We would be much better off asking clients what their concerns are or what passages of life they are going through or what changes they see coming than we are spouting the trite and overused, "Tell me about your goals." Have you ever witnessed the deer-in-the-headlights, conceptually constipated response to that question? The truth is a lot of people really don't know what their goals are. They are too busy dealing with "what is" to concern themselves with what might be.

What Was I Thinking?

One day while rummaging through old files, I came across a "goals sheet" that I had been cajoled into filling out in a workshop. I remember being given dire directives at the time about the axiomatic necessity of: 1. Writing down my goals; and 2. Keeping those goals in front of me. While I don't remember the exact statistics the instructor gave, the odds were somewhere between the penthouse and the outhouse if we failed to subscribe to these commandments.

So, I wrote all my goals down-and promptly misplaced the goal sheet-not to surface again until, serendipitously, this moment five years hence. And, upon reading it, I had to thank goodness and fate that I had lost it in such prompt fashion.

In retrospect, my goals fell into two neat categories:

1. Already happened; and

2.  What was I smoking at the time?

I began to reflect on what a goal really is. If a goal truly is a goal, will it not take root organically and grow? Will the lack of a Tony Robbins chant really hold back my goal from growing into reality if it is indeed organically rooted within my being? And, if it's not a goal--and is rather a whim or capricious desire--then the winds of personal awareness will blow it away to some other garden.

Many of our so-called goals change as often as the fashion world. I think of this every time I hear a newly minted former boat owner quip, "The two best days in a boat owner's life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it."

Come Back From The Future

I feel that a conversation about goals and dreams is not the starting point for advisors who are intent on building serious lifetime relationships. These goal/dream conversations are too fuzzy, too elusive and too susceptible to impulse and fad to suffice as the foundational dialogue in a "clients for life" relationship. Opt rather to build that foundation on the "here and now" and "coming soon to a life near you" realities, concerns, and transitions of everyday life.