The Size of Your Dreams, - [good books for high schoolers txt] 📗

“At this pace, I expect I’ll end up with around $800,” Jarod reported that Thursday.

The week had passed in a blur. I was caught up on Mr. Griffin’s question about what I hoped to gain from helping so much. For the past three days, I hardly participated in class and hadn’t done anything to help anyone after school. As far as I could tell, no one had noticed.

“That’s great,” Christy said.

“Is it?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“For 30 days?” Jarod asked. “Absolutely. A month ago I only did $250.”

“What does your card say?”

“It says $1000. But we all know I was only going half-assed the first couple of weeks, so $800 is pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Mr. Griffin asked. “Is that the expectation you have for yourself?”

“Didn’t you once say that what we’re going for is growth and we don’t always hit our goals?” Jarod said.

Mr. Griffin shook his head. “If next Tuesday, after your deadline has passed, you tell me that you hit 98% of your goal, I’d tell you to celebrate your growth, and not beat yourself up over the other 2%. But there are still five days to go until your deadline. This is not the time to pat yourself on the back. It’s time to reevaluate your strategy and double your efforts.”

Jarod tensed up, and his mouth opened for some snappy reply, but then his body relaxed, and he merely said, “What more can I do?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m already booked today, tomorrow, Saturday morning, and Monday afternoon.”

“You can’t fit any more time in on the weekend?”

“I could work a few more hours on Saturday if I had enough work.”

“Can you earn $200 in a few hours?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not enough. What about Sunday?”

“I promised my girlfriend I’d spend the day with her.”

“You promised yourself you’d hit $1000 by the end of the month. Perhaps she can help you and then you’d fulfill both promises at once.”

Christy snickered at the thought.

“She wouldn’t go for that,” Jarod said.

“Then you have a problem of misalignment,” Mr. Griffin said.

“Misalignment?”

“Your goals and your girlfriend’s goals are different. She’s rightfully going to put pressure on you to fulfill your obligation to her, and it could come at the expense of fulfilling your obligation to yourself.”

“So what do I do?”

“Get your goals aligned,” Mr. Griffin said.

“How?”

“Tell me about your girlfriend. Does she genuinely care about you?”

Christy broke in, “It’s almost disgusting how much she worships him.”

Before Jarod could respond, Mr. Griffin said, “She wants you to be happy?”

“Yes.”

“She wants you to be successful?”

“Sure.”

“And you’ve talked to her about your goal for yourself this month and how important it is to you to reach it?”

Jarod fidgeted with his notebook. “It never actually came up.”

Mr. Griffin held up his index finger. “Step one of alignment is to tell her about your goals. You might be surprised at how supportive she becomes just knowing what your goals are.”

“She still won’t be happy about me canceling on her.”

Mr. Griffin held up a second finger. “Step two: what can you do to make sure she will be happier with you hitting your goal than with you taking her out on Sunday?”

“She doesn’t like being canceled on.”

“No one does. Is there anything she has her heart set on?”

“She did drop a hint about Cirque Du Soleil coming next month. She’s dying to go, but the tickets cost $100 each.”

“$100 is a small price to pay for alignment.”

“I’m not going to send her alone, so it’s not $100, it’s $200. And even if she lets me work all day Sunday, there’s no guarantee I’ll hit $1000 for the month.”

Mr. Griffin grinned. “Don’t promise her the tickets in exchange for allowing you to cancel on Sunday. Rather, tell her about your goal to hit $1000 this month, and tell her that if you hit that goal, the two of you will celebrate by going to Cirque du Soleil. If she cares enough about the tickets, she might even help you hit the goal. And she’ll do it joyfully, without giving you a hard time for canceling, because you’ll be fully aligned.”

“That might handle one problem,” Jarod said, “but even if I had all of Sunday to work, I don’t have enough jobs to make another $200. I’ve already hit up all of my normal customers.”

“Use your Mastermind Group.”

Jarod turned to the three of us. “You guys have any ideas?”

His eyes mainly fell on me. Ideas kept flickering in my head, and I knew that if I put my mind to it, I could probably help him brainstorm something that would work. Yet, as I’d done all week, I bowed out. “I’ve already given you my best ideas.”

“What if you offer half off for new customers?” Darnell said.

Jarod shook his head. “Then I’d have to mow an extra $400 worth of lawns to get the missing $200. Even if I could line up that many jobs, I wouldn’t have the time to do it.”

“Then flip the offer,” Christy said. “Buy one now, get one next month free.”

“That’s even worse, it’s giving everyone two mows at half price.”

“Yes, but this way you make all the money now and do the free work later. All of it still counts towards your goal.”

“Even if I did want to do that, how would I get that many jobs?”

“How about another flyer?” Christy said. “You could put it in mailboxes around town, stipulating that they need to have their first mow this weekend to qualify.”

“Let me get this straight,” Jarod said. “I’d pay $50 to get a new flyer printed up. I’m already working all afternoon today and tomorrow, so I’d have to pass it around at night. To get an additional $200 worth of jobs, I’d have to promise $200 of free work next month. And to top it off, I don’t get to put a dollar of that extra $200 in my pocket because I have to blow it on tickets to Cirque du Soleil. So I wind up working my butt off only to have $50 less in my pocket at the end of the day. I’m far better off doing nothing and hitting $800 for the month.”

“As your math teacher,” Mr. Griffin said, “let me say that your numbers are spot on.”

“So you agree I shouldn’t do it?”

“Absolutely not. Not all problems involving numbers are math problems.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Think, Jarod. What will you miss if you do it your way?”

“I’ll miss hitting my goal. But in this case, missing the goal will be better than hitting it.”

“I’d agree with you if your goal was to add as much money as possible to your college fund. Pull out your notecard.”

Jarod pulled out his card.

“Read it. What’s the goal?”

“I intend to mow $1000 worth of lawns between November 13 and December 13.”

“Does the card say anything about how much money you intend to add to your college fund?”

“No.” Jarod reached into his backpack and pulled out an eraser.

“What are you doing?”

“Changing the goal to add that bit about my college fund.”

“Don’t go changing it now.”

“But it will be better for me like this.”

Mr. Griffin shook his head. “No way.”

“I told you from the beginning that this is the reason I wanted to get the money to begin with.”

“You may have told me that, but you didn’t put it on your card.”

“So what? We’ve all made tons of changes to our cards.”

“Not all changes are the same. Anything can change when it supports the goal. Steps are the most flexible, they should be getting stronger as you dive into them. Dates change when they must, such as Christy moving her deadline to give Sue time to run a practice.”

“So goals can never change?”

“Even a goal can change when you decide it’s no longer something you want. In this case, the goal is earning more money, which is something you want.”

“The way I’d reword the goal, making it about money saved rather than money earned is a better reflection of what I really want.”

“Then it makes perfect sense to change the wording. On Tuesday.”

“But my 30 days end on Monday.”

“Precisely. You gave yourself a goal for this month. Hit that goal. On Tuesday, when you write a new card, you’ll take all you’ve learned this month and use it to make next month’s goals even better.”

“Why not just change it now?”

“Because every goal hit builds momentum, and every goal missed kills it.”

“So I should finish the goal I wrote, even if it’s not good for me?”

“Hitting your goal will be the best thing possible for you. It might mean working harder and having $50 less in your college fund, but think of all it will bring you. The flyer can potentially bring you a slew of new clients. True, you’ll owe them a free mowing next month, but some of them might come back again and again afterward. You’ll get to take your girlfriend to Cirque du Soleil, which aside from being a fantastic show, will be a well-deserved celebration for hitting your goal, will get the two of you in deeper alignment, and might even raise your status in her eyes.”

“Like we need that.” Christy rolled her eyes.

“But the main reason I don’t want you to change your goal is selfish. If you change your goal, it will hurt my ability to hit mine.”

“What’s your goal?”

“The same it’s been from the start. To make all of you into the successful, capable people you have the potential to be.”

“What does my goal have to do with that?”

“It’s simple. If you work your butt off to hit your $1000 goal by Monday, you’ll know that you’re capable of setting a goal and hitting it. The next time you write a card, will you word it better or worse?”

“Better, I expect.”

“Will you set it higher or lower?”

“Higher of course.”

“Right, because you’ll know you’re someone who sees goals through to the end. This is how you build momentum in life.”

Mr. Griffin bent over and looked Jarod in the eyes. “Your goal is so close. One more push and you can hit it. Give up on it now and how much confidence will you have next time you set a goal that you’ll see it through to the end?”

Jarod bit his lip. “Not much, I guess.”

“And how likely are you to skip goal setting altogether?”

“I probably wouldn’t bother.”

“Exactly. I already know what you can do. In these next five days, you’ll prove it to yourself. Work your butt off if you have to. Don’t think about the $50 less you’ll have in your college fund, think about the strength you’ll build by seeing your goal through to the end. And when