You start with your daily, weekly, and monthly goals, knowing that they will take you to your milestones. The milestones, then, serve as a check points along the way to let you know that you are on the path to your Strategic There. And the Transcendent There serves as your guiding Vision to give you something beyond the present to aim towards when the goals become difficult to persevere through.
Let’s continue with our example about continuing education. When the goals of the weekly readings and essays pile up, you could start to feel like it’s not worth it anymore. Without a Transcendent There, it would be easy to give up. But what keeps you on the path, is the knowledge of what this is all for. The Milestones also help provide motivation by showing you points along the way that you’ve made it to thus far.
Nesting Theres can help you keep your goals by breaking down the steps needed to get There and providing a vision to aim for when the going gets tough. If you want to see your goals through to the end, cast your vision from the top-down and implement it from the bottom-up.
Gracie McBride is the Content and Systems Development Coordinator at The Crossroad.
