Page 71 - Hard Goals

62 HARD Goals

ing its color? I mean, just look around your room or take a look
outside; do you see colors? Go eat an apple or a strawberry; are
they red? What color is the sky? The grass? Your car?
The biggest impediment you face in convincing people that
the world is losing its color is that everyone can see colors all
around them. You’re trying to create a HARD Goal to convince
people that the world is losing its colors, but your visuals stink.
People can barely remember black-and-white television, let alone
picture the whole world turning black and white. And if your
“pitch” is built around scientifi c words and formulas, that’s just
not terribly compelling imagery. By contrast, the competing goal
of denial—do nothing and keep eating fl uorescent food—has
great imagery; there are colors everywhere people look. Science
is on your side. Health is on your side. So are logic, quality of
life, doing what’s right, and more. But imagery is not on your
side, and as you’ll learn in this chapter, visuals are essential.
And thus, unless you make some serious improvements to your
imagery, there are lots of people that won’t be motivated to
achieve this HARD Goal. The world will go solidly black and
white before anyone plugs in to what you were trying to say.
This chapter is called “Animated,” but there are all sorts of
words to describe the process covered here: picturing, visualiz-
ing, envisioning, imagining, and many others. I chose the word
animate because, well, admittedly, it fi ts the acronym HARD
perfectly. But aside from that obvious fact, it really is the best
word for the job. “Inspire, heighten, intensify, give lifelike quali-
ties to,” are all defi nitions of animate. And that’s exactly what
you’re going to do to your goals.
A necessary part of making your goal compelling—so moti-
vating, inspiring, and necessary that you’d move heaven and
earth to achieve it—is making your goal imaginable. The more