January 20, 2025 • 23 mins
Big Goals with Caroline Adams Miller - Part 1
In this episode, Caroline Adams Miller explores effective goal setting and presents a research-backed approach to achieving personal and professional aspirations.
In this episode, you will learn:
• The limitations of the SMART goal system
• Introduction of Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory
• Key differences between performance and learning goals
• Importance of goal clarity in personal and professional settings
• Real-life examples of goal-setting failures
• Using the Oura Ring to maximize health and well-being
• Advice for cultivating a growth mindset
• Encouragement to embrace challenges and setbacks as learning experiences
• Insights on tracking progress and measuring success
Bio:
For over 30 years, Caroline Adams Miller has been a trailblazer in advancing these fields, helping individuals and organizations reach their most ambitious goals and improve overall wellbeing. She was among the first to earn a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, a program pioneered by Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology. Caroline also graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, laying the groundwork for her future achievements in
psychology and personal development. She is a black-belt martial artist and a Masters swimmer.
Caroline is the author of nine influential books, including:
• My Name is Caroline (Doubleday 1988, Gurze 2000, Cogent 2014), a pioneering recovery memoir that has given hope to countless individuals battling eating disorders.
• Getting Grit (SoundsTrue 2017), which explores the science of perseverance and was recognized as one of the “top ten books that will change your life” in 2017 and one of the “top 25 books that will help you find your purpose” in 2023.
• Creating Your Best Life (Sterling 2009, 2021), a #1-ranked book on goal-setting that combines the science of success with research on happiness and was the first mass-market book to bridge these fields using Locke and Latham’s goalsetting theory.
• Big Goals (Wiley, 2024), which offers an accessible, updated framework for
achieving significant goals, incorporating modern research on mindset, grit,
artificial intelligence, and resilience. It provides practical strategies for both
personal and organizational success, grounded in 15 years of new research in
positive psychology. This book is destined to change the way people view
goalsetting and has been selected as a must-read for The Next Big Idea Club.
Her books have been translated into multiple languages, including German, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian, reaching a global audience
You can find more information about Caroline Adams Miller here.
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi Friend - If you’re enjoying Stories of Change and Creativity, make sure to subscribe, rate, and leave a 5-star review—it helps more people discover the show.
Here's the link to leave an Apple podcast review.
You can also complete this short audience survey and provide your feedback.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Judy Oskam (00:03):
What's your dream?
Do your goals get you closer toliving your very best life?
Well, this episode could setyou up for success.
You'll learn there's a betterway to set goals that really do
work.
Welcome to Stories of Changeand Creativity.
I'm Judy Oskam, a universityprofessor at Texas State
University.
(00:23):
I'm also a Gallup certifiedstrengths and Thrive certified
coach.
Caroline Adams Miller wrote thebook Big Goals the science of
setting them, achieving them andcreating your best life.
She graduated magna cum laudefrom Harvard University and
later earned a master of appliedPositive Psychology at the
(00:45):
University of Pennsylvania.
She tells me she's afifth-generation Washingtonian,
has three adult children, shehas a cute snoodle named Alpha
and is married to her collegesweetheart.
I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
You explore the science behindgoal setting.
What drove you to write thebook?
(01:05):
We'll start there and thenwe'll kind of weave around.
Caroline Adams Miller (01:07):
Yeah.
So what drove me to write thebook is when I went back to
school in 2005 to get a master'sdegree in applied positive
psychology, I was introduced toLocke and Latham's goal setting
theory as part of an assignmentin October of 2005.
And I had fancied myself agoal-setting expert.
I'd always used goal-setting.
(01:30):
As a certified coach, I wascredentialed.
I read every book.
I come from a family of athleticcompetitors and high achievers,
so that was my shtick wasgoal-setting.
So when I was assigned Lockeand Latham's goal setting theory
and I found out it was rankednumber one of 73 management
theories and I'd never heard ofit, never been taught it I was
(01:54):
floored.
So for the last 15 years Iwrote Creating your Best Life,
which introduced goal settingtheory to the mass market, and
then this book 15 years later,with the addition of all the new
research that I've put into anacronym that binds it all
together.
So you start with goal settingtheory and then all the other,
(02:14):
the six areas that you have toprompt yourself to go through
questions, because the worldneeds this.
Judy Oskam (02:20):
We all deserve to have the tools work, yeah we do
and I'm I'm teaching a graduateclass in the spring and it's all
about creative problem solvingand we're going to talk about
some of the theories and theinformation in your book and
part of it is kind of and I'llask you can you share a story,
(02:40):
that a personal story from you,that where you've kind of seen
this work in your real life?
Caroline Adams Miller (02:47):
Gosh, there's so many.
Okay.
So my book Big Goals is myninth book.
It for me, that's what I call aperformance goal, what Locke
and Latham call a performancegoal.
It's not a learning goal.
I'm not learning how to write abook.
I'm not learning how to setaside time.
I'm not learning how to do pagecount.
I'm not learning how to do theresearch.
(03:08):
For that reason, if a publishersays, can you have it done in
five months, I know what I haveto do.
So for me, it's about backingup and going through my
checklist.
So performance goals arechecklist goals.
You've done them before.
What was the learning goal?
Component of this wasintegrating artificial
intelligence into how I checkedthe research.
(03:28):
So I used perplexity and chat,gpt-40 and Claude to and
askmypdfcom to put in massivePDFs of research and have it
summarize it for me.
And so the performance goal waswriting the book.
The learning goal was how do Iuse this new artificial
intelligence to make the bookmore excellent?
(03:49):
Not write it for me, but helpme gather the resources more
efficiently, and it makes youmore efficient.
So learning goals are thingsyou've never done before, the
world's never done them before,and performance goals or
checklist goals are things thatyou have done before that are
like recipes, and that's how youcan say the cake will be baked
in an hour, because you know howto do this thing and you know
(04:10):
what excellence looks like.
So that's how I used it thisyear.
Judy Oskam (04:14):
So the two differences, then, and how you
then combine them all.
Take your cake analogy you putthings in the mixing bowl and
mixed it all up, right, so whydon't we do that normally?
I mean, why are we stuck onKPIs and the smart and all of
that?
Why are we just now hearingabout this?
Caroline Adams Miller (04:37):
The reason why we're stuck on smart
goals is because it's sticky andbecause a man named George
Doran I hope I'm pronouncing hisname correctly in 1981, wrote
an article for a managementjournal and he just called it
SMART goals and it sounded good.
You know, specific, measurable.
(04:58):
Whatever the reason I'm saying,whatever is, it has become many
different things to manydifferent people.
So the smart does not actuallyrepresent what it originally
represented.
But the problem is goal settingtheory.
The science of goal setting,which isn't sexy, which isn't an
acronym, which isn't asmemorable, is stuck in academia.
(05:19):
And so goal setting theory, aswell known as it is, as highly
thought of as it is again rankednumber one of 73 management
theories, it was stuck inacademia until I brought it out
in Creating your Best Life.
So that's one reason so smartis sticky.
And OKRs and KPIs are a very, Ihate to say it, white male
(05:42):
techie thing.
That started at Intel andbecause it's been done that way
and integrated into so manydashboards, productivity
dashboards it's become acceptedwithout question that this is
how you do it.
Problem is it doesn't alwaysmeasure what matters.
So it doesn't always measurethe learning component, and I'll
(06:02):
just go back to my learninggoal of integrating AI into how
I researched and wrote the book.
It would not be fair of me toexpect a certain level of
excellence in how I used AI orto know all the tools out there
in the short period of time Ihad to write the book.
That is where learning andperformance goals get mixed up
(06:23):
and cause tremendous amounts ofgrief to human beings, to
companies, et cetera.
So if I held myself to somekind of extraordinary high
measure of achievement withartificial intelligence, I would
have disappointed myself.
I might have disengaged fromthe process of trying to learn
it as I wrote it, and so we haveto give ourselves grace when we
(06:44):
have learning goals and when weskip that step, really bad
things happen, and I can go intothat.
Judy Oskam (06:51):
Well, I'd like to hear some of the bad things that
do happen.
I mean, what does happen whenwe don't really open ourselves
up to that opportunity?
Caroline Adams Miller (07:00):
Well, we're not curious, we're not
engaged in the process oflearning, and one of the biggest
problems in the workplacethat's been so well documented
is disengagement and a lack ofconnection.
People don't feel like theyhave role clarity.
That was what Gallup identifiedas the biggest problem facing
the workplace less than a yearago.
Know what's expected of you anda manager who might be managing
(07:27):
you from a distance doesn'treally know learning goals or
performance goals and doesn'tknow how to measure whether or
not that is the metric to usewhen you're learning it.
Or is that the metric to use ifyou've done it before?
If it's not being measured andyou don't know what's expected
of you, what you do is you oftenskip steps and you disengage
and you're not curious.
And then people start to makethings up.
(07:48):
They make up their researchwith PhDs, um, because they're
expected to have an outcome, butthey don't know how to do it.
So they lie, they cheat, theysteal, they make things up
whatever it is.
So companies there are lots ofexamples of companies that have
done that.
If you want me to go into that,I can tell you about some
disasters.
Judy Oskam (08:06):
Sure Share one, so we can kind of get a handle on
that.
Caroline Adams Miller (08:09):
I'll just give you one, and this is a
sad one, but lives are oftenlost when companies mix up
learning goals and performancegoals.
So the Titan submersibleStockton Rush, who had never
built a submersible that wouldgo to the depth of where the
Titanic was.
He wanted to be an astronaut ofthe deep and his goal was to
make money, so he decided toskip all the certification that
(08:33):
went along with building a safesubmersible.
So he had a learning goal,which was building a safe
submersible that was certified,that engineers signed off on.
Engineers who raised red flagsand refused to sign off on it.
He sued them and so instead hestarted taking passengers down.
And so he had a performancegoal to make a certain amount of
(08:53):
money by a certain date.
But he skipped the learningprocess and people died, and
that's happened in so manyplaces.
The Ford Pinto is the otherbiggest loss of life to a car,
because Ford did the same thingwith the Pinto.
Judy Oskam (09:08):
Well, and you write about that in the book it's got
some great case study analysisin there.
So I appreciate that.
But how can we bring that downto the personal level?
Because I think understandingon a personal level what's a
learning goal versus aperformance goal and how can we
implement that, using creativity, maybe, and how can we help
(09:30):
ourselves there?
Caroline Adams Miller (09:31):
Well, we have to have a dream for
ourselves, so we have to startthere.
What is the dream that you havefor your life in the next year?
Just begin to engage in theprocess of if my best possible
life occurs this year and I'mgoing to be doing hard work I'm
going to choose to go out of mycomfort zone.
I'm.
What do those dreams or goalslook like, and how many of the
(09:53):
components of accomplishingthose different dreams and goals
have I done before?
So do I have a learning goal?
Am I learning artificialintelligence?
Am I learning to enter a newfield?
I've never worked in a certainfield before four.
You're an accountant and youwant to add a certain
certification to how you do yourwork.
(10:14):
You know how to do your work,but you're adding something to
it.
It's still a performance goal,even though you're adding this
one component, because you knowhow to do your job.
You know what excellence lookslike.
Same thing for athletes, forexample.
So I'm a competitive swimmer,and so I don't need to learn how
to swim.
I don't need to learn anystroke technique.
I might need to learn how toendure more pain if I want to
(10:37):
get faster, and so I might haveto do different sets in practice
, so I can have a performancegoal of making masters nationals
, but I might have to learn howto endure more pain.
However, I know how hard I haveto work to get there.
So you have the performancepiece, which is showing up at
workout, doing the workouts, andthen the learning piece would
be the small add-on which is howdo I endure more pain in
(11:01):
different kinds of sets to getthere?
Does that make sense?
Judy Oskam (11:04):
Yeah, and I think what I like how you I just I was
skimming through this again Ilike how you put in there some
of the personal things that youdo, for instance, for your
personal health and well-being.
Can you talk about that and whythat's important when we're
doing these lofty dream goals,if you will?
Caroline Adams Miller (11:24):
Yeah.
So in Chapter 10 on excellence,I write about the aura ring,
and so I, because I washospitalized with
cytomegalovirus a few years agoand it really was a wake up call
.
There was too much stress in mylife that I didn't always feel
happening and finally my bodygave out and I found myself in a
hospital with NIH infectiousdisease doctors trying to figure
(11:45):
it out.
When I came out I realized Iknew how to live, but I didn't
know how to live in the mosthealthy possible way and what.
It didn't mean food, it didn'tnecessarily mean drink.
It meant tracking sleep.
It meant making sure that toxicpeople were not part of my
clientele or people I chose tospend time with.
(12:05):
So I have the aura ring inthere.
So I started wearing the Ouraring at the recommendation of
one of my neighbors, and I wasjust tracking sleep, and so it
was a learning goal for melearning how many hours does it
take for me to really wake upfeeling good?
How restless am I?
Did I get enough REM sleep?
So I'm getting all this data.
But one day this neighbor saidto me well, I'm trying to get
(12:26):
two crowns a week.
I went, what?
Two crowns?
And she said oh, aren't yougetting crowns?
So I ran back, I looked at theaura ring and I realized there
were little crowns appearing onthe days where I had great sleep
over in 85.
So what I realized is, as yougather data, you have to be
trying to achieve something withthat data.
(12:48):
So I was just gathering datawithout really shooting for
anything.
I was in a learning process,but now I shoot for crowns, and
two every, let's say, two weeksor so, and so I've been in the
process of learning how to usethe Oura Ring, learning what
value I get from it, learningwhich data matters, and then I
start to shoot for goals thatstretch me outside of my comfort
(13:11):
zone, that make me do things alittle bit more excellently, and
that are usually a little bitharder, because we know in
research that people, whenthey're building confidence and
self-esteem, they don't get itfrom doing easy things, they get
it from doing hard things, andthose hard things are things
that light them up, that areintrinsic goals, and so that's a
(13:36):
piece of how I live my lifewith my health now.
Judy Oskam (13:37):
Well, and that then became a performance goal,
correct?
Caroline Adams Miller (13:40):
Yes, it is a performance goal.
So I learned how to wear thering, I learned how to look at
the app.
I learned, I learned, I learned.
And then this person made thispassing comment and I thought,
yeah, I have to turn this into aperformance goal around what
matters in the data.
So that was really important.
And the same thing with being amartial artist.
You know, when you're a martialartist and you're learning how
(14:00):
to do, I'm a black belt and hopketo.
But when I was a white belt anda yellow belt, the stripes on
your belt mean you're learningthings.
You see the black belts walkingaround the dojo and you know
that's a goal you want toachieve.
But you can't say I'm going toget there in a year, two years,
three years.
I got to achieve every stripeon here, every belt, all the way
up there.
So I can't dictate the time.
(14:20):
I know what excellence lookslike, but I have to learn a
whole lot to get there and to doit with with grace and to do it
well and to not skip any steps.
So the martial arts is just aperfect example of learning and
performance goals mixed togetherin order to achieve excellence.
On the mindset problem.
Judy Oskam (14:38):
I always tell when I have clients or even students
give yourself permission tolearn something, give yourself
permission to kind of giveyourself a little grace.
(15:01):
What do you recommend as far asmindset?
Caroline Adams Miller (15:05):
Well.
So mindset is just a big, bigtopic, and what I found and I
gave a TEDx talk about this in2017, is when I interviewed
paragons of grit good grit Ifound that the way they got to
whatever this outcome was theywere seeking.
They had a mindset that theyagreed upon ahead of time that
(15:26):
they would go to if they wantedto quit, because mentally,
emotionally, financially,something interfered with the
accomplishment of doing thishard thing, and they agreed with
themselves that they were gonnato have a growth mindset.
They were going to learn how todeal with it, but they were
going to have an if, thenreaction.
If I feel the pain, then I'mgoing to sing a song to myself.
If I want to quit, then I'mgoing to remember my cousin who
(15:49):
died of brain cancer, whodoesn't have a chance to do the
things I'm doing.
So they change the channel intheir brains.
But most of all, you have tohave a mindset of curiosity, and
that's where Locke and Latham'slearning goal comes back in
Having a mindset where you'reengaged in the process of being
curious and getting better andusing the word yet I don't know
(16:12):
it yet, but I'm going to keepapplying myself in the best
possible way to get there.
That's the mindset that youneed in order to accomplish
anything, really.
Judy Oskam (16:21):
And I like using the word practice.
Well, we're practicing this youknow it's not an end goal, but
we're practicing this, and doyou want to leave it better than
before?
Not finished, but better, canyou?
go into a situation and leave itbetter, and then that pressure
is not on you to succeed atevery turn in whatever success
is.
(16:41):
Yeah, well, you know we're sucha success driven country in
America, and even our studentsare as well, and our faculty as
well.
But how do you help them kindof navigate success on a
personal and professional level?
And I know you've got somegreat worksheets in your book.
Yeah, talk about where we starton this.
Caroline Adams Miller (17:06):
Well, I work with a lot of senior
executives now who are settinggoals not just for themselves
but for their organizations, andeveryone's level of excellence
is a little bit different.
So what's hard for me may notbe hard for somebody else.
And so what you want to do isyou want to have a big goal, a
big dream, something that's yourNorth Star.
You know, you're looking up atthe top of the mountain.
(17:30):
Where do I want to get?
Where do I want to be?
And so Lachlan Latham and GaryLatham in particular said to me
that when he studied people atthe end of their lives, it was a
coulda, woulda, shoulda.
So you do need to have a driveto succeed at something
important.
And I just want to throw in onemore interesting piece of
knowledge, and that is a lot ofpeople know about learned
helplessness.
My mentor, marty Selling, didthe research in the 1960s with a
(17:52):
colleague, and they decided thedogs had gotten shocked so
often they lay down and becamehelpless.
Instead, in recent years, whatthey realized is that we are
born helpless and that the drivethe human drive is to master
our environments.
So it's not just about having abig goal.
We must master our environmentsin order to flourish, which
could mean anything.
(18:12):
It could mean you know learninghow to drive a stick shift car.
It could mean learning how tojuggle children with an
in-person work experience whereyou're going somewhere and
you're trying to find childcare.
It could mean so many differentthings.
But you have to start with adream.
(18:33):
That's hard, that takes you tothe next level of excellence,
and you must be able to measureyour progress towards that goal.
Does that?
Judy Oskam (18:41):
help.
Yeah, that helps a lot.
And I remember, and you wroteabout it, that when you were
putting all these theoriestogether and you kept going back
to was it Latham or Lockton,Latham.
Caroline Adams Miller (18:53):
Yeah, I mean.
Judy Oskam (18:54):
Gary and you were saying to him you want to do
this and that, and he finallyjust said just write the book.
Oh, that's Marty, oh, marty,okay.
Caroline Adams Miller (19:01):
Talk about that a little bit because
that was fascinating for me.
Yeah.
So it's 2005 and I'm in thisfirst class at Penn in this
Masters of Applied PositivePsychology, and none of us
really know what this degree isgoing to do for us.
All we know is we wanted to bethere because something called
us.
And so early in that year, fallof 2005, several staggering
(19:24):
pieces of research came to me,and one was the benefits of
frequent positive affect, bySonia Lubomirsky and Ed Diener
and Laura King, and it said thatall success in life is preceded
by being happy first.
And it was a slam dunk.
Finding success in every domainof life is preceded by being in
a flourishing emotional statefirst.
(19:45):
And so, as somebody who fanciedherself as a goal setter, I was
like this turns everythingupside down.
You can't talk about goalsunless you talk about wellbeing.
That actually became the thesisof my book Creating your Best
Life.
But Marty wanted me to applypositive psychology to
healthcare or to insurance or tosomething, because he thought
that it would just get moreattention and make a bigger
(20:07):
difference in the business world.
And I kept saying but, marty,people don't know goal setting
theory A and B, they don't knowthat happiness precedes success.
And I do think the worlddeserves science because this
smart goal thing.
I'm suddenly realizing that ifyou just use the word, let's say
, realistic or reachable, as theR in smart, you're immediately
(20:30):
undermining one of the mostpowerful parts of goal setting
theory, which is the goals.
If you just set reachable goals, those are called low goals.
You want to achieve hard goals,not impossible goals, but hard
goals, and so using smartimmediately kind of dumbs things
down.
And I said to Marty I'd like tomake a difference in the world
(20:51):
with goal setting.
And yeah, so Marty just gave up.
He threw his hands up and saidyou're going to write it anyway,
just go write it.
And then later, when he wrotethe book Flourish, he called out
my book, creating your BestLife.
He said Caroline's added a hugemissing piece to the world of
goal setting.
And, um, you know how you justget an instinct that you're on a
(21:14):
path.
Yeah Well, that was your dreamright.
Judy Oskam (21:16):
That was your big mountain dream, right On the top
of the mountain.
It was my big yeah.
Caroline Adams Miller (21:21):
And I didn't know how to write a book
that was that evidence-based.
I had never done it and so, butI was given a hard performance
goal deadline by the publisherand I said I don't know if I can
do it.
I'm learning how to write abook this evidence-based, this
heavily footnoted, but I'm goingto die trying.
And I almost.
(21:42):
You know, I was covered inhives when I was done with the
book because my co-author endedup not being able to write a
word.
He didn't contribute anythingto the book, maybe two pages,
and that was out of my hands,and so I had this impossible
situation.
But you know what?
I think we only get a fewopportunities in life to
redefine ourselves, to ourselves, who we are, what we're capable
(22:05):
of, what are our strengths, whohas our back, what are we
proudest of.
And I remember I was calling myagent as I crossed the Bay
Bridge, from where I'd written abig chunk of the book, to go
back home, and I called him andI said Ivor, I did it, I did it
and I can't believe I did it.
And I said I think I'm adifferent person today.
(22:26):
Yeah, and that moment has beena stepping stone to lots of
other big goals.
And that's what I mean is whenyou have big goals and you shoot
for them and maybe you don'tachieve them, but you've come
close.
So you get you know.
As excellent as you can be, youredefine who you are to
yourself.
(22:51):
And that's what a flourishinglife is all about and that's
what I really want people tofeel.
Judy Oskam (22:54):
Tune in to part two of my interview with Caroline
Adams Miller.
We continue the conversationand talk about how women in
particular can achieve their biggoals.
We also discuss strengths andthe VIA or values in action
assessment.
It's a free online assessmentthat will identify your true
character strengths and the viaor values in action assessment.
It's a free online assessmentthat will identify your true
character strengths and I'llinclude information about
Caroline and her books in theshow notes.
Thank you for listening tostories of change and creativity
(23:16):
and remember if you've got astory to share or know someone
who does, reach out to me atjudy.
oskam.
com.
Thanks for listening.
What's your dream?
Do your goals get you closer toliving your very best life?
Well, this episode could setyou up for success.
You'll learn there's a betterway to set goals that really do
work.
Welcome to Stories of Changeand Creativity.
I'm Judy Oskam, a universityprofessor at Texas State
University.
(00:23):
I'm also a Gallup certifiedstrengths and Thrive certified
coach.
Caroline Adams Miller wrote thebook Big Goals the science of
setting them, achieving them andcreating your best life.
She graduated magna cum laudefrom Harvard University and
later earned a master of appliedPositive Psychology at the
(00:45):
University of Pennsylvania.
She tells me she's afifth-generation Washingtonian,
has three adult children, shehas a cute snoodle named Alpha
and is married to her collegesweetheart.
I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
You explore the science behindgoal setting.
What drove you to write thebook?
(01:05):
We'll start there and thenwe'll kind of weave around.
Caroline Adams Miller (01:07):
Yeah.
So what drove me to write thebook is when I went back to
school in 2005 to get a master'sdegree in applied positive
psychology, I was introduced toLocke and Latham's goal setting
theory as part of an assignmentin October of 2005.
And I had fancied myself agoal-setting expert.
I'd always used goal-setting.
(01:30):
As a certified coach, I wascredentialed.
I read every book.
I come from a family of athleticcompetitors and high achievers,
so that was my shtick wasgoal-setting.
So when I was assigned Lockeand Latham's goal setting theory
and I found out it was rankednumber one of 73 management
theories and I'd never heard ofit, never been taught it I was
(01:54):
floored.
So for the last 15 years Iwrote Creating your Best Life,
which introduced goal settingtheory to the mass market, and
then this book 15 years later,with the addition of all the new
research that I've put into anacronym that binds it all
together.
So you start with goal settingtheory and then all the other,
(02:14):
the six areas that you have toprompt yourself to go through
questions, because the worldneeds this.
Judy Oskam (02:20):
We all deserve to have the tools work, yeah we do
and I'm I'm teaching a graduateclass in the spring and it's all
about creative problem solvingand we're going to talk about
some of the theories and theinformation in your book and
part of it is kind of and I'llask you can you share a story,
(02:40):
that a personal story from you,that where you've kind of seen
this work in your real life?
Caroline Adams Miller (02:47):
Gosh, there's so many.
Okay.
So my book Big Goals is myninth book.
It for me, that's what I call aperformance goal, what Locke
and Latham call a performancegoal.
It's not a learning goal.
I'm not learning how to write abook.
I'm not learning how to setaside time.
I'm not learning how to do pagecount.
I'm not learning how to do theresearch.
(03:08):
For that reason, if a publishersays, can you have it done in
five months, I know what I haveto do.
So for me, it's about backingup and going through my
checklist.
So performance goals arechecklist goals.
You've done them before.
What was the learning goal?
Component of this wasintegrating artificial
intelligence into how I checkedthe research.
(03:28):
So I used perplexity and chat,gpt-40 and Claude to and
askmypdfcom to put in massivePDFs of research and have it
summarize it for me.
And so the performance goal waswriting the book.
The learning goal was how do Iuse this new artificial
intelligence to make the bookmore excellent?
(03:49):
Not write it for me, but helpme gather the resources more
efficiently, and it makes youmore efficient.
So learning goals are thingsyou've never done before, the
world's never done them before,and performance goals or
checklist goals are things thatyou have done before that are
like recipes, and that's how youcan say the cake will be baked
in an hour, because you know howto do this thing and you know
(04:10):
what excellence looks like.
So that's how I used it thisyear.
Judy Oskam (04:14):
So the two differences, then, and how you
then combine them all.
Take your cake analogy you putthings in the mixing bowl and
mixed it all up, right, so whydon't we do that normally?
I mean, why are we stuck onKPIs and the smart and all of
that?
Why are we just now hearingabout this?
Caroline Adams Miller (04:37):
The reason why we're stuck on smart
goals is because it's sticky andbecause a man named George
Doran I hope I'm pronouncing hisname correctly in 1981, wrote
an article for a managementjournal and he just called it
SMART goals and it sounded good.
You know, specific, measurable.
(04:58):
Whatever the reason I'm saying,whatever is, it has become many
different things to manydifferent people.
So the smart does not actuallyrepresent what it originally
represented.
But the problem is goal settingtheory.
The science of goal setting,which isn't sexy, which isn't an
acronym, which isn't asmemorable, is stuck in academia.
(05:19):
And so goal setting theory, aswell known as it is, as highly
thought of as it is again rankednumber one of 73 management
theories, it was stuck inacademia until I brought it out
in Creating your Best Life.
So that's one reason so smartis sticky.
And OKRs and KPIs are a very, Ihate to say it, white male
(05:42):
techie thing.
That started at Intel andbecause it's been done that way
and integrated into so manydashboards, productivity
dashboards it's become acceptedwithout question that this is
how you do it.
Problem is it doesn't alwaysmeasure what matters.
So it doesn't always measurethe learning component, and I'll
(06:02):
just go back to my learninggoal of integrating AI into how
I researched and wrote the book.
It would not be fair of me toexpect a certain level of
excellence in how I used AI orto know all the tools out there
in the short period of time Ihad to write the book.
That is where learning andperformance goals get mixed up
(06:23):
and cause tremendous amounts ofgrief to human beings, to
companies, et cetera.
So if I held myself to somekind of extraordinary high
measure of achievement withartificial intelligence, I would
have disappointed myself.
I might have disengaged fromthe process of trying to learn
it as I wrote it, and so we haveto give ourselves grace when we
(06:44):
have learning goals and when weskip that step, really bad
things happen, and I can go intothat.
Judy Oskam (06:51):
Well, I'd like to hear some of the bad things that
do happen.
I mean, what does happen whenwe don't really open ourselves
up to that opportunity?
Caroline Adams Miller (07:00):
Well, we're not curious, we're not
engaged in the process oflearning, and one of the biggest
problems in the workplacethat's been so well documented
is disengagement and a lack ofconnection.
People don't feel like theyhave role clarity.
That was what Gallup identifiedas the biggest problem facing
the workplace less than a yearago.
Know what's expected of you anda manager who might be managing
(07:27):
you from a distance doesn'treally know learning goals or
performance goals and doesn'tknow how to measure whether or
not that is the metric to usewhen you're learning it.
Or is that the metric to use ifyou've done it before?
If it's not being measured andyou don't know what's expected
of you, what you do is you oftenskip steps and you disengage
and you're not curious.
And then people start to makethings up.
(07:48):
They make up their researchwith PhDs, um, because they're
expected to have an outcome, butthey don't know how to do it.
So they lie, they cheat, theysteal, they make things up
whatever it is.
So companies there are lots ofexamples of companies that have
done that.
If you want me to go into that,I can tell you about some
disasters.
Judy Oskam (08:06):
Sure Share one, so we can kind of get a handle on
that.
Caroline Adams Miller (08:09):
I'll just give you one, and this is a
sad one, but lives are oftenlost when companies mix up
learning goals and performancegoals.
So the Titan submersibleStockton Rush, who had never
built a submersible that wouldgo to the depth of where the
Titanic was.
He wanted to be an astronaut ofthe deep and his goal was to
make money, so he decided toskip all the certification that
(08:33):
went along with building a safesubmersible.
So he had a learning goal,which was building a safe
submersible that was certified,that engineers signed off on.
Engineers who raised red flagsand refused to sign off on it.
He sued them and so instead hestarted taking passengers down.
And so he had a performancegoal to make a certain amount of
(08:53):
money by a certain date.
But he skipped the learningprocess and people died, and
that's happened in so manyplaces.
The Ford Pinto is the otherbiggest loss of life to a car,
because Ford did the same thingwith the Pinto.
Judy Oskam (09:08):
Well, and you write about that in the book it's got
some great case study analysisin there.
So I appreciate that.
But how can we bring that downto the personal level?
Because I think understandingon a personal level what's a
learning goal versus aperformance goal and how can we
implement that, using creativity, maybe, and how can we help
(09:30):
ourselves there?
Caroline Adams Miller (09:31):
Well, we have to have a dream for
ourselves, so we have to startthere.
What is the dream that you havefor your life in the next year?
Just begin to engage in theprocess of if my best possible
life occurs this year and I'mgoing to be doing hard work I'm
going to choose to go out of mycomfort zone.
I'm.
What do those dreams or goalslook like, and how many of the
(09:53):
components of accomplishingthose different dreams and goals
have I done before?
So do I have a learning goal?
Am I learning artificialintelligence?
Am I learning to enter a newfield?
I've never worked in a certainfield before four.
You're an accountant and youwant to add a certain
certification to how you do yourwork.
(10:14):
You know how to do your work,but you're adding something to
it.
It's still a performance goal,even though you're adding this
one component, because you knowhow to do your job.
You know what excellence lookslike.
Same thing for athletes, forexample.
So I'm a competitive swimmer,and so I don't need to learn how
to swim.
I don't need to learn anystroke technique.
I might need to learn how toendure more pain if I want to
(10:37):
get faster, and so I might haveto do different sets in practice
, so I can have a performancegoal of making masters nationals
, but I might have to learn howto endure more pain.
However, I know how hard I haveto work to get there.
So you have the performancepiece, which is showing up at
workout, doing the workouts, andthen the learning piece would
be the small add-on which is howdo I endure more pain in
(11:01):
different kinds of sets to getthere?
Does that make sense?
Judy Oskam (11:04):
Yeah, and I think what I like how you I just I was
skimming through this again Ilike how you put in there some
of the personal things that youdo, for instance, for your
personal health and well-being.
Can you talk about that and whythat's important when we're
doing these lofty dream goals,if you will?
Caroline Adams Miller (11:24):
Yeah.
So in Chapter 10 on excellence,I write about the aura ring,
and so I, because I washospitalized with
cytomegalovirus a few years agoand it really was a wake up call
.
There was too much stress in mylife that I didn't always feel
happening and finally my bodygave out and I found myself in a
hospital with NIH infectiousdisease doctors trying to figure
(11:45):
it out.
When I came out I realized Iknew how to live, but I didn't
know how to live in the mosthealthy possible way and what.
It didn't mean food, it didn'tnecessarily mean drink.
It meant tracking sleep.
It meant making sure that toxicpeople were not part of my
clientele or people I chose tospend time with.
(12:05):
So I have the aura ring inthere.
So I started wearing the Ouraring at the recommendation of
one of my neighbors, and I wasjust tracking sleep, and so it
was a learning goal for melearning how many hours does it
take for me to really wake upfeeling good?
How restless am I?
Did I get enough REM sleep?
So I'm getting all this data.
But one day this neighbor saidto me well, I'm trying to get
(12:26):
two crowns a week.
I went, what?
Two crowns?
And she said oh, aren't yougetting crowns?
So I ran back, I looked at theaura ring and I realized there
were little crowns appearing onthe days where I had great sleep
over in 85.
So what I realized is, as yougather data, you have to be
trying to achieve something withthat data.
(12:48):
So I was just gathering datawithout really shooting for
anything.
I was in a learning process,but now I shoot for crowns, and
two every, let's say, two weeksor so, and so I've been in the
process of learning how to usethe Oura Ring, learning what
value I get from it, learningwhich data matters, and then I
start to shoot for goals thatstretch me outside of my comfort
(13:11):
zone, that make me do things alittle bit more excellently, and
that are usually a little bitharder, because we know in
research that people, whenthey're building confidence and
self-esteem, they don't get itfrom doing easy things, they get
it from doing hard things, andthose hard things are things
that light them up, that areintrinsic goals, and so that's a
(13:36):
piece of how I live my lifewith my health now.
Judy Oskam (13:37):
Well, and that then became a performance goal,
correct?
Caroline Adams Miller (13:40):
Yes, it is a performance goal.
So I learned how to wear thering, I learned how to look at
the app.
I learned, I learned, I learned.
And then this person made thispassing comment and I thought,
yeah, I have to turn this into aperformance goal around what
matters in the data.
So that was really important.
And the same thing with being amartial artist.
You know, when you're a martialartist and you're learning how
(14:00):
to do, I'm a black belt and hopketo.
But when I was a white belt anda yellow belt, the stripes on
your belt mean you're learningthings.
You see the black belts walkingaround the dojo and you know
that's a goal you want toachieve.
But you can't say I'm going toget there in a year, two years,
three years.
I got to achieve every stripeon here, every belt, all the way
up there.
So I can't dictate the time.
(14:20):
I know what excellence lookslike, but I have to learn a
whole lot to get there and to doit with with grace and to do it
well and to not skip any steps.
So the martial arts is just aperfect example of learning and
performance goals mixed togetherin order to achieve excellence.
On the mindset problem.
Judy Oskam (14:38):
I always tell when I have clients or even students
give yourself permission tolearn something, give yourself
permission to kind of giveyourself a little grace.
(15:01):
What do you recommend as far asmindset?
Caroline Adams Miller (15:05):
Well.
So mindset is just a big, bigtopic, and what I found and I
gave a TEDx talk about this in2017, is when I interviewed
paragons of grit good grit Ifound that the way they got to
whatever this outcome was theywere seeking.
They had a mindset that theyagreed upon ahead of time that
(15:26):
they would go to if they wantedto quit, because mentally,
emotionally, financially,something interfered with the
accomplishment of doing thishard thing, and they agreed with
themselves that they were gonnato have a growth mindset.
They were going to learn how todeal with it, but they were
going to have an if, thenreaction.
If I feel the pain, then I'mgoing to sing a song to myself.
If I want to quit, then I'mgoing to remember my cousin who
(15:49):
died of brain cancer, whodoesn't have a chance to do the
things I'm doing.
So they change the channel intheir brains.
But most of all, you have tohave a mindset of curiosity, and
that's where Locke and Latham'slearning goal comes back in
Having a mindset where you'reengaged in the process of being
curious and getting better andusing the word yet I don't know
(16:12):
it yet, but I'm going to keepapplying myself in the best
possible way to get there.
That's the mindset that youneed in order to accomplish
anything, really.
Judy Oskam (16:21):
And I like using the word practice.
Well, we're practicing this youknow it's not an end goal, but
we're practicing this, and doyou want to leave it better than
before?
Not finished, but better, canyou?
go into a situation and leave itbetter, and then that pressure
is not on you to succeed atevery turn in whatever success
is.
(16:41):
Yeah, well, you know we're sucha success driven country in
America, and even our studentsare as well, and our faculty as
well.
But how do you help them kindof navigate success on a
personal and professional level?
And I know you've got somegreat worksheets in your book.
Yeah, talk about where we starton this.
Caroline Adams Miller (17:06):
Well, I work with a lot of senior
executives now who are settinggoals not just for themselves
but for their organizations, andeveryone's level of excellence
is a little bit different.
So what's hard for me may notbe hard for somebody else.
And so what you want to do isyou want to have a big goal, a
big dream, something that's yourNorth Star.
You know, you're looking up atthe top of the mountain.
(17:30):
Where do I want to get?
Where do I want to be?
And so Lachlan Latham and GaryLatham in particular said to me
that when he studied people atthe end of their lives, it was a
coulda, woulda, shoulda.
So you do need to have a driveto succeed at something
important.
And I just want to throw in onemore interesting piece of
knowledge, and that is a lot ofpeople know about learned
helplessness.
My mentor, marty Selling, didthe research in the 1960s with a
(17:52):
colleague, and they decided thedogs had gotten shocked so
often they lay down and becamehelpless.
Instead, in recent years, whatthey realized is that we are
born helpless and that the drivethe human drive is to master
our environments.
So it's not just about having abig goal.
We must master our environmentsin order to flourish, which
could mean anything.
(18:12):
It could mean you know learninghow to drive a stick shift car.
It could mean learning how tojuggle children with an
in-person work experience whereyou're going somewhere and
you're trying to find childcare.
It could mean so many differentthings.
But you have to start with adream.
(18:33):
That's hard, that takes you tothe next level of excellence,
and you must be able to measureyour progress towards that goal.
Does that?
Judy Oskam (18:41):
help.
Yeah, that helps a lot.
And I remember, and you wroteabout it, that when you were
putting all these theoriestogether and you kept going back
to was it Latham or Lockton,Latham.
Caroline Adams Miller (18:53):
Yeah, I mean.
Judy Oskam (18:54):
Gary and you were saying to him you want to do
this and that, and he finallyjust said just write the book.
Oh, that's Marty, oh, marty,okay.
Caroline Adams Miller (19:01):
Talk about that a little bit because
that was fascinating for me.
Yeah.
So it's 2005 and I'm in thisfirst class at Penn in this
Masters of Applied PositivePsychology, and none of us
really know what this degree isgoing to do for us.
All we know is we wanted to bethere because something called
us.
And so early in that year, fallof 2005, several staggering
(19:24):
pieces of research came to me,and one was the benefits of
frequent positive affect, bySonia Lubomirsky and Ed Diener
and Laura King, and it said thatall success in life is preceded
by being happy first.
And it was a slam dunk.
Finding success in every domainof life is preceded by being in
a flourishing emotional statefirst.
(19:45):
And so, as somebody who fanciedherself as a goal setter, I was
like this turns everythingupside down.
You can't talk about goalsunless you talk about wellbeing.
That actually became the thesisof my book Creating your Best
Life.
But Marty wanted me to applypositive psychology to
healthcare or to insurance or tosomething, because he thought
that it would just get moreattention and make a bigger
(20:07):
difference in the business world.
And I kept saying but, marty,people don't know goal setting
theory A and B, they don't knowthat happiness precedes success.
And I do think the worlddeserves science because this
smart goal thing.
I'm suddenly realizing that ifyou just use the word, let's say
, realistic or reachable, as theR in smart, you're immediately
(20:30):
undermining one of the mostpowerful parts of goal setting
theory, which is the goals.
If you just set reachable goals, those are called low goals.
You want to achieve hard goals,not impossible goals, but hard
goals, and so using smartimmediately kind of dumbs things
down.
And I said to Marty I'd like tomake a difference in the world
(20:51):
with goal setting.
And yeah, so Marty just gave up.
He threw his hands up and saidyou're going to write it anyway,
just go write it.
And then later, when he wrotethe book Flourish, he called out
my book, creating your BestLife.
He said Caroline's added a hugemissing piece to the world of
goal setting.
And, um, you know how you justget an instinct that you're on a
(21:14):
path.
Yeah Well, that was your dreamright.
Judy Oskam (21:16):
That was your big mountain dream, right On the top
of the mountain.
It was my big yeah.
Caroline Adams Miller (21:21):
And I didn't know how to write a book
that was that evidence-based.
I had never done it and so, butI was given a hard performance
goal deadline by the publisherand I said I don't know if I can
do it.
I'm learning how to write abook this evidence-based, this
heavily footnoted, but I'm goingto die trying.
And I almost.
(21:42):
You know, I was covered inhives when I was done with the
book because my co-author endedup not being able to write a
word.
He didn't contribute anythingto the book, maybe two pages,
and that was out of my hands,and so I had this impossible
situation.
But you know what?
I think we only get a fewopportunities in life to
redefine ourselves, to ourselves, who we are, what we're capable
(22:05):
of, what are our strengths, whohas our back, what are we
proudest of.
And I remember I was calling myagent as I crossed the Bay
Bridge, from where I'd written abig chunk of the book, to go
back home, and I called him andI said Ivor, I did it, I did it
and I can't believe I did it.
And I said I think I'm adifferent person today.
(22:26):
Yeah, and that moment has beena stepping stone to lots of
other big goals.
And that's what I mean is whenyou have big goals and you shoot
for them and maybe you don'tachieve them, but you've come
close.
So you get you know.
As excellent as you can be, youredefine who you are to
yourself.
(22:51):
And that's what a flourishinglife is all about and that's
what I really want people tofeel.
Judy Oskam (22:54):
Tune in to part two of my interview with Caroline
Adams Miller.
We continue the conversationand talk about how women in
particular can achieve their biggoals.
We also discuss strengths andthe VIA or values in action
assessment.
It's a free online assessmentthat will identify your true
character strengths and the viaor values in action assessment.
It's a free online assessmentthat will identify your true
character strengths and I'llinclude information about
Caroline and her books in theshow notes.
Thank you for listening tostories of change and creativity
(23:16):
and remember if you've got astory to share or know someone
who does, reach out to me atjudy.
oskam.
com.
Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com