The Human Advantage
More and more scientists are growing to believe that consciousness, as in human consciousness, is the ability to imagine. It’s our ability to cast a vision forward and say, "This is what I desire for my life; this is where I want to be; these are the things I want to achieve." Humans can look forward and say, "I want to babysit my grandchildren someday." Dogs can’t do that. It’s our ability to look forward and set goals that makes us human. That is a critical piece of information.
This time of year, we all think about our goals. It’s become a cultural phenomenon, and yet you will hear the drumbeat of naysayers who shoot down the idea of a New Year’s resolution. As if to say, "I want to better myself; I want to improve my situation; I want to improve the situation of my family" is some kind of mistake or fool's errand. It’s ridiculous.
Goal-setting is part of the human experience, so why do people shoot it down? Well, I think the reason people shoot it down is that we’ve lost another critical part of the human experience in our modern age. A major contributing factor to human success on an evolutionary scale is our ability to cooperate. Humans work in packs, in tribes, in communities on a scale that’s unimaginable to other creatures on this planet. Sure, ants can work in large colonies in the numbers of thousands, but ants can’t ask “what if?”; ants can’t hold each other accountable; ants can’t support each other and spur each other on to do things that have never been done before. We can.
Statistics around this are fascinating, and I will quote the statistic over and over again: if you write down your goals, you are 38% more likely to achieve them. If you write down your goals and give someone permission to keep you accountable to those goals, you’re 77% more likely to achieve them. That is a huge hack toward your success. And what it tells me is, as a human being, part of our experience is community; part of our the human experience is the give and take of ideas and the give-and-take of cooperation and collaboration. It’s just part of who we are.
Shawn Achor quotes a study in his book, Big Potential, - when you’re standing next to a friend, a steep incline looks 20% less steep than if you were standing by yourself. We were meant to scale the heights together.
I hope you set big goals for 2024. I hope you set goals that scare you a little bit. I hope you set goals that almost embarrass you to share with other people. But if you’re going to achieve them, you’re going to have to take the next step, and you’re gonna have to invite other people into your journey. It’s time to fully embrace what makes us human. It’s time to fully embrace the greatest hack toward our achievement. It’s not just setting goals; it’s setting goals and working towards them together with other people who are also striving as well.
