Article #2

The Difference Between a Goal and a Vision

If you were curious enough to read my last article, I really appreciate you, but if you did not get the opportunity, I spoke about how twice in my life the life I was building was taken away. Once when I left the military and the other when we closed our nonprofit due to the 2020 pandemic. During those spans, I had built my identity on accomplishments and status, and when they both were gone, I was left with no identity, footing, or direction. A ship left adrift at sea with no wind in its sails. What I have come to learn and understand is that the problem wasn't the military nor the nonprofit, and not even the pandemic itself. It was that I had mistakenly confused a destination with a direction. I was focused on a finite identity built upon a finite finish line. And, when that finish line disappeared, so did my identity.

Let me slow down for a second, because I don't think most of us have ever been taught the difference. All our lives we've been taught to set goals, and the type of goals vary person to person, but goals with finish lines, nonetheless. Unless you went to business school, or operated around high-level thinkers, no one ever sat us down and taught us what it was actually like to build a vision for our lives. See, vision and goals are not the same thing, even though we use them like they are.

Here's the clearest way I know how to say it.

A goal is something you either achieve or you don't.

Get into the school. Get the promotion. Hit the number. A goal has a finish line, and once you cross it, it's over. You did it, or you didn't.

A vision doesn't have a finish line. A vision is a direction you move toward for the rest of your life.

You don't "complete" becoming a person of integrity. You don't "finish" becoming someone your kids can trust. A vision is a continuous journey, not a box you check off.

Most of us build our entire identity based on our goals and achievements. I know I did, more than once. Join the military. Go to college. Start a nonprofit. Earn a master's degree. Build programs. Earn another master's degree. Every one of those was a finish line I was sprinting toward, and every one of those, when it disappeared, took a piece of me with it. And here's what nobody tells you about building your identity on goals:

goals were never built to hold the weight of your identity.

I remember the exact moment I stumbled into a vision instead of a goal, though I didn't have the language for it at the time. In 2013 my son was born, and something in me shifted that had nothing to do with achievement. I didn't set a goal that day. I didn't write down a five-year plan. I made a decision about who I was going to be for him — a father he never had to wonder if he loved him, and a man worthy of him following. That wasn't a finish line. Almost 13 years later, it still isn't. I'm not "done" being that. I'm still becoming it every single day, and I hope I still will be twenty years from now. And it's not easy by any means. It takes hard work and a lot of self-reflection.

That's the difference. A goal asks, "Did I cross the finish line?" A vision asks, "Who am I becoming?"

I've come to believe this distinction matters more than almost anything else we teach young leaders, and more than most of what we teach ourselves. Not because goals are bad. Goals are really good. Goals are how a vision gets legs. But goals were never meant to answer the question "who am I," and when we ask them to, we set ourselves up to lose our identity the moment the goal disappears. Simon Sinek calls this the difference between a finite game and an infinite game. Finite games have an end. Infinite games don't. The whole point is to keep playing, to keep getting stronger, to keep bringing other people into the game with you. Most of us were only ever taught to play finite games. Get the grade. Make the team. Land the job. Rarely were we taught the infinite one.

Here's an example I give my students: Finite goals = "Get into college. Major in education. Become a teacher." All three are great goals, but all three are finite goals that can be interrupted or not completed. Still set them, but set an infinite goal above them, in case you don't cross one of those finish lines. An infinite goal could read like this: "I want to be a lifelong learner who makes a positive impact on those around me." See the difference?

So, here's something worth trying this week, whether you're seventeen or fifty-seven.

Take one goal you're currently chasing, it could be a promotion, a degree, a number on a scale, anything with a finish line. Then ask yourself that same question: who am I trying to become, that this goal is just a step toward that identity?

If you can't answer that question, that's not a failure. That's just information. It means you've found a goal that's floating free, disconnected from any direction bigger than itself, and those are exactly the goals that leave us feeling empty when we finally reach them. I don't think the answer is to stop setting goals. I think the answer is to stop letting goals carry weight they were never built for, and to start building something underneath them that can survive losing one.

That something is a vision. And building one is what we will discuss in the next article.

Reflection: What's one goal in your life right now that doesn't seem to be serving any vision bigger than itself? What would it take to find, or build, that vision?

This idea shows up in the Infinite Vision Framework — vision is the direction everything else in the framework serves. We'll go deeper into how to actually build one in the articles ahead.

Want to walk through this with a group? This is one of the core exercises I use in workshops and trainings, so reach out if you'd like to bring it to your team, school, or organization.