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Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Caroline Adams Miller on the Keys to Achieving Big Goals | EP 548
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- [00:01]
Caroline Adams Miller
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- [00:33]
John R. Miles
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- [01:05]
Caroline Adams Miller
Think smart goals is a thing and it's not. It was A guy in the 80s, George Doran, consultant, just wrote an article for a management magazine and he created an acronym that was sticky, but it's what I call jargon. Mishmash Syndrome. That acronym means different things all over the world. Relatable, realistic. It could be measurable, meaningful. There is no one acronym that fits smart goals. It ain't science.
- [01:33]
John R. Miles
Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Hey Passion Struck family. Welcome Back to episode 548 of the Passion Passionstruck podcast. I'm your host, John Miles and I am so grateful for the incredible energy, enthusiasm and dedication you bring to this community week after week. Your commitment to living a purpose driven and intentional life is what makes the Passion Struck movement so powerful and together we're creating a ripple effect of positive change. If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. You've just joined a global community of game changers who are igniting their purpose and pursuing lives of boldness, meaning and impact. We're so thrilled to have you on this journey. Before we dive into today's episode, let's take a moment to recap my episode from earlier in the week where I had the honor of sitting down with Madison Marsh, Miss America 2024. Madison shared her inspiring journey to the crown and her mission to use her platform to promote mental health awareness, pancreatic cancer awareness, and empower young women while leading with authenticity. If you missed this episode, I highly encourage you to go back and listen. A powerful conversation filled with insights on resilience, purpose and making a meaningful impact. And if you're looking to explore more themes like leadership, mental health and personal growth, don't forget to check out our Episode Starter Packs, curated playlists designed to guide you through the best of our 540 plus episodes. They're available on Spotify or at passionstruck.com starter packs. For even more inspiration, sign up for my Live intentionally newsletter@passionstruck.com, it's filled with exclusive content to help you apply the wisdom from our episodes into your daily life. And don't forget, every conversation we have here is also available in video form on our YouTube channel where you can watch, share and grow with others who are passionate about creating change. Today, we're diving into a topic that is fundamental to living a fulfilling and purpose driven life goal setting. My guest is the renowned positive psychologist and best selling author Caroline Adams Miller. Caroline has been a trailblazer in the science of goal setting, grit and success for over three decades. She's one of the world's leading experts in positive psychology and her groundbreaking work has transformed how we approach personal and professional growth. Caroline's latest book, Big the Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, Creating youg Best Life, challenges the traditional ways we think about goal setting and introduces a research backed framework to help us accomplish transformative goals. She brings fresh perspective to Locke and Latham's goal setting theory, a powerful yet overlooked concept, and explains how we can use it to unlock our potential and achieve lasting happiness. In our conversation, Caroline shares her Bridge Framework, a revolutionary approach to goal setting that blends science, grit and the psychology of flourishing. We explore why big goals are essential for personal growth, how the self esteem movement hindered goal achievement, and the actionable steps you can take to set and stick goals that you truly matter. Whether you're a young professional, a parent, or anyone seeking greater clarity and direction in life, this episode is packed with insights that will inspire you to think bigger act boldly and create a life aligned with your purpose. Let's dive in with Caroline Adams Miller as we explore the science of setting big goals and unlocking the life you were meant to live. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey be begin. Are you feeling stressed? Not sleeping well? You're not alone. Thankfully I found a game changer. Magnesium Breakthrough from Bio Optimizers. It's been a total upgrade for my sleep and stress levels. Magnesium Breakthrough is packed with the top seven forms of magnesium, giving you the ultimate support for better sleep, stress management, balanced hormones and improved mood all in one bottle. It's like a wellness reset you didn't know you needed. Since using Magnesium Breakthrough, my sleep has gone from restless to restorative. I wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day. Right now, for the entire month of November, Bio Optimizers, the makers of Magnesium Breakthrough, are having a Black Friday blowout sale on all their products. All month long. You will get discounts with my unique code plus access to up to $100 in free gifts with purchase. Go to bioptimizers.com passion and use code Passion to get your discount and free gifts today. It's better over here at&T customers switching to T Mobile has never been easier. We'll pay off your existing phone and.
- [06:39]
Caroline Adams Miller
Give you a new one free.
- [06:40]
John R. Miles
All on America's largest 5G network network. Visit t mobile.com CarrierFreedom to switch today. Pay off up to 650 via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days. Free phone up to 830 via 24 monthly bill credits plus tax qualifying port and trade in service on go 5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue build credits or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is due. I am so excited today to bring Caroline Adams Miller to the Passion struck audience. Welcome Caroline.
- [07:12]
Caroline Adams Miller
Thank you. It's really nice to be here.
- [07:14]
John R. Miles
Caroline. You and I have been chatting now for a few months on different topics and the more I learn about your story, the more it resonates with me and I think it's important for the audience to hear part of the backstory. And so I want to start at when you were at University of Pennsylvania because this happened when you're in your mid-40s, while you're raising three children, you make this bold decision to join the first ever Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program. And most people at this stage, and I hear it a lot when people see the COVID of my book or they hear about the podcast, that they fear it's too late to try something new, or they fear they've lost their sense of passion and it's too late for them to regain it. So I think it's important for them to hear your backstory. What drove you to take that leap? And how did reclaiming your purpose during that time shift your sense of mattering?
- [08:16]
Caroline Adams Miller
Wow. Okay. Thank you. And so I think it was more the bold step was University of Pennsylvania took me. But what I did see was in January of, I think, 2005, the COVID story of Time or Newsweek was the New Science of Happiness. Big smiley face. And. And every article in that issue was about positive psychology and how it was so important and wellbeing mattered. And Marty Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness. And there was an article in there with one paragraph, one little paragraph that was flashing neon lights at me. It said, the University of Pennsylvania is going to take 32 men and women from all over the world and its first ever masters of applied positive psychology in the world, the Science of Happiness. And all I remember thinking was, I have to get into that. I just have to get into that program. I had never seen, heard of a graduate program that spoke to me. So I had this intuition I had to get there. I had not gone to graduate school before this. I was an undergraduate from Harvard University, and I'd never seen my college transcript. So I had to write to Harvard. It's like, do you still have them? I'd never looked at it. Boy, they didn't have great inflation in the late 70s and early 80s. I saw Cs and B minuses and I was magna. But still, I was not the great inflation we see today. And so I applied to the University of Pennsylvania. I wanted so badly to get in. I added a question to the application. It was, why should you take me? And I remember I typed, I'm fun in big letters. So I have this zest for life, this passion. It's like you talk about. Passion struck. I became so passionate about this topic, and then in particular about its connection to the science of goal setting. That was my fifth book. My capstone from that year at Penn became this global bestseller, creating your best life. And that was the first two things. And then I'll stop talking. The first time that the mass market got a goal setting book that had evidence, footnotes, and science in it. That still blows my mind that until that book came out in 2008, the only books on anyone's bookcase were Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, I mean, none of which had any SC footnotes. Certainly not Goal Setting Theory, which is my latest book. And the second thing was there was this meta analysis that came out right before I got to Penn and it said all success is preceded by being happy first. Which completely changes any discussion of goal setting. If you don't address the issue of emotional flourishing, not just happiness, it's not happy ology, then you're really not being professional in terms of talking about goal setting if you have access to this information. So for several reasons, that book became a real pioneering book in the field of goal setting and in positive psychology. It's still selling. But my latest book is an updated version of that. So that was when I was passion struck.
- [11:22]
John R. Miles
Well, I have to ask, you got to study under Marty. Chris Peterson, Angela Duckworth, Barry Swartz, Barbara Fredrickson. And you just mentioned that study. So Sonia was one of the three authors of it.
- [11:35]
Caroline Adams Miller
Yeah.
- [11:35]
John R. Miles
What was it like? I mean, some of those are my favorite people I've read and studied.
- [11:41]
Caroline Adams Miller
Yeah, it was like being drunk all the time. And I don't drink. I haven't had a drink in 40 years, but I just felt drunk. I would call my husband at the end of every day. So it was like five days or three full days every single month. And I remember I couldn't speak. And the only analogy I come up with is I was an unformatted computer disk that had too much information on it. My brain hurt all the time. And I love school. I love school. I didn't care about my grades. I love school. And this spoke to me. This informed my practice as an executive coach because there was so much research. There was like, gosh, my coaching can now have an evidence base to it, because back then it didn't. Coaching was the Wild West. But talk about brilliant people. Chris Peterson wasn't just brilliant, he was funny. And Marty is brilliant. And so Sonja Lubomirsky and Barbara Fredrickson have become my friends. Angela Duckworth was not one of my instructors. She was, you know, doing her PhD work. And I think I was the first mass market book to put her new groundbreaking work on grit, which she had just done under Marty. She became an instructor later in the program, but not my year. I just got to know her because of her research on grit and the West Point Point research. So it was life changing, and it was life changing in some surprising ways. It changed my profession. It changed me as a human. Because after you hear things like the number one strength of happy people is gratitude. And you look at the via character strengths and you look for where's gratitude? Maybe it's not in the top five, maybe it's not even the top 10. You pay attention and you can't forget the fact that gratitude is closely linked to a flourishing life. So you hear these things. It's a minute past midnight. You can't go back and live that life anymore that you lived before. So you come out of this master's program, I think fundamentally altered as a human being. And I don't know of any master's program anywhere that I've ever heard of where you don't just come in and learn something, you change as a human being. And I changed as a mother, I changed as a wife, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend. I'm not the same person I was before 2005. And I think a lot of people.
- [13:58]
John R. Miles
Have that reaction that is super inspiring and makes me just think of everything I think about the program is what it delivers. Well, I want to ask a follow on question to this so many people today feel like they've lost their sense of mattering. They feel hopeless, which we're going to talk about further in the interview. But a lot are unsure how to reignite their passion. What lessons from your journey can you share with others who may feel stuck or searching for ways to find meaning and purpose in their own lives?
- [14:30]
Caroline Adams Miller
That's such a good question. I'm sorry I didn't address that in the second part of that last question. First of all, it's never too late. You just have to have curiosity. And also one of the five character strengths. I use the via character strength. I don't use anything else in my work and that's free. It's via character.org I get nothing from it. But it ranks your character strengths from 1 to 24. And Zest is one of the five Chris Peterson told us to look for. He said five of those 24 more closely associated with being of a flourishing person. And zest, he commented, and other researchers who came to work with us commented it starts high as children and then it drops to bottom five in most adults. And I think Zest is closely aligned with passion and curiosity. And I think we have to look for ways to be alive while we're alive. And by following my intuition that I had to do this and having the not everyone thought I was being a good mother or I was juggling too much with my business, but I had the backing of Some key people. We know that you need at least three to four people who have your back in order for you to take creative risks in life and believe in yourself. And I think that's what allowed me to feel not just that I was passion struck and that I was passionate about this new addition to my life, my world, my writing, my everything, my work. It made me feel like I mattered in a new way because I now had this knowledge. Marty told us he wanted to go out with this knowledge and apply it, apply it to the world in whatever division of life we came from. We've had UN peacekeepers go through that program. We've had priests, we've had politicians. We've had so many different kind of people. But our mandate is to take this amazing education, go out and apply it to the fields where we are most passionate, where we work, where we can make a difference. And I have brought that feeling that I matter and I can make more of a difference with this because of the incredible good fortune I had not only to get in, but to have the ability to go. It's not free. They do have scholarships now for some people. And so there's several areas where I've made a huge difference with this knowledge. One is in the field of goal setting, which we can talk more about, and the other one is in the field of addiction because, as we've discussed, I cultivated grit in my twenties when I became, I think, the first publicly known recovered bulimic. When I wrote my first book, My name is Caroline, I just talk about passion struck. I had to tell the world that I was in recovery at a time when nobody got better. It was a death sentence. But I wanted to live, and I wanted to live for myself. And it was really my first goal that my teachers didn't set, my parents didn't set, culture didn't set. I wanted to live, and I needed to figure out how to recover from bulimia. So I, in my book, Positively Caroline, which was the second part of my name is Caroline, is I got in recovery. People, the world needs to know you can get in recovery from this thing. The second was in 2013, 2013, when the other book came out, Positively Caroline. It was about the fact that I stayed in recovery. And that is really the bigger challenge that I don't think we talk about enough. Not just getting in recovery now we know it's possible, but staying in recovery. So that book, the last part of it, is how I feel like positive psychology could be used in the field of addiction, particularly with eating disorders. To help people cultivate the behavior, the mindset, the ability to overcome addictions. And I think it's more and more accepted that can be done and those can be combined. So I was passion struck in two different areas.
- [18:16]
John R. Miles
Well, I want to do a little bit deeper dive on this. Since you brought it up. I was going to do it later, but we might as well do it now. So the story here is you are at Harvard, you're a competitive swimmer and you have all these incredible achievements on the outside, but privately you're battling this eating disorder that almost cost you your life. And I think there are probably people listening to this who are facing maybe not an eating disorder, but an addiction battle or some other battle where they're outside is completely different than how they're feeling on the inside. Can you take us back to that period and share what it was like to be the girl who had it all while facing a deeply personal struggle and what it took you to have the strength to break free in that period of time?
- [19:06]
Caroline Adams Miller
Thank you for asking. Obviously you can tell I have zero shame about this. It's the thing I'm proudest of. The fact that I overcame bulimia at a time when people didn't know how to do it, and as I said, it was a death sentence is the thing to this day, that is my touchstone. If I could do that, then I can probably do anything. So I have no shame. And I've been trying for 30 some years to take the shame out of it. And I fear we're falling behind other addictions. So it was lonely. It was sad. I was in a household that was not particularly warm and loving. It was all about achievements. My great uncles made Olympic history. They were the first siblings to go 1, 2 in an event in the 1912 Olympics. The standing. The standing high jump. Ben and Platt Adams. Platt got the gold, Ben got the silver. And those were the stories I heard. And my parents were intelligent and we were supposed to have great grades and go to the right schools and all the rest of it. So the standards for me were extraordinarily high. And failure was not tolerated. And there was abuse in my home. And I. It's not something I want to go into publicly, but too publicly, because I do talk about it in my books. But there was a lot I had to overcome in order to love myself and to feel like I was worthy to live. And so it was lonely, it was sad. It was my secret. For seven years. I kept thinking if I just did something else, it would go away. Like, if I got into Harvard or Yale or Stanford or whatever, the bulimia would go away. If I did a swimming time that was great, made Junior Olympic cuts, it would go away. If I got great SAT scores, it would go away. And nothing ever helped. And so when I went to Harvard, it was my last hope. I'm at Harvard. This is the pinnacle of achievement for so many people. And I'm miserable and I'm getting worse. So I had this double life. I had all kinds of medical complications. Again, nobody knew what to look for because nobody knew how to treat it. So I had crumbling teeth. I'd never had my period. I didn't even get my period Till I was 22. And I was losing all of my passions. Playing the piano, swimming. I had to drop out of swimming. I couldn't keep it up with this double life. So it was the hardest, saddest, most suicidal period of my life. And then I was asked on a date, one of my first dates in my life, my sophomore year. I'm five, ten and a half. I think I just looked. I didn't look like somebody you could approach. And I was miserable on top of it. So this man approached me and he asked me out. And on our third date, we agreed we'd get married. I got engaged at 19. He was captain of the Harvard lacrosse team. Really handsome guy. And I thought, this is it. I'm going to get married and I'm going to get married and it's going to go away. So I got married nine days after I graduated from Harvard and I went on my honeymoon and it was a disaster. I was purging on my honeymoon. And that's when I looked in the mirror and said to myself, this thing is going to kill you. It's going to kill you unless you figure out how to overcome it. And the last part of my story, I'll just say, is I was living in Baltimore at the time and just by the grace of God, and I do mean just sheer luck, there were 12 step recovery meetings there for compulsive eaters where I found and met people in recovery from bulimia. I just got goosebumps thinking about this. It was life changing. It was February of 1984, and I was sitting there defensive and not talking. And then this woman said this sentence. She said, my name is Betsy. I'm changing her name. My name is Betsy, and I'm recovering from bulimia one day at a time. And I remember I put my needle point down. I looked at her. She was tall, she was blonde, she was an athlete, and she was saying sentences I'd never heard anybody speak. And I looked at her and in that moment I knew if she could do it, I could do it. And that was really when my life began. I learned what joy was. I learned what grit was. I learned how to cultivate it. I learned about goal setting. I learned what love was. Someone said to me one day, caroline, it's great that you're getting better, but you can't keep what you don't give away. And that one sentence was what I found, brought me joy that I could sponsor other people, that I could be a role model. I had something I was proud of that I could share with other people. I had months, weeks, months, years of recovery. And in positive psychology, we know that's one of the positive interventions is giving. Being a giver brings you joy. And I learned it by hitting the worst bottom of my life. And I'm just so grateful. I was bulimic and it gave me the path to find out what all those things meant. They weren't just phrases on a wall or speeches I heard. This is when I found out what life was all about. And it's I don't regret now.
- [24:04]
John R. Miles
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- [26:50]
Caroline Adams Miller
A minute of it I have a.
- [26:52]
John R. Miles
Couple things to respond to that one I love what you just said, that to get things into your life you had to give first and you have to constantly give and I think that's such an important reminder for someone. And the second thing that you brought up throughout this is I recently had Bo Eason, a well known public speaker on the show and we were talking about what stories do best when you're public speaking and he said no one wants to hear the story of Tom Brady talking about his seven super bowl wins. They want to hear about the lowest point of his life when he was at Michigan and almost decided to throw in the towel, but made the decision to become what he is today. And I think the same thing goes with this story and oftentimes people are afraid to share these stories. I was afraid to share some of these dark moments in my life. But I, I think since I've been doing it and I see other people doing it, these are the stories that people learn the best from. So thank you for sharing.
- [27:56]
Caroline Adams Miller
Thank you and Same to you.
- [27:58]
John R. Miles
And I'm going to tie this into your new book, Big Goals, the science of setting them, achieving them, and creating your best life, which I just want to acknowledge is a must read on the next Next Big Idea Club's best books for 2025. So congratulations on that.
- [28:15]
Caroline Adams Miller
Thank you.
- [28:17]
John R. Miles
So when you're facing something like addiction, like bulimia, when you think about that, it's a really big goal to overcome that dilemma in your life. How does this book, when you look back in time, relate to that trauma you were going through at that time and that goal that you had to set?
- [28:39]
Caroline Adams Miller
It's so funny. I lived my life in hindsight. When I was at Penn, I'm sitting in Huntsman hall, which is where Wharton is. I would hear this research and little puzzle pie pieces would start to come together in my mind. Oh, that's why all those things that I did, those achievements didn't bring me the happiness I thought it was, because happiness precedes success. I mean, just that one equation. Oh, my gosh. By the way, Sonia is replicating all of that research now, and it's even more robust that happiness precedes success. And she's been looking at other cultures. So I checked in with her when I was writing Big Goals. So I think that's an important thing to. To note. So another assignment I had at Penn was Goal Setting Theory by Locke and Latham. And I remember I said out loud, I didn't care who was around me. I just said in wonderment, there is a science to goal setting. I was shocked. I didn't know there was a science. And as much as I'd read about goal setting, I didn't know, didn't know goal setting. I didn't know Lock and Latham existed. And they're still not known well enough, which is why I wrote Big Goals. But when they talk about goals, there's learning goals and performance goals. And we can go into that in more detail if you'd like. But one of the divisions, learning goals, is what my bulimia was. I had to learn something I'd never done before. I had to learn how to behave. I had to learn how to eat. I had to learn how to deal with cravings. I had to learn how to deal with sadness without binging. So they're very careful to say that when you have a learning goal, you have to flatten your learning curve as quickly as possible. You've got to go find the places where you can get the skills and the knowledge that you don't have in order to achieve this goal, you cannot say I will be over bulimia in six months. You cannot do that to yourself. You cannot do that for any goal. That's a learning goal. Because when you assign performance goal metrics, and you can only do that if it's a goal that fits on a checklist, you've done it before, you know what excellence looks like, you know what it's going to take in terms of time, money, energy, people around you. If you assign that kind of metric or outcome to a learning goal, you're likely to quit because it's just too hard, you don't know how to do it. So that's how it relates to overcoming bulimia. It was a big learning goal. And any learning goal we have, you want to engage curiosity, you want to engage the ability to have a growth mindset. And that's how people stay engaged in the process of having disappointments, not having the first way they learn it work out. But that's how you persist longer in goal accomplishment, is when you correctly separate them and follow the guidelines that I've laid out in big goals. But people still don't know about it. And the last thing I'll say is if you mix them up, if you mix up learning goals and performance goals, you have the biggest disasters in business history, bar none. It's example after example of people and companies having a learning goal. Lee Iacocca with the Pinto, the Ford Pinto. They'd never made a small car, but in his arrogance he said, oh, I'll have a two thousand pound, two thousand dollar car. And in one year he wanted to like, be like the small European cars. Ford hadn't built small cars. What happened? The Pinto became the death trap. More lives were lost because of the Pinto and the ways in which engineers were pressured to sign off on safety checks. And they knew the car was a death trap. So same thing with the Titan submersible. Skipped all the learning. Just wanted to make money and get people down to the Titanic. I mean, I could go on and on. Don't mix them up. It's a simple, elegant theory. It is number one of 73 management theories without ever having a replication crisis. And that's significant. Just learn this simple, elegant theory and I promise you all of your goal pursuit is going to be a whole lot easier. And these two men are still alive. They did the work, they did the scholarship, they just didn't pursue fame. And I'm so grateful to put a spotlight on their work.
- [32:45]
John R. Miles
I think you just named two great examples I think it's important because it's top of mind to go through another one. And I have flown American Airlines for years and years, have right now a million and a half miles on them and they are a huge Boeing customer. But there was one point in time when they were going to move to a different carrier and they went to Boeing and said, if you don't do something, we're going to move away from you. And so, yeah, what happened to Boeing's culture? Because I think it's important to talk about this because I remember when I was doing my MBA studies, I took this course and the professor said, I want you to look at the Fortune 500 from the 1970s and how many companies are on the list today. And the strange thing about this is if you do this for the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, you'll get the same answer. So many companies disappear because they get comfortable in what they're doing and they lose the creativity and inventiveness. And this is exactly what happened to Bowen. Maybe you can use this goal setting failure to describe their story.
- [33:57]
Caroline Adams Miller
So that's a case study I have in the book. I have spent just hundreds of hours looking at Boeing and the MCAS failure because again, people lost their lives. Because what you see when you mix up a learning goal and a performance goal is companies lose their reputation, sometimes they never get it back and people lose their lives like they did with the Boeing 737 Max. With the MCAS failure. It is such a good example that American Airlines, Boeing's biggest customer, just went to them and said, we're about to place an order for 200 planes with Airbus. They've been innovating while you've been sitting still. And so they had this board of directors that was, sorry to say it. It was mostly white men doing what I call the Habsburg jaw effect. They were all sitting around inbred ideas. And it became sterile. There were no good ideas coming out of there. It was a lot of group think. And in the 80s, Jack Welch and other CEOs began to demand higher pay packages. And they used to cut, cut, cut to get more productivity and squeeze workers to the max while giving themselves these avaricious pay packages. Jack Welch is the absolute poster child for avaricious, just greedy pay packages. It was just one of the worst in 2005. And so this is what happened is these companies just wanted to make more and more money. They wanted to pump up the stock price. Boeing did that. And Boeing lost its edge and they stopped innovating and they started to cover up. It became a culture of sloppiness, of lying, of poor quality. And they knew it. And it was just like the Ford Pinto. These engineers knew that they were signing off on things like drills being left in planes. They would drill and then drop it and they go, that's okay, just seal it shut. So this has now come out more and more. And they didn't let the pilots train in simulators to just cut costs. Again, it comes down to money. They wanted to make as much money as possible, so they cut costs. They did not develop what Airbus had developed with more strict guidelines. They didn't develop this long haul carrier that could have more fuel so it would be heavier and go longer distances, because that's what the world was asking for. So they just retrofitted one of their other workhorse planes, cut corners, lied, cheated, and took more big pay packages, and basically just threw the planes out there. And we now know what happened. These things are predictable, and goal setting theory predicts this when you mix up a learning goal. Boeing had a learning goal. They had to learn how to make this kind of plane. And normally I think it takes six to 10 years to develop a new plane. They didn't want to lose their customers, particularly American Airlines. They just took shortcuts. I call this faux grit. Fake grit. You're not doing the hard work to do something great at the end of the day, so you fake it. So that's what happened. So Boeing is just one of the examples in the book.
- [37:01]
John R. Miles
In the book, you also draw a parallel between Dr. Andrew Huberman's ability to distill complex research that he's doing into actionable protocols, and your mission, as you've been discussing, is to make goal setting science accessible to everyone.
- [37:17]
Caroline Adams Miller
Yeah.
- [37:18]
John R. Miles
So how did Huberman's approach inspire your work? And what lessons are you taking from his method into your own real world application?
- [37:28]
Caroline Adams Miller
So Huberman went from one to several million followers just as I was recovering from cytomegalovirus, which had me in a hospital for three days, and it took NIH infectious doctors to figure out why I was literally dying. They thought I had leukemia. And so anyway, I was told there was no cure to cytomegalovirus. I had to just relax, really. Okay. So I started taking these long walks on the beach. We had just bought a beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and I was practicing a concept called utviden, which is a Dutch word for airing your soul out in windy, salty, cold air. And I did that for miles and it coincided with Andrew Huberman's podcast, which was three hours. I was out there for three hours airing my soul out. And he kept talking about how there was all this research stuck in medicine, these trials going on and on, but there was already ample evidence to show that these things, whatever, they were making a difference in how people lived, how they healed, how to approach supplements, sleep, light. And so he developed protocols. And so these multi hour podcasts, the public wanted it and I could see the hunger as it grew and grew. And he became a star. People wanted these protocols. And I realized that even to this day, even though I brought goal setting theory to the mass market in 2008. And then John Doerr, the venture capitalist who invented it, I think he invested in Google and some other startups. He had goal setting theory in the introduction to his book Measure what Matters. But other than the two of us, me first and then him, 10 years later, goal setting theory still wasn't known by anybody. And so I'd go around the world and I'd give webinars and talks to hundreds of CEOs and executives and I would say, how many of you set goals for your company, companies? Every hand goes up. How many of you do it with goal setting theory? No, no hands go up. And so for 15 years I watched this and I thought, the world really deserves better. We're over a barrel now. We live in a VUCA environment, our kids are anxious and depressed, suicide has gone up, and companies have to learn new ways. We're in a vast learning goal condition in the world right now because of COVID and artificial intelligence. And I said, now we have to know goal setting theory. And I'm going to put protocols in this that people can now use to experiment with creating success. And every bit of my book is going to be evidence based. And I'm going to explain the history of goal setting from time and motion studies to how we got here today, and how we can use goal setting theory. But then I added my bridge methodology, which is how I created other protocols. Because what that does is goal setting theory was published in 1990. There's been a raft of findings around mindset and grit and all kinds of things, priming, you name it, that also impact success. And no one had really pulled together a goal setting book that included everything you need to know. So I did it. And everything in this book is a protocol. If you buy this book, any manager in the world will be able to set goals correctly with themselves, with their companies. Every teenager who wants to make a Sports team or make the orchestra in the oboe. This book will tell you how to accomplish your goals. No longer will people have dreams and no idea how to accomplish them. I have dragged goal setting out of the magical law of attraction 1980s, 1990s into the 21st century. It is now evidence based. If you buy this book, everything about it is evidence based. And my protocols will change your life. And the last thing I want to say, I'm just militant about this. Smart goals isn't science. Period. Exclamation point. Another exclamation point. People think smart goals is a thing and it's not. It was a guy in the 80s, George Doran. He wrote an art, a consultant, just wrote an article for a management magazine and he created an acronym that was sticky, but it's what I call jargon, Mishmash syndrome. That acronym means different things all over the world. Relatable, realistic. It could be measurable, meaningful. There is no one acronym that fits smart goals. It ain't science. There's research showing it undermines it. Finally, the last thing I'm going to say about smart goals, because I really feel so strongly about this, it's even in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has embedded it in its answers about goal setting is what was I going to say about smart goals? Oh, if you take the first definition of smart goals and you make R realistic, that immediately undermines goal setting theory. Red flags started to fly in my brain in 2005 when I saw that challenging and specific goals, learning goals and performance goals, they have to be challenging and specific if you want the best possible outcome. Using the word realistic immediately causes you to set what's called low goals. So forget smart goals, buy my book and learn the real science. Period.
- [42:39]
John R. Miles
I love it. So one of the things that you mention in the book is that men and women approach goals differently.
- [42:47]
Caroline Adams Miller
Yes.
- [42:48]
John R. Miles
And oftentimes biases and traditional systems penalize women for behaviors that reward men. What steps outside of an individual, like what steps can organizations take to create more equitable and effective goal setting practices?
- [43:07]
Caroline Adams Miller
I think it's really important that we look at this. And again, I don't think this question has really been asked or addressed ever in a book. And it just struck me in February because I signed the contract last December and the book was turned in May 1, and it's out November 27. So this was huge. And in February, as I literally drowned 14, 16 hours a day, I realized one day that all I had listened to that day or that week were what I called dude podcasts. I'd heard nothing but men talking about men to men, about success and goal setting and motivation. And I realized that I hadn't heard a single woman even referenced as an example of excellence or curiosity or genius. The criteria for being a genius are skewed against women. And that's when I realized that self efficacy theory, Bandura's theory, where you have to have relatable role models, was working subconsciously and unconsciously against anybody who didn't fit that model of mostly white men. Because, face it, they've been in leadership. They've had the power for forever. That's not debatable, really, that listening to podcasts, reading these books, for the most part, you weren't going to hear or see relatable role models. And I began to ask myself, are we, and I'm a woman, are we by and large setting smaller goals because of how the world seems to be skewed against us, we don't hear or see relatable role models. Wikipedia says that 18% of the biographies are of women, 82% are of men, because there's this drive by editing that says women haven't been notable or noteworthy enough, so they delete their bios. So that's just one aspect, is what are we hearing and seeing? And for the most part it's dude walls, dude panels, but now dude podcasts, which is mostly how women get a lot of information. The other thing I want to say, and there's so much research in the book about this, so it's really important, is that since 1940, perceptions of women have changed in many ways, particularly around competence. Women are now seen as competent because we're in the workforce now, 50% of the workforce, maybe more, is female. So we have many chances to be seen as competent where there has been no change at all in how people perceive women. And that includes how men and women see women, is in this area of agency and being goal directed and being ambitious. And the research shows very conclusively that any woman who sets, pursues and achieves big goals, she is going to pay a huge social penalty. And the research on it is all over the place because what's happened is you violated stereotype norms. It's called the black sheep effect. You will be ghosted. You will not have your success celebrated. You'll be held to different standards than men are. But for the most part, you will be excommunicated by both friends and other people, both men and women. They're the rare few who celebrate and success celebrate and build up. Women who've succeeded. But for the most part, this is the one area that's held constant and we've had no growth whatsoever. So just being me, a woman talking about goal setting is blowing up norms. Blowing up norms because people sitting in audiences are not used to hearing women talking about goal setting and how the science impacts them. So I think companies have to realize that many of the reward systems, many of the ways in which people are encouraged to get feedback as they're pursuing goals. And part of goal setting theory says you have to have feedback that tells you that you're getting warmer, you're getting closer, or you got to pivot. Women don't get accurate feedback. They succeed. They often get no feedback. People go silent. It's very painful. Women are also, by and large, not given leadership feedback, while men are. And there are a few other studies that came out literally recently, like in the last month, that I didn't get in the book. One is about how women female CEOs are given 1.7 years to succeed and men are given more than 2, almost 3 to succeed. Women are deemed failures much more quickly with different criteria. Not only that, quote, unquote, failed female CEO. The halo effect follows any female who might be considered by a board of directors to be the next CEO. She's already considered a quasi failure simply because that role model was quote, unquote, failed male CEOs. No such halo effect exists that doesn't happen. So here's another one. In the workplace, women and men who are given the exact same goals and tasks to accomplish, women who achieve those goals with excellence and on time do not get credit for being that person. The research shows that men who take longer and work nights and weekends and maybe have the same outcome, maybe it's excellent. They're seen as more successful, more dedicated, more disciplined, and more dedicated to the company. So all over the place, the ways in which we set goals, value progress, give feedback and reward excellence skews against women. And I'll give you one last example, because a lot of people study Amazon for goal setting success. They've got this big goal setting program where people are squeezed to death and they're encouraged to rat on their friends and call these anonymous lines and say so and so isn't doing their work. I mean, it is a cutthroat Darwinian culture. But one of the things is they encourage managers to give brutal feedback in front of other people, shame them. And the problem is when women do that, when women adhere to those standards in any culture, they'll pay a penalty. They will pay a huge penalty. So they might be following the criteria, the 14 criteria that Amazon says this is how you must act to be an, an amabot. So they'll be doing what the company wants them to do, but it's going to completely undermine their success. It will not pay off in the end. So those are just a few examples. We have to wake up to the fact that we do not have goal setting productivity systems embedded in the world or in companies that are evidence based or that ask people as they're setting their strategy, will this strategy work for someone who looks like me? Can I find a woman, a person of color who has also achieved or built this character trait or done this hard thing, who I can relate to? Because you know what, how they did it is not going to match many of the stories they've heard on podcasts, is not going to. Is not going to match some of the people we see in documentaries. You have to step back and say, will it work for me? And then just like I did with overcoming my bulimia, find a Betsy. I looked at that woman across the room in that church in Baltimore, Maryland who said, my name is Betsy and I'm recovering from bulimia one day at a time. I just got goosebumps again because it changed my life. There was my role model. She was. And she did. She taught me how to overcome bulimia one day at a time. You can't just follow a recipe that has worked for people who don't look like you, sound like you come from your culture. Be vigilant, be thoughtful, be awake at the wheel, not asleep at the wheel for whatever reason.
- [50:45]
John R. Miles
What you just brought up triggered in my mind something that you and I were talking about before the podcast, and that's Albert Maduro's self efficacy theory. And in the book you connect self efficacy theory with goal setting theory, emphasizing the importance of building confidence and resilience to tackle big goals. My good friend of mine, Scott Simon, has this book Scare your soul, which I love because he talks about the importance of courage muscles to help you achieve goals. What are some steps listeners can take to develop their I can do it muscle and increase the likelihood of committing to and achieving ambitious goals.
- [51:28]
Caroline Adams Miller
So there are four ways to build self efficacy. One is a vicarious role model, somebody in your environment. It's also someone who believes in you. And that's a big one. Having a mentor sponsor. But by and large, Bandura found that the number one way to build self efficacy was to break big goals down into smaller pieces and have mastery experiences. So don't be daunted or overwhelmed by the fact that you have a big goal. I have this whole methodology and worksheets in this book that'll walk you through how to set the right big goals and make sure your strategy matches it. But we have to set goals that are appropriate for us, our goals intrinsically motivated, and then break it down into different steps. But we also have to take a look at my bridge methodology is brainstorming relationships, investments, decision making, hygiene, good grit, and your standards of excellence. You have to look at all of those because every one of them is going to involve steps that need to be taken that will build up mastery. And another thing I'll say when you look at relationships is people catch behaviors in their environments. And if you want to do hard things and it requires grit or resilience or the ability to have more self regulation or willpower, take a look at the tribe that you spend time with. Take a look at the emails that you open. Take a look at the conversations that you listen to in the hallways wherever you work or live or spend time, because those are going to have a massive impact on whether or not you have the support you need to accomplish your goals. And this goes to Shelly Gable's research. Shelly Gables research on active constructive responding really makes people wake up. You see the shade snapping open in people's eyes when they hear about active constructive responding. She found that there's only one right way to respond when someone tells you they have a big goal or they've done something hard and meaningful that they feel proud of. The only one right way to respond that your brain says this is a good thing and I'm going to do more of this, is if that person responds with curiosity and enthusiasm. Her research found that there are three other ways to respond, which is passive aggressive, passive destructive, and active destructive. And they're all about either changing the subject or saying mean things or whatever devaluing that person's excitement about what they've done. And if you share your big goal or your success with the first person who responds to that, the first responder research is what I call it. That person has the power to make you disengage from that goal and just stop doing it. So think really carefully about who has your back, who's in your circle. Do you have a mastermind group that believes in you and you respond with curiosity, enthusiasm to their goals? This is again where I want to call out women for a moment. There is research showing that 84% of women admit to being surrounded by frenemies, friends who are enemies. And why do women do this? Because they don't want anyone to think they're not nice. And as I learned this research, what I realized was we're doing this at our own peril. And we're thinking, well, one day my mom will say something nice about what I've accomplished. One day, my sister in law, my cousin, my best friend, they'll be happy for me. But they must not mean what they're doing. No. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. And this is where you have to really take active steps, is when you've got big goals. Bandura talks about the importance of being around people who believe in you, vicarious role models, supporters, and people who help you achieve mastery. And so do not make the mistake of being around people who suck more than they give. So I'll stop right there.
- [55:33]
John R. Miles
So one of the things I think it takes to realize a big goal and to even set one is giving yourself psychological safety, safety, something that Amy Edmondson has pioneered. And you talk about in the book. What do you think is this correlation between psychological safety and goal setting?
- [55:54]
Caroline Adams Miller
So Amy Edmondson was in my husband's class at Harvard and I followed her work for years. She's a professor at Harvard Business School. And what's really important at work is when you're in a meeting that your voice is heard and. And I'm going to go back to women again. So it's a safe place to express your feelings, even if you're the newest employee, to give your ideas to not be interrupted or mansplained or eyes rolled or being cut off. So you have to have that. But Phyllis Chesler is someone, I've really followed her research. She's at nyu, and in her book Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, she has this unbelievable line. And again, the whole book is evidence based. It weighs like as much as a brick, but it's worth it. She said no one warns little girls to expect incoming fire for the rest of their lives. That it will come in the form of passive aggressive comments. I put up with it. You could mean girls. That's just how women are. Just accept it. She talks about the fact that we have all of this incoming fire. And what I realized when I wrote the book is many of us don't have psychological safety outside of the workplace. So the workplace is one place that has gotten an enormous amount of publicity and justifiably so. But what about a lack of psychological safety elsewhere when you're at Home eating dinner, when you're out sitting on the soccer field watching your kids play, what are you absorbing there? Again, be vigilant. It's not just at work. So that's what I have to say about psychological safety.
- [57:28]
John R. Miles
And I can't talk about this whole topic without getting into grit with you. So in the book you talk about. Well, let's go back for a second. You wrote getting grit in 2017, which Angela Duckworth has said is one of the best science based approaches that she has seen outside of her own work. In my own book, Passion Struck, which I know you've read, I describe that being passion struck as this combination of grit and intentionality. And in the book you mentioned that to go after your goals, you need self motivation in order to do it. And that really unleashes the grit. So when you think about intentionality, or I think Angela would call it self control in her research, how powerful is that intentionality in building grit and applying it to the goals you're trying to achieve?
- [58:30]
Caroline Adams Miller
Good question. And I think your book is great, by the way. So Angela was doing this research while I was at Penn and that's where I met her. And then we became friends later. And I decided to write not just about the quality of grit, because she found that passion, perseverance in pursuit of long term goals was this X factor in success. And she gave a wonderful TED talk about it. And then she wrote this bestseller, Grit Bestseller all over the world. Really what I wanted to write about was the quality, how to get it. Not just that it's great and that it's important, but how to get it. And so for me, intentionality is intrinsic motivation. And it's the decision to actually do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal because it is something that you want to accomplish it. It's something that's so important to you. And this is the passion that you will persist through dark nights of the soul. And what's baked into grit and big goals is that will happen. That will happen. The stoics talked about premeditatio malorum, premeditate the evils that are coming in the path before you. Because it's going to be hard to do hard things. So they knew it thousands of years ago. So you have to have this passion along with this realistic, realistic optimism. I'm gonna do it. It's hard. I'm gonna have to unleash passion. And that passion is what's going to keep me going even when I'm alone, even when I'm doing hard Things. And nobody's doing flashcards or giving me a trophy or whatever. And so that, to me, is what intentionality is all about. And the last thing I'll say about my book. Getting grit as I wrote it. About how to cultivate. How do you break this down? What are the qualities? It's humility. It's persistence. It's the ability to set goals correctly. It's about self regulation. But I realized and wrote about a definition. That I felt was a little bit different from Angela's. Because I believe that grit is good grit. When the display of that good grit. The pursuit of hard things that are important to you. And you do it with dignity and self respect. And you do it without a. A cheerleading squad. And you do it because it's important to you. And you do it for all the right reasons. I call that authentic grit. Because I believe good grit awes and inspires other people to ask themselves, what if I acted like that? What could I do? What would my life be like? What if I went out of my comfort zone and did hard things too? And so for me, good grit isn't just about a person doing hard things. It's about the quality of uplifting the people who see you. The people who are awestruck by seeing what you do and how you do it. And there's so many examples of that. So for me, grit is all about not just doing hard things. But it's how you do those hard things. And what is the impact? Because this is systems theory. I believe it has to impact other people. In order for it to make a big difference. During COVID I came up with a term that was too late because the book was out already. Compassionate grip. What I saw were people doing hard things so that other people could live. If you didn't want to wear a mask for two years. But it meant grandmom and granddad and the neighbor next door. Who you went and knocked on her door. And asked if she needed her walkways shoveled or leaves raked. There was so much compassion for other people, by many, to do hard things that they didn't want to do. They didn't want to stay home from their jobs. They didn't want to wear masks. They didn't want to cancel their kids graduations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I saw a new kind of grit. That I think Mother Nature brings about every hundred years. Maybe because of a Black Swan event. When we get to see what we're made of. And I think grit comes from how we deal with Those Black Swan events, those unusual hundred year events.
- [62:32]
John R. Miles
Thank you so much for doing that correlation because I think it's important for the audience. As I was getting further into your book, one of the best frameworks or exercises that you bring up that I think would be valuable for listeners is something out of positive psychology called Best Possible Future Self. Can you describe what this is? And I want them to go to your book to use it. But why? This is something they should be keyed in on.
- [63:00]
Caroline Adams Miller
So Best Possible Future Self is a well known exercise in positive psychology. I don't know if Laura King wrote it or Sonia Lubomirsky. I don't know who to give credit to. But it's been studied that when you write about your future as if it's gone as well as possible five years, 10 years into the future, and you do this three, four days in a row in tremendous detail, 15, 20 minutes of writing, it's been found that people are more in touch with their goals. They have more empathy or sympathy for who they're going to be in those 10 years. They begin to imagine an older version of themselves. They clarify something called goals and conflict, which is not talked about enough. Many of us have really good goals. They're both good goals, well formed goals. But the pursuit of one means the other one cannot be accomplished, at least not at that that time. This exercise makes you forcibly move one up and one down, clarifies goals and conflict. If you do the Via Character strength test again via character.org and you look at in this set of writings journaling that you do, who am I going to be in the future if everything works out as well as possible? And I write about in detail who's around me, how did I do these things, et cetera, et cetera, and how did I use my top character strengths to make it happen? You're more likely to be happier, more optimistic, more zestful. It's a phenomenal intervention into people's well being. In the book I include more recent research though, that I want to add to this. So sometimes we're encouraged to write a letter to our future self. Maybe a year from now. We do a time capsule kind of things like where am I going to be at the end of 2025? And we stop right there. Well, some Canadian researchers found that it's even more powerful to write that letter to your future self and talk about what are you doing? It's December 31st, and look at these things you did, and here's how you did them, and here's why you're proud of yourself. And these things were hard, but you overcame them by doing these strategies, etc. And you change your circle and you practice more gratitude. But that future self needs to also write a letter back to present self about how they're going to do it. So it's the reciprocity future self and then future self back to present self with kind of this air of wisdom and lessons learned. And this mirrors Gabriel Ottigen's work, which many people are familiar with about mental contrasting. It's not enough to just say, here I am today and that's where I want to be in a year, so let's go set. I'm going to do this. This. Too many people just rush into it and skip all these steps. But Gabriel Ottigen, a lot like the ancient Stoic said, it's not enough. You start to have these fantasies that you've done these hard things and you fool yourself into thinking you've done more work than you have. No. And I think vision boards are really big culprits in this and people spend too much time with these positive fantasies. She says, do that briefly, but don't spend too much time there. Come back and have a realistic assessment of what you're going to have to deal with. What obstacles? Again, premeditatio malora, the Stoics premeditate the evils in front of you. So that's also part of Letter to the future future Self back to today. So there's a lot of great research on this and I took phenomenal care to not just do an N of 1. What worked for me. Everything in my book is evidence based. You asked me where I got the research. I'll open the drawer in my head where it is. People deserve to have a science based approach to making their dreams come true personally and professionally. And up till now there has been no book that brought it all together. And I'm so proud of the fact that I have done that.
- [66:50]
John R. Miles
As you saw in my own book, I think it's extremely important to tie these principles to science because then it really, really shows that locking mechanism. So I'm so glad you did it. And I think that's why it's getting so many accolades even before it's launched. The last thing Caroline, I want to talk about is a metaphor that you use in the book. And I heard this metaphor used recently in another book by Adam Grant, Hidden Potential, where he talks a lot about scaffolding. Can you talk about why it's important to build your Scaffolding of your bridge and how that relates to achieving a specific goal.
- [67:35]
Caroline Adams Miller
I'm a big fan of Adam Grant's, by the way. I love his work and he's been really generous and kind in the ways he has talked about my other books. And now I'm nominated for his club. It's just amazing. But the scaffolding of my bridge approach, I believe, is most analogous to the stages of of Change by Prochaska, Norcross and DiClementi that came out in the 70s about overcoming addiction. And what they found is that the stages of creating change, particularly with things like quitting smoking, was pre contemplation before you even know you want to quit smoking. Contemplation. I want to quit smoking. Gosh, it's going to be hard. How am I going to do it? Preparation, Beginning to learn what you got to learn. Where do I have to be? How do I have to do this? Do I need a course? Whatever. Preparation. And then you go into action. A lot of people just look at action and go, oh, that's what you got to jump into. No, it's this long preparation and thinking about it and scaffolding of the resources you need. And then you achieve your goal. You maintain, and then you disengage. So as I wrote the bridge methodology and I've been fine tuning it for 15 years, what I realized is you can't skip any of the steps. You can't skip the brainstorming, really effective brainstorming, especially if you are achieving a learning goal and you've never done it before, you better have the right prompts, like artificial intelligence, because it's the quality of the prompt that gives you the this high quality answer. So if you skip the brainstorming and even for performance goals, you have to do it the relationships. You skip who's around you, who do you need to know? Who needs to be around you, but then who needs to not be around you? Really important investments. What kind of of time, money, energy am I going to have to use? And then decision making. To me, this is fascinating. Every CEO I've ever worked with has not done a decision hygiene worksheet before. They've never analyzed the quality of their decisions for particularly what Daniel Kahneman talks about noise, which and he died earlier this year. He said noise is a much bigger problem and costs businesses much more money than bias. And he spent a lot of his life talking about bias. But he said no. As I go through this noise research, noise is the biggest problem in our judgment. You got to do that so decision making and then grit. What do I need to do? Do I have to up my self talk? Do I have to learn how to change the channel in my brain when I want to be, when I want to quit? Do I have to build up my willpower and then excellence? What are those challenging and specific standards that you need to set before that Locke and Lathan talk about you skip any of those steps, it's going to be like stages of change. What they've Norcross and and Prochaska and all found is if you skip any of those stages you're doomed. You got to go back. You're gonna have to go back to contemplation. So you can't skip them. And you can't do it with my bridge methodology either. Just and I call it goals gone wild in my book when you mix up learning and performance goals, you can't skip the learning steps. You can't because if you do you're gonna cheat, you're gonna lie, you're gonna steal and in the worst cases people will lose their lives. So do the work. And I think we became such a quick fix society that told our kids how great they were before they did anything. Even if they didn't do anything. We've got great inflation and comfort animals and everyone's a valedictorian. Some classes have 400 valedictorians. I mean we decided in a very misguided way to the self esteem parenting movement to take all difficulties out of our children's lives. We bubble wrapped a generation and as a result they learned because of the adults in their lives. And so it's all on the adults. They learned that you didn't have to do much to be called a winner. And so what I'm trying to do in my most recent books is a call to develop the grit and the ability to take the hard steps to get this sweetness at the end of doing hard things. In Chinese it's called shiku, eating bitter so that you do hard things. So at the end of the harvest the fruit is sweet, you do the work. So I just want people to learn that. And this is what society values by the way. Society values and puts a premium on hard things. People who do hard things. That's why we all tune into the Olympics because no one gets a participation trophy. I mean they're winners and losers. Okay, that's what happens. We got to get back to that. And I think we'll all be happier, we'll be more confident, we'll have more self efficacy and the world will be different.
- [72:09]
John R. Miles
Caroline, thank you for sharing that and for this amazing conversation. I have one last question for you. You write at the end of your book, the greatest gift you can give to others and to me is for you to share these techniques and tools with people who have never heard of them.
- [72:25]
Caroline Adams Miller
Yeah.
- [72:26]
John R. Miles
What's your challenge to listeners on how they can walk someone else across the bridge?
- [72:33]
Caroline Adams Miller
I think the most important thing is Locke and Latham's goal setting Theory. It's just not known. Even if you go to Harvard Business Review and you type in goal setting theory, three articles come up. Do you know how many articles in Harvard Business Review have been about goal setting and success? People don't know it. Learn goal setting theory. Divide your goals into learning goals and performance goals and then add my bridge methodology on top of it. You can Google if you don't want to buy my book, Google goal setting theory and just take a look at the goals you're pursuing and ask yourself, is this a learning goal? Is this something where I've got to build in the time and the energy to be more curious about how to acquire these skills and knowledge and then hold myself to high standards in the process of doing it? Or did I just rush into setting a time goal? So learn that. Tell someone else. Start a chain of people knowing it because I want to kill off the zombie goal approaches like smart goals and Law of Attraction. They should be dead by now. But they're just zombies walking around. They don't work. Let's kill them off.
- [73:35]
John R. Miles
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. What is the best place for people to go to learn more about you two places?
- [73:44]
Caroline Adams Miller
Carolinemiller.com my name think princess Caroline like you and I were talking about. Caroline. It was not a common name when I was born. CarolineMiller.com and then the book has its own website, BigGoalsBook.com and there's all kinds of case studies broken down throughout history. Here's how these goals were achieved and the very top of it is a learning goal or performance goal. And then bridge. So I've given examples from sports, from history, from business so that people can see how this works in in real time. So it's all there.
- [74:16]
John R. Miles
Well, Caroline, it was such an honor to have you today and I was so anticipating doing this interview and it totally lived up to my expectations and exceeded them. So thank you so much.
- [74:27]
Caroline Adams Miller
Thank you. I really appreciate this. And again, listeners should buy your book and read it because as I went through it, I was just like, wow, this book is great. And it honors all the things that I hold dear like like credit the researchers who did the work and then take do that and create protocols like you did too. So I I really appreciate you putting your book in the world and this podcast.
- [74:51]
John R. Miles
Well, I think my challenge or goal to readers and listeners is to buy both our books because as you rightly pointed out, I covered a lot of things, but goal setting is something I should have focused more on and and now they have a whole book on it. So you can use that to help you accomplish the tiny actions and microchoices that I talk about in the book.
- [75:14]
Caroline Adams Miller
I think you're right. Absolutely both. Thank you.
- [75:17]
John R. Miles
Wow. What an inspiring and thought provoking conversation that was with Caroline Adams Miller. Today's episode was a deep dive into the science of goal setting and achieving the life you truly want. Caroline's bridge framework and her insights into the psychology of grit and human flourishing have given us powerful tools to pursue big goals with intentionality and resilience. Her message is a reminder that setting meaningful goals isn't just about achievement, it's about transformation, growth, and unlocking your full potential. As we close, I encourage you to reflect on the big goals in your life. Are you aligning your actions with your aspirations? Are you challenging yourself to go beyond the status quo and embrace the discomfort of growth? Caroline's wisdom offers actionable steps to help you create a life filled with with purpose and meaning. If Caroline's message resonated with you, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and review. Your feedback helps us continue to bring transformative conversations to the passion struck community. And if you know someone who could benefit from this episode, share it with them. Because a single idea can spark profound change. You can find links to everything we discussed today, including Caroline's book Big Goals in the show notes@passionstruck.com you can also watch the video version of this conversation on YouTube. And don't forget to explore our sponsors and exclusive deals@passionstruck.com deals supporting our partners allows us to keep bringing you these impactful episodes. Before we go, I want to remind you that I'm passionate about bringing these insights to organizations and teams through speaking engagements. If today's conversation inspired you and you think it could benefit your workplace, visit johnrmiles.com speaking to learn more about how we can ignite intentional change and growth together. Next week, I'm honored to welcome Dr. Abraham George, a visionary leader and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to reducing poverty and inequality in India. Dr. George is the founder of the George foundation and the Shanti Bhavan Initiative that provides education, healthcare and empowerment to those in need. His pioneering work has transformed the lives of over 15,000 individuals as well as their communities, and his insights into leadership, philanthropy and social justice will inspire you to think differently about how you can make meaningful impact in the world. World this is a conversation you don't want to miss.
- [77:23]
Caroline Adams Miller
Poverty has different dimensions. It's not hunger, it's suffering and even indignity of being in the lower caste that is also part of poverty. So I find all these activities that I embarked on, they're closely interrelated. Though you may not see it as such. Somebody may argue that I did doesn't fit in with poverty. Is lead poison? That's an urban problem more than anything else. But I would argue even there, who suffers most is the poor people in slums who have no way of protecting themselves, who are right next to a factory that is fabricating lead. They are the ones who are suffering. So it's also a poverty issue. So everything I've done as some connection may not be directly visible, but some of the are directly connected.
- [78:14]
John R. Miles
Remember, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value in today's episode, share it with someone who could benefit. And as always, take what you've learned here and put it into action so that you can live what you listen. Until next time. Live life. Passion struck. Hey Fidelity, Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app?
- [78:44]
Caroline Adams Miller
With Fidelity, it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score. And then when you're ready, trade US stocks and ETFs with no commissions.
- [78:55]
John R. Miles
That's right.
- [78:56]
Caroline Adams Miller
I am always right.
- [78:58]
John R. Miles
Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list of Fidelity.com Commission's Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC member NYSE SIPC when.
- [79:11]
Caroline Adams Miller
Living with cancer, it's important to be informed and know what to expect. But finding the right information can feel overwhelming. That's why understandcancertogether.com is here to help. We've gathered practical information and resources based on where you are in your cancer journey so that you can focus on the important conversations and decisions of today. UnderstandCancerTogether.com helping you navigate life with cancer one moment at a time.