Page 167 - Hard Goals

158 HARD Goals

tiger, you will almost certainly be dead minutes later. But if you
fail in your goal to increase your savings this month, you’ve
got at least a decent chance of still being alive 30 minutes later.
Most of the repercussions we face if we fail in achieving our
goals are not going to kill us.
Not only will we not actually die of embarrassment, we
might not even have cause for any embarrassment (let alone
enough to kill us). It’s important to note that the statements on
our list of “what happens to us if we fail” are not proven facts;
they’re interpretations, assumptions, emotionally charged
extrapolations, castastrophizing, irrational beliefs, or what-
ever else you want to call them. But they are not proven facts.
Let’s prove this with Step 2 of our process. We’re human
beings, not computers, so we can’t just fl ip a switch and say,
“Oh, feeling like I’ll die of embarrassment is irrational, so I’ll
just stop feeling that way.” Instead, we’ve got to debunk these
thoughts in our heads, just as if we were attorneys from “Law
& Order” cross-examining a witness. So we’re going to take
each of these statements and, one by one, ask ourselves if we can
fi nd any examples that might provide evidence to the contrary
of what we said.
Let’s take the example, “If I fail to achieve my goal, I’ll die
from embarrassment.” Can you fi nd any examples in your life (or
even someone else’s life) where you failed to achieve a goal but
didn’t die? To take it a step further, can you fi nd any examples
where any embarrassment you felt was far less than what you
were expecting? Now, by virtue of your being alive and reading
this book right now, I’m guessing you found at least one example
that refutes the belief that “I’ll die from embarrassment.”
Of course, that was a pretty easy example to counter, so let’s
try something more diffi cult. How about, “If I fail at this goal,