Do Your Goals Pass the Sniff Test?

The following article will appear in the upcoming April 4, 2025, edition of the Estes Park news. You can view virtual editions here.

My clients come to me because they’re spinning their wheels alone trying to make progress in some area of their life—changing careers, losing weight, writing a book, trying to run their first marathon after a below-knee amputation (all actual client examples). Depending on how stuck they are, I either act as kitty litter or a tow truck to help get them cruising back along the highway at 75 mph.

Let’s say you’re three tires deep in a mud pit (metaphorically speaking), so you call me for help. When your life feels more frozen than a Lean Cuisine, even the thought of setting a goal can feel like solving a Rubik’s cube. You may not know exactly what you want yet. But I can guarantee you know what you don’t want. You don’t want to be out of breath going up a few stairs anymore. You don’t want to die with this story still inside you. You don’t want to serve overpriced burgers to tourists asking what time of year the deer turn into elk for another summer.

Once you can articulate what you don’t want (and are no longer willing to tolerate), you can focus on what you might want. You might want to do a year-long around-the-world tour. You might want to lose X pounds. You might want to [fill in the blank with your own goal here].

Now, here’s where other coaches would have you turn your desire into a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. But I’m not like most coaches, so we’re instead going to give your desire the sniff test. Using my not-patented 7 Layers of Why tool, ask yourself, “Why do I want [insert goal from above]?” Then, ask yourself, “Why do I want [your response to the first question]?” Again, ask, “Why do I want [answer to the previous question]?” Repeat this until you’ve asked yourself why a total of seven times.

Your desire is a worthwhile goal to pursue if you uncover a meaning behind it that’s bigger than yourself in this moment right now. One that almost if not actually brings a tear to your eye. Your deepest level of why might be your family or the legacy you want to leave behind. It might be about making a difference in your community or living in the satisfaction of knowing you lived up to your full potential.

Taking the around-the-world travel example from above: If the deepest why you can uncover is “because it looks so cool when I see everyone else posting about it on social media,” do not pass go, do not collect $200. Toss that Tupperware out because that goal is rotten. BUT, if your deepest level of why is “because my husband died before he could retire and we could finally travel the world together and I want to spread his ashes in all the places we’d dreamed about”—well, now we’re cookin’. 

I walked two clients through this exercise who both said their desired outcome was to lose weight. The first client realized halfway through this exercise that she did not, in fact, really care all that much about losing weight. Instead, what she really wanted was to spend more quality time with her husband adventuring. She didn’t want to obsess about her food or work out like it was a second job. She wanted more fun, more juiciness in life. So, she made that her goal. (And surprise! She ended up losing weight anyway. Being overall happier and more satisfied with your life acts like an all-natural Ozempic every time.)

The second client, on the other hand, said it would “be nice” if her knees stopped hurting and she could go to Key West with her girlfriends and do “all that walking.” While these certainly aren’t meaningless reasons, they weren’t enough. Nice isn’t seven-layers deep. Nice does not pass the sniff test. That’s why I was not at all surprised when she said she’d need to reschedule her follow-up session—and never got around to doing so.

If you’d like to walk through this sniff test together with outside support, I’d love to give you a free 60-minute session to do so. Or maybe you already walked yourself through it and are looking for more of the “kitty litter” type of “what’s next and how do I stay on track” type of support. Either way, email me at chazz@higherelevationscoaching.com to get on my weekly-ish mailing list and let me know how I can help you get unstuck.