The practice of authentic goals

BOOK EXCERPT · MORGAN SAGE NORMAN · From the supplied v79 selection

By Morgan Sage Norman

Chapter 22 · Pages 139–140

The lie about success

The lie is that success means hitting the goals handed to you. But if you’ve ever hit the target and still felt empty, you know the truth: It doesn’t work.

The exhaustion isn’t because you can’t reach goals. It’s because you’ve been chasing the wrong ones.

Energy is your fuel. Intention is your compass. Authentic goals are your destination.

Borrowed goals belong to the company, the industry, or someone else’s definition of success. They look impressive but drain you. Authentic goals belong to you. They energize you like one of your favorite songs you can listen to over and over, move through you, and make the work feel alive.

The practice of authentic goals is learning to quiet the world’s shout so you can hear your own whisper.

Field memory: The SUV that wasn’t about the SUV

At an off-site, I once heard a story about a leader whose team consistently outperformed every other group in a giant company.

His secret wasn’t pushing people harder to hit their numbers. It was digging deeper…always asking questions that tapped into the heart center.

One woman told him she wanted to hit her quota so she could buy a new SUV. On the surface, that looked like a standard corporate goal: Make your number; get the reward.

But when he kept digging, the truth came out. The SUV wasn’t really about the car. What she actually wanted was to spend more time with her kids before they graduated. She wanted to learn to ski with them, to drive safely through snowy winters, to create memories together. The authentic goal was family.

The leader went to the dealership, got the actual brochure for that SUV, and put it on her desk. Not as a gimmick, but as a daily reminder: You’re not working for a number. You’re working for what really matters.

When she hit her quota, she got the car. But the real achievement wasn’t the SUV. It was the time and memories she created with her family…her authentic goal, brought to life.

Field memory: My own borrowed goals

I fell into tech because of scarcity. As a kid, I wanted to be a teacher, a pilot, a talk show host, maybe a comedian. I wanted to teach, to tell stories, to make people laugh. But somewhere along the way, those goals felt unrealistic. So I traded them for safer ones: sales quotas, revenue targets, promotions, LinkedIn-worthy roles.

I was good at it. I was climbing ranks, managing larger and larger teams across the world. But it drained me. Beyond drained me.

The breakthrough came when I stopped asking, “What should I want?” and started asking, “What do I actually want?” When I admitted that storytelling, creativity, and shaping ideas energized

This selection ends mid-sentence. The story continues on page 141 in the book.