OES - by Mehdi Kajbaf (Coach/Facilitator)

Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to do a bunch of seminars on goal setting and the more I spoke, and listened to people the more I realized a lot the traditional frameworks such as SMART don’t work very well. I knew I was really good at achieving my goals, and I knew most people were really bad at it and eventually I began to codify my approach. 

It comes down to a system I call, Values Based Goal Setting. It works where traditional goal setting fails. Traditional goals in their most basic sense are a destination. Goal setting as we currently think about it, involves crossing the delta between your current state, and some desired state. You currently weigh 150 lbs, and you want to weigh 125 lbs. You currently make $50,000/year and you want to make $65,000 a year. You are currently single, and you want a companion.

It really doesn’t matter what area of life you are considering, it’s always about moving from your current state to some other desired state. You define that state, steps to achieve them, work on your plan and more often than not you still fall short. 

It just doesn’t work, at least it never works for me because it’s externally motivated and meaningful action is difficult. Defining goals is easy, knowing what you want is hard. I mean what you REALLY want. What you really want is another way of saying what your core values are. Not just what you value, but what you can’t live without. Core values are what drive you and define you and without a clear understanding of those, goal setting simply isn’t sustainable.

Once you set goals based on core values, they become intrinsically motivated instead of externally. It’s not about arriving at some change, but about being the change everyday.

Values Based Goal Setting in a nutshell is the creation of your best life through the habit of constantly making the right choices. So what are the right choices? How do we define them, how do we make them? I’ve simplified VBGS into four steps.

Identify your core values, and particularly choose one core value that is not fulfilled. 

Set a strong intention that frames your value. 

Recognize opportunities to fulfill this intention in everyday activities. 

Take Pro Value Actions, every day to move towards your intention. The more you act to get closer to your intention, the close you get to your intention, the more your life becomes a reflection of your deepest core values. 

It’s really that simple (not easy) to get what you want. Identify the value, create the intention, recognize opportunities and then see choices as binary. Act every moment by making the choice that gets you closer to your goal and over time, this consistently pro-value behavior will enable you to achieve your most importat goals. This manifests itself in every facet of your life, the multitude of decisions you make that take you closer to your intention will create a life that is a reflection of your deepest values. Having that alignment is fulfilling and exciting.

That’s a mouthful! I don’t know how to describe the concept more succinctly but it is quite simple. SMART and other traditional goal setting tools skip over the most important aspect of goal setting, understanding what you REALLY want and WHY you want it. It’s fine to say you want more money to have a more comfortable life or go on a trip but it’s just not motivating. Everyone wants more of everything, but you got to start with matters most and create a life that is reflective of those deepest values.

These blog posts will dig deeper into the 4 steps, and help you answer the multitude of questions and concerns you have with this system including:

How do I know what I value? How do I create intentions? What if I have multiple competing values? How do I act? Why is it so hard to stick with it? These are all common responses, of course our defensive instincts kick in when someone tells us our goals are easily achievable. 

I get asked all the time, what does it mean to be a coach? What do coaches do, and how are they different from therapists or other helping professions?

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A coach will work with you, in equal partnership to create positive and lasting change. There are many principles of coaching that help achieve this.

The first and most important principle of coaching is the mind that holds the problem, holds the solution. There are many implications to this mantra, most important of which is that as a coach, we don’t provide solutions, and rarely even offer advice. Our role is to ask questions, listen mindfully and provide insight and observation when necessary, to help you discover the solutions for yourself.

In coaching, we believe the coachee is a whole person, completely capable and able to manage the challenges they are facing. What might be missing however, is awareness, objectivity and accountability. In our sessions, we help to bring awareness to underlying assumptions, and any limiting beliefs that might be holding you back.

Objectivity is achieved when we move from the subjective stories about our lives, to the objective truth. Honesty and authenticity are necessary for this transition. As coaches we may challenge your story at times to discover fresh perspectives.

Accountability is a struggle for many of us. We often understand our goals, know what we could be doing to achieve them and still fall short because we haven’t instilled accountability into our process. A good coach will assist you with the process of accountability and track progress as you work towards your better life.

While there is some overlap in these processes with other helping professions such as therapy, there are important distinctions. First, in therapy for example, there is a heavy focus on the past, and understanding the source and root of issues. Sometimes, it may be necessary to understand the history to avoid the same mistakes and ensure accountability, however as a coach, we really don’t spend much time in that space. 

Second, in therapy there is the idea that you are broken, and need fixing. As coaches we believe you already have the necessary tools to work towards progress.

Coaching is not for everyone, and neither is therapy. Some challenges including those which require medical intervention such as depression and severe anxiety aren’t suitable for coaching. In those cases, a therapist or a medical professional would be more appropriate.

When choosing what helping professional you’d like to try, keep in mind that we have the concept of coachability as well. Not everyone can be coached.

To be coachable, you must have these three criteria : 

Have an area you are dissatisfied with

A vision for change

Willingness to do the work

In my experience almost everyone can benefit from some coaching, and so part of becoming a good coach, and good coachee is to adopt the coaching mindset in all aspects of our lives. The coaching mindset is one of curiosity, non-judgment and growth.

When we are curious about our thoughts, our relationships, our goals and our beliefs we ask informative questions that lead us to greater awareness and clarity. There is great power in adopting a curious mindset in all areas of our lives.

Non-judgment is absolutely necessary to create a safe space for people to explore. There is no place for judgment in coaching, and as a coach it’s critical to manage your own biases and beliefs in order to allow the coachee the space to explore. Non-judgment is incredibly valuable as it is rare in the general population. 

Finally, adopting a growth mindset means that in all areas of our life we seek improvement. Often, the improvement is increased gratitude, satisfaction and contentment. We don’t mean growth, in the traditional sense of having more money or stuff.

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted and there’s really no great excuse. I felt like I should fill in some gaps from my previous post about a year and a half ago! 

Matboard and More is still going extremely well. The Covid pandemic has been dramatic and really impacted our production but we’ve been coming out of it and 2020 looks like it will be our best year to date!

I’ve been doing all of my seminars via Zoom which has been a fascinating challenge. It is REALLY hard to facilitate seminars when there is minimal feedback and you can’t see the audience. So it’s forced me to become more of a lecturer, and to become more organized in my approach.

I think that’s awesome though, I love the challenge and I’m happy to have the chance to continue learning and sharing my learning.

I’ve also been working on what I first thought would be a book, but now I’ve decided I’m going to release it as a series of blog posts instead! It’s the culmination of years of thought and reflection on how I’ve achieved my goals in life. I definitely have a very unique approach and I’ve been able to codify that in a way that I think could help others looking to make big shifts in their life.

I had a bunch of seminars this year on Happiness and Stress so I had an opportunity to do a bunch of reading and reevaluate my approach.

The first and most powerful message I have for you is that stress is not inherently this dangerous and terrible monster. It has been so intensely demonized that we’ve lost all perspective. 

So I urge you to read the book, and watch the TED talk, The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. 

It totally re framed my thinking and changed my approach when discussing stress. The simple summary is that while there are some well known negative impacts to excess stress, there are a lot of misconceptions as well and we need to change relationship with stress. Embrace it! It helps motivate us, gives us energy, pushes us past our limits and helps us create more meaningful lives!

This connects with the overall idea of happiness because it’s very closely tied to stress. Happiness is not the absence of stress in our lives, we should not be looking to reduce stress to zero. The number one most stressful life moment for Canadians is having a baby. Does that mean we should all stop having babies so that we have less stress and are happier?

No! Babies bring meaning to our lives. Meaning is stressful. Meaningful lives are happy lives.

For me this means that I am trying to find different challenges that stress me in positive ways. Whether that be Yoga and physical fitness, attempts at writing this blog, working on my relationship with my wife, improving my video game skills or simple day to day things like keeping a clean household, cooking meals and keeping a healthy sleep schedule.

Don’t run away from stress, it won’t kill you! Understand good versus bad stress and learn to make stress work for you. 

Today my wife asked me a question… why is it that when two people fight, they bring up issues from the long past? How is that when Jill is pissed off at Jimmy, she can remember that time 3 years ago when Jimmy embarrassed her in front of her parents? Why doesn’t Timmy from sales ever seem to let go that time when Joanne screwed up his presentation and cost him a big client? It goes on and on, but we’ve all been there.

There are a couple reasons this happens, one of them being that our brains are actually designed to remember other people’s mistakes/flaws more clearly than their achievements. It’s called selective memory retention and it plays itself out in lots of interesting ways. It’s especially powerful against those who we don’t like or possibly consider our enemies.

When you get into a fight, especially a more serious argument, that person becomes your enemy, even if for a short time. In that moment your animal brain will go ahead and pick out all the memories that serve you in that fight. So you can defend yourself and win.

Selective memory retention is really useful for making us feel better about ourselves but it makes it very difficult to be fair in an argument. Then again, how many of us are concerned with being fair? We want to be right.

The other major reason we bring up negative memories and incidents in a disagreement is that we never got over the incident when it occurred. Bitterness and resentment are a special kind of poison that slowly erode trust, respect and love in any relationship. They fester and build up over time and explode at the first opportunity when there is a serious argument.

Resilience and strength in a relationship come from a strong foundation of effective conflict resolution, which in turn are based on trust and respect. Good communication is the engine that keeps everything running smoothly.

Everytime a conflict arises you have a few choices.

Use it as an opportunity to learn, grow and strengthen your bonds

Run away from it either by simple avoidance, passive aggressiveness or not addressing it completely which will certainly increase the chances of bitterness and resentment poisoning the future

Use it as an opportunity to demonstrate your power and attack the other person gaining some advantage, perceived or real

Some combination of the above

Of course option 1 is the healthiest, but it’s also the most time consuming and difficult, at least in the short term. Recognize that you are simply borrowing from future happiness when you decide to take one of the easier options.

The next time you are in an argument and find yourself bringing up negativity from the distant past, ask yourself :

Am I allowing my animal brain to take over here by selectively remembering things that help me beat my current “enemy” instead of being fair and objective?

Why do I still feel so much negativity about this?

How can I address this in a way that it won’t seem relevant in the future?

What is the point of bringing this up now?

What can I do now, so that this current argument won’t linger and be brought into future discussions?

Tell me about yourself?

To that question, I would give my ‘elevator pitch’ about my experience, my education, and my accomplishments, but it would be difficult to convince someone with merely my words.

What if I could show them the great things I’ve done in the past?  Putting on the recruiter hat, it must be difficult for them to find the talent they’re looking for because everyone’s canned responses are so similar.

ProudBoard.com, a Toronto-based startup company is attempting to not just make it easier for job seekers to showcase their accomplishments, but also bridge the gap between recruiters and top talent. 

ProudBoard, a Toronto-based visual professional platform, has lofty ambitions. It is aiming at revolutionizing the online space for professionals by making it easier for people to showcase their top accomplishments to their peers and prospective employers.   The site  provides a simple way to aggregate, organize and highlight professional achievements. It is the world's first visual professional platform for people and organizations to showcase their successes and important moments in a concise, visually appealing way – through pictures, videos, pdfs, documents, etc.  For example, people can post research papers or presentations which they’ve worked hard on and want the world to see.

As shown by the diagram above, ProudBoard fills a gap which is currently not being met.

Currently, there is no platform on the web where professionals can aggregate their achievements in one place.  “With Proudboard, top achievements are always kept at the top of the page, and not pushed down to the bottom where they can get lost in all the clutter”, says Khaled Awad, Founder and CEO of Proudboard.  “ProudBoard’s mission is to help people build their professional brand.  We wanted a place where we could point peers and employers to.” 

There is a school of thought that is quickly gaining steam, which says the MBA is useless.  I really enjoyed reading this particular article on the topic.  Technology has enabled people all across the world, particularly with the ability to start up their own business.  Apps, social media, blogs, online marketplaces and various other technologies have made it incredibly easy to create a business.  Business is fast, sexy and accessible.