Why 'goal mobility' is worth cultivating

Having a Plan B matters when things go wrong — but also when they go right.

Warmup

Recently, I reached my “impossible.”

The confirmation came in an email delivered this past Wednesday, just past noon. I officially had taken first place for the 2024 Spartan Race US National Series in my age group.

For anyone who has read my new book NOT TOO LATE, you’ll know how truly impossible this seemed eight years ago.

I’d been a non-athletic office worker trapped in the inertia of “sitting and screens.” (More on “s&s” in last week’s newsletter.) I couldn’t perform a single pull up. My most significant athletic competitive accomplishment was a 5K charity fun run.

Now I’d reached a milestone that put me in the company of some of the fittest women my age. We’d run three challenging obstacle course races throughout the year for this series: a 5K, 10K and 21K — each with 20 to 30 obstacles such as carrying a 40 lb. sandbag, scaling 8-foot walls and climbing a 17-foot rope.

But here’s the interesting part.

The milestone happened because I didn’t stick to my original plan for these races.

Instead, I deployed “goal mobility.”

Summary

The level set:

• Mobility is defined as “ability or capacity to move.” (Merriam-Webster).

  • It’s obvious how important mobility is when it comes to the body’s range of motion, flexibility and coordination.

  • Less obvious is how much it matters with our goals. Financial goals. Work goals. Relationship goals. Physical goals.

• We often think of having a Plan B for when things go wrong. Unforeseen circumstances make the original goal unobtainable — or delayed.

• But we also need a Plan B for when things go better than expected:

  • When we reach an initial goal and realize it’s just the tip of the iceberg. That our true goal is actually something much bigger.

  • When our strength or good fortune exceeds our expectations in the moment, and we can aim higher.

• This is how we push the range of our limits. This is how we reach our personal “impossible.”

In a moment, we’ll head to the desert and a swampy cattle ranch where I’ll explain more.

Let’s get it done.

Post

With the Olympics fading in the rearview mirror, I’m almost finished re-reading a book called Let Your Mind Run by Deena Kastor.

Kastor won the bronze medal for the marathon in the 2004 Olympics. She was the first American to medal in that sport in 20 years.

A turning point for Kastor’s training comes when she realizes that while having a Plan B certainly helps when things go wrong, it’s equally important when things go right.

In other words, as she puts it:

“…we should also have a plan when our strength exceeds our expectations.”

The origin of my goal mobility philosophy

My parents are planners. Growing up, they drilled this mantra into me: “Plan the dive, dive the plan.”

They learned this during their scuba diving training. But they’ve deployed it far and wide: creating a retirement savings strategy, charting a course sailing, preparing for a hurricane on the N.C. coast.

However, their plans aren’t rigid. They can flex. Because sometimes the goal itself needs to move.

Example 1: If you’re on a sailboat and a huge storm is brewing, or winds are coming from the wrong direction, you’ll need to set a goal for a different destination. And be OK with that.

It doesn’t mean your trip is a failure. It means you’ve made the smart decision to stay safe. To learn. To flex. And you and the boat will survive to sail another day.

Example 2: You’ve set a monthly goal for your financial savings. Then you get a raise, or a larger-than-expected bonus.

You could keep the same monthly goal for your savings and just spend more (fun in the moment!).

Or, you could make the goal more aggressive — move your savings target up so that you’re still living the same lifestyle but putting more money away.

This is how my parents — a veterinarian (Dad) and school teacher (Mom) — retired by age 58.

Developing goal mobility, the right way

To be clear, goal mobility when deployed properly isn’t a way to let yourself off the hook. It’s not about saying, “well, things just got a little tough so I’ll dial back the expectations and make it less uncomfortable.”

Nor is goal mobility about always pushing for more, more, more and never taking stock or enjoying what you’ve achieved.

It’s about developing a keen sense of awareness about your own potential and asking yourself, when circumstances change, how a goal might also change to maximize that potential.

• Sometimes this is about reaching an initial goal and then setting a new one in pursuit of something larger. In other words, one goal opens up a sightline to new possibilities.

• And other times it’s about making an adjustment midway to the goal because either things went south, or you’re doing better than you thought you would.

  • For instance, at the media/tech startup where I work, SmartNews, if we’re advancing faster than expected to meet a target goal, we don’t coast. We either make the goal more aggressive or we accelerate the time it takes to get there, which gives a cushion for when things don’t go according to plan elsewhere.

Lessons from the desert and the cattle ranch

My first obstacle racing goal at age 46 was simply to run a single Spartan Race and “not die.” After checking that box (although I did fall 10 feet off a rope) I could have collected my finisher medal and been done.

Instead, after I crossed the finish line, my goal moved to, “When can I race again and how can I get a lot better?” I now was striving for something much larger: mastery. This goal would be never-ending in some ways and continue to motivate my athletic journey for years.

However, I’ve also learned to change goals midstream.

Example 1:

In the hot Abu Dhabi desert, some 7,000 miles from home, I competed in a World Championship Spartan Race in 2021. My goal was to make the Top 3 of my age group.

Halfway through the competition, which was a slog through deep red/gold sand, I felt pretty good.

Like I had a chance.

And then I slipped off an obstacle and badly injured my tailbone.

In an instant my goal burned up in the heat. I had a choice: get into an ATV, head to a medical tent and quit. Or reset my goal.

After a momentary internal debate, I chose the latter: my new goal became “finish the race and don’t be last.” And that’s the goal I met, step by careful step.

I’m as proud of that finish as I am of any first place medal.

Example 2:

When this year began, I decided to compete in the Spartan Race 2024 US Age Group National Series competition.

My goal: finish all three races and place in the Top 5 overall for my age group in the series.

Then in the first race, through the muddy terrain of a cattle ranch in Jacksonville, Fla., I took first place. It shocked me. In 2019, I’d finished almost dead last at this competition.

I could have coasted a bit for the next two races. The series worked on a points system and a first place win gave me a big advantage.

Instead, my goal moved. Now I wanted to place in the Top 3 for the series, which would be harder. It meant risking disappointment. But I wanted to see what was possible.

Because of that, my training plan became 10% harder. My commitment to eating properly, drinking less alcohol, hydration, race prep solidified more. I knocked out 10 pull ups a day.

I ended up #1 thanks to my goal mobility. And reached my impossible.

Cooldown

To dig a bit deeper:

• Medium listen - There’s strong shared DNA in the tactics & discipline required to hit our financial and physical goals. I hung out (podcast-style) with financial guru Jean Chatzky on her show recently where we dug into best practices on both fronts.

• Long read - The book Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins is a manifesto in understanding our limits and thinking about goals in profound ways. He’s published a new one called Never Finished that explores his strategies in more depth.

Thanks for reading. Let me know how you practice goal mobility. And as always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.

Wendy