Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (43 page)

Those people who always seem to have what they want...actually they don’t. They often sacrifice smaller wants in the interests of bigger ones. They pass up on the promotion they wanted because it would mean longer hours, and family time means more to them—that’s the thing they really want. Where they were smart was in recognizing how much they wanted each thing, and prioritizing them.

How much do you want to start a family, for example? Enough to stay put rather than moving to a house in a more expensive area? Enough to give up vacations for the foreseeable future? Enough to put your career on hold for a few years?

No one can have everything. So work out how much you want the particular thing you’re aiming at, especially in relation to all the other things you might want.

Want What You Get

I have a friend who once went for an interview for a job. To be honest she was driven by desperation—she just needed to get away from the hellish career situation she was in (and fast). She didn’t get the job and was absolutely devastated. However, having met my friend, the interviewer decided to bring forward plans to create a completely new role (as well as filling the existing vacancy) just so she could be hired.

She’s still working in that job ten years later; it’s been that good, and it has taken her in a whole new direction she would never have previously envisioned but one she came to feel was absolutely ideal for her.

I have another friend who met a woman he liked, as a friend, but initially discounted her as a future partner because she wasn’t like his previous girlfriends, and there was no stomach churning or massive physical firework reaction. The woman is now his wife, they’ve started a family, and he considers himself to be the most amazingly lucky man to have such a fantastic relationship.

Sometimes you don’t know what you want until it happens. You can’t always predict what’s going to come your way. But if you are open to possibility, and are willing to give things a try to see where it takes you, sometimes it will take you to a place you couldn’t have envisioned but that is perfect for you. It might be that you get something that is not exactly what you originally envisioned as your goal, but you can decide to want it having already gotten it.

Only you will ever really know whether you get what you want. I’m not advocating settling for second best here. This is not about compromise; it’s about attitude. If the point of the exercise—to find work you enjoy, to have a brilliant relationship—has been achieved, it’s entirely a matter of perspective.

Don’t Be a Fuzzy Thinker

If you want something, you have to go for it. You don’t necessarily have to sacrifice everything (sometimes you do) but you do have to make a firm decision to take action. It’s no good saying you want to give up smoking if you just carry on lighting up and thinking how nice it would be if you could stop. Do something about it.

I know one person who can’t even make a decision about whether to have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee in under five minutes. It usually takes him several years to move houses or to hand in his notice at a job he doesn’t enjoy. Hardly surprising then if he doesn’t often get what he wants.

You have to be firm with yourself. After you’ve identified what you want—and decided why you want it and how much—you need to make a decision about whether you’re going to do something about it. Commitment: That’s what you need. After all, if this is definitely what you want, what are you waiting for?

People who get what they want are generally decisive people. And if you want to do this without having to ask, you need to be doubly firm with yourself. It’s OK—decisive behavior may not come naturally to all of us, but you can learn it. Just jump in with both feet. It gets easier every time.

Know What It Takes

So how are you going to go about making things happen to reach that goal? It won’t just happen. You need to make a list (it could be long; it could be very short) of the things that have to happen to achieve your aim. After all, if you don’t know what they are, how are you going to make sure they actually do happen?

You might need something concrete—to borrow money to pay for a new car or the fancy wedding you want, or to get an appointment with the boss of the company you want to work for, or to find a babysitter once a week so you can go out and do whatever it is you want to do. Or maybe you need to influence someone’s behavior, or encourage them to change her attitude. In that case, what will it then take to change her mind? Whatever it takes, you’ll have to identify it. Otherwise how are you going to make it happen?

Look, you have to put something in to get something out. A lot of the work may simply be a matter of thinking, or it might take months of long hard work. But however it might look from the outside, good things don’t just fall into people’s laps. Not very often anyway. If you want something you have to work out how to get it, and this is the first stage of that process.

Work Out Who You Need on Your Side

You’re not alone, you know, and you don’t have to do this by yourself. Even if you don’t take other people into your confidence, you may need their cooperation. So start by establishing who can help you. They may be an essential part of the team, or they may not even know they’re helping you.

Let’s go back to your promotion. You need your boss on your side for a start. And very possibly their boss. And maybe some of your senior colleagues. You may also need your partner’s support—whether because a promotion will mean a shift in hours, or because you want him to help you practise your interview skills.

Dealing with any kind of life or work problem is going to be a whole lot easier if you have good friends, or your partner again, backing you up. And if your family is really with you, it can provide that crucial practical and emotional support. Maybe you also want a network of other people in your situation.

Perhaps you’re on your own and would like to meet that special somebody. Do you know anyone who can introduce you to people? If you want to try online or speed dating, would it be a good idea to get advice from someone who has tried it before? (The answer’s yes to that one.)

Right, now we’re getting somewhere. We’re starting to see what you need and who you need, so you can lay the groundwork thoroughly and make this aspiration far more likely to come true.

Break Big Ambitions into Chunks

There’s a big difference between wanting to buy a little runaround car and wanting a Rolls Royce or a Lamborghini. Sometimes what you want should be achievable in a fairly short time. But other aspirations are too big to take a blind jump at. You need to break them into manageable steps. And the important thing is to treat every one of those steps seriously—think each one through as carefully as you would if they were your eventual goal and not just a starting point.

Did you hear about the guy in Canada who decided to get what he wanted by trading?
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He started out with one red paperclip, which he traded for a pen. He traded that for a doorknob and so on. Just kept trading up until he finally got a house. You see, there’s no way he could have traded that paperclip for a house right away, but because he took it one step at a time, he got what he wanted in the end. In his case it took 14 trades. In your case there may be only one or two steps—or there may be many.

Take big ambitions in stages, and treat every stage as an achievement in itself. Otherwise the mountain will be too high to scale and you’ll lose heart. In fact, you may well end up with far less than you could have had. If you want that Lamborghini, aim for a few cars of increasing value, impressiveness, coolness, speed, or whatever-it-is-you-want on your way to the ultimate car.

Set Up Some Milestones

Not every ambition is big enough to break into chunks. But whether yours is, it’s certainly worth setting up some milestones. These aren’t final concrete achievements, but they are steps along the route. So, for example, if you’re trying to lose weight, you might ultimately be aiming to lose 10 pounds over the next six months. But if that seems a long haul, aim for a more modest goal along the way. Maybe losing four pounds by the end of this month, for example.

Not all milestones have to be so concrete. Maybe you know that to get promoted you need to win a particular contract, get your boss to give you more responsibility, find an opportunity to impress the board of directors with a valuable self-generated report, exceed certain targets, and so on. Each of these is a step toward your goal.

Starting a language class requires you to locate the class, free up the relevant evening to attend it, and maybe find someone to go with you. None of those things is an end in itself, but without them you won’t get what you want.

Milestones are important for two reasons. For one thing they help you to get organized so that you can launch your plan more effectively. And for another thing they ensure you stay on track and keep pointing toward your destination.

Celebrate Every Step

It’s great if you can focus ahead on what you’re trying to achieve. But don’t forget to look back and see how far you’ve come. Every time you reach any milepost along the way, you need to recognize the fact, rejoice, celebrate, enjoy your success, bask in the achievement. It may only be one step towards your ultimate goal but, hey, it’s one more step toward your ultimate goal. That’s a good thing! It’s worth enjoying.

Think of it this way. If you’ve maybe broken your aim down into chunks, and then broken each chunk down into goals along the way, you
want
to reach
those milestones. So when you do, you’ve got what you want. OK not all of it—not the end objective—but you’ve got as much as you can get at this stage, and you’re well placed to move on to the next stage. So you’re already a person who gets what they want...even if you still want more.

The power of positive thought is huge. Just by consciously acknowledging your achievements along the way, you’ll feel more successful. And that, in turn, will make your future challenges seem more achievable. So it really is important to celebrate. Some celebrations may be private and others may be very public—I don’t care how you do it so long as
you
realize how well you’ve done.

So come on—celebrate getting that person on your side, or persuading your boss to give you a particular responsibility, or securing an interview, or reaching the halfway point in saving for a new computer or car or vacation or whatever. You’re doing great!

Write It All Down

Right. Go and get a pen and paper—hurry up—yes OK, you can write on this book if you must, I don’t mind. OK, now you need to get a few things down on paper
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before we go much further. Ready?

Write down what you want, and then write down what you need to get it. Put down any chunks you need to break your goal down into (smaller wants), and also the more detailed steps along the way (what you need to achieve first).

You’re doing this for a couple of reasons. To begin with, you’re going to forget it if you’re not careful. Anything worth having is going to take some detailed thought and planning and preparing and groundwork-laying. If it’s not down in writing you risk leaving out something vital that slows you down or even stops you in your tracks.

And also it seems more real once you have something down in black and white. This is a plan. This is actually happening. This is progress. No longer a dream or a vague wish but a solid, clearcut plan of action.

You see? All those people you thought were getting what they wanted because they were lucky or had good karma or something. Nope. They’ve just got a pen and paper, and they’re not afraid to use them.

Analyze Your Sticking Points

Some things are going to be harder than others, right? It’s one thing to put aside a bit of money every week in the spring, but quite another to keep saving in the months before Christmas, or while you’re on vacation. It’s easy to persuade your sister to host the big family event, but persuading your divorced parents to both attend is in a whole different league. Meeting your performance targets at work should be doable, but carrying off that presentation smoothly is a far bigger challenge.

When you look through the list (that you’ve now written down so you
can
look through it), certain
things are going to jump out at you as being much harder than others. These are the ones you need to focus on. I say this because your instinct is often to do the opposite—to ignore them and hope they’ll go away. But if you’re going to get what you want, you must focus on them. They are the key things that stand between you and what you want.

Look, if you can just overcome these difficulties, you’re almost home. So put your efforts into thinking about how you can get around these obstacles more than any others. Work out where the problem is, what it will take to resolve it, and how you can master that.

Anyone can turn up if they’re invited for an interview after responding to a job posting. But suppose your dream company isn’t advertising and you have to ask for a meeting? That’s the bit that’s going to be hard. Is there any way to do it without asking directly, if that seems just too scary? Do you have a mutual contact? Can you write instead of calling? Or turn up at an event and introduce yourself? Don’t sidestep the issue because you don’t want to address it, or you’ll never get what you want.

Set Your Deadlines

Right, we’re going to make things happen. Umm...what things? When? Well, you have to put a date by all the things you’ve listed that you need to do. Otherwise it may never happen. Does this sound a bit like project management to you? Good, because it is. Getting what you want is a project, and you need to plan for it in the same way.

Deadlines, that’s what you need. Something to work to. You need to decide when things will happen—or at least the latest date by which they will have happened. Suppose you want your sister to host a family party for your brother’s thirtieth birthday.
You know there’s loads that needs organizing—food, entertainment, invitations—but you need to get your sister to agree in the first place and probably your mother is the most likely person she’ll say yes to. So when will your mother next see your sister to ask in person? And when, in turn, does that mean you need to brief your mother? You see, it’s not only the obvious things that need deadlines.