How to Begin

How to Begin Plot Summary

Introduction

We all get one shot at this life, so why not make the most of it? The stirrings of ambition can appear at any stage - perhaps you're just starting out, mid-career, or wrapping things up. Maybe you're outraged by injustice, frustrated with how things are done in your organization, or simply feeling that your life is full enough but not as meaningful as you'd hoped. Whatever your itch, the process outlined in these pages will help you get going on a project that truly matters. Being ambitious means two things: ambitious for your life and ambitious for the world. The first involves unlocking your greatness and becoming the best version of yourself. The second means looking beyond your own happiness to make a difference - whether that's building a better relationship, leading a thriving team, returning to study, or starting an organization. These two ambitions amplify each other. By taking on hard things, you step to the edges of your skills and experience. You struggle, stumble, figure things out, learn, and grow. You reveal and strengthen your Best Self as you make the world a little better.

Chapter 1: Set a Worthy Goal That Matters

A Worthy Goal isn't just any goal - it has three essential qualities that work together like primary colors to paint your ambition: it must be Thrilling, Important, and Daunting. When a goal is Thrilling, the idea of taking it on gets you excited. It speaks to your values and lights up your receptors. You'd be proud to do it. It's an adventure you want to have. This quality is a countermeasure against a sense of obligation - those "I should be doing this" thoughts that weigh us down. Michael Bungay Stanier, the author, shares his own experience of setting a Worthy Goal to launch a top-tier podcast. Initially, he described it vaguely as creating a "top-notch podcast," but through refinement, he evolved it to "Launch a new podcast that is in the top 3 percent of all podcasts within 12 months." This specificity gave the goal more power and clarity, making it both more exciting and more challenging. Another example he provides is his goal to transition out of his CEO role at Box of Crayons, a company he founded. This wasn't just about quitting a job but about "Role-modeling a gracious, generous, and trusting transfer of power." The framing connected to deeper values about leadership and legacy. Setting a Worthy Goal requires honesty about what truly matters to you. It's not about what others expect or what looks impressive on paper. It's about what genuinely excites you and what contribution you want to make to the world. The Important aspect ensures your goal gives more to the world than it takes - whether that's through improving relationships, creating something valuable, or addressing injustice. The Daunting element ensures your goal pushes you beyond your comfort zone. If the thought of taking it on makes you a little sweaty, you're on the right track. This quality counteracts our tendency to play it safe and stay small. Without it, goals become too comfortable and don't lead to growth. Finding your Worthy Goal isn't a one-shot process. It typically takes multiple drafts, starting with what the author calls a "crappy first draft" - something to get you started. From there, you refine it through testing and reflection until it truly resonates as something worth committing your life energy toward.

Chapter 2: Test Your Ambition with Three Criteria

Once you have a draft of your Worthy Goal, it's time to test it against three powerful criteria to ensure it has the right substance and direction. The first test is the Spouse-ish Test, which helps gauge how Thrilling your goal is. This involves sharing your goal with someone who knows you deeply - a partner, sibling, best friend, or coach - and noting their reaction. They might respond with enthusiasm ("That's wonderful!"), impatience ("Stop talking about it and go do it!"), or skepticism ("That's ridiculous"). Their response isn't the final word, but it provides valuable perspective on your level of excitement and commitment. When Bungay Stanier shared his podcast goal with his wife Marcella, she was supportive, noting that he enjoys talking to new people and is good at it. This external validation boosted his own enthusiasm. For his CEO transition goal, she was very excited, reminding him of more carefree days when he didn't carry the weight of leadership. The second test is the FOSO Test (For the Sake Of), which examines how Important your goal is. Instead of simply asking "Why?" - which can lead to vague justifications - you complete the phrase: "[Your Worthy Goal] for the sake of..." This connects your goal to a bigger purpose beyond personal gratification. For his podcast goal, Bungay Stanier identified purposes like "finding new voices, making wisdom accessible, helping people love books." For his CEO transition, it was about helping his company scale and role-modeling how to give up power. The third test is the Goldilocks Zone Test, which assesses whether your goal is appropriately Daunting. Like the porridge in the fairy tale, your goal shouldn't be too hot (impossibly big) or too cold (too small and uninspiring), but just right. It needs the right scope and weight to challenge you without overwhelming you. The author found his podcast goal needed more specificity to be properly daunting, while his CEO transition was already quite challenging. After running these tests, you'll likely need to revise your goal. The author suggests starting your second draft with a verb to make it more action-oriented. For example, "Create a podcast" became "Launch a new, professional-grade podcast." This small shift emphasizes commitment to action rather than just an idea. The final step is to rate your goal against the three criteria on a scale of 1-7. If your total score isn't at least 18 out of 21, your goal likely needs more refinement. This voting test helps you objectively assess whether your goal is truly Worthy. Through this iterative process, you'll arrive at a goal that genuinely excites you, contributes to the world, and pushes you to grow.

Chapter 3: Claim Your Goal with Confidence

After testing and refining your Worthy Goal, it's time to claim it with confidence. This means making one final push to strengthen it until it truly resonates. The key is adding precision through a single word or short phrase that tightens the power and focus of your goal. This isn't about making it bigger or bolder, but about setting specific parameters that light the fuse of your motivation. Bungay Stanier's podcast goal evolved significantly through this process. At one point, it expanded to become a podcast media company with multiple shows, then contracted again. The breakthrough came when he read that being in the top 3% of podcasts means achieving 10,000 downloads per episode within a month of release. This specificity transformed his goal to "Launch a new podcast that is in the top 3% of all podcasts within 12 months," setting a completely different standard from any podcast project he'd done before. For his CEO transition goal, the refinement process connected him deeply to his desire to be someone who gives up power rather than holds onto it. This shifted his goal from the somewhat bloodless "Manage the transition out of the CEO role" to the more powerful "Role-model a gracious, generous, and trusting transfer of power." This final version scored a perfect 21/21 on his rating system. The standard you're aiming for isn't perfection - which the author describes as "just misery dressed up in fancy clothes." Instead, you're looking for "good enough," which means your goal has crossed the line, made the cut, and feels right. You'll know you're ready to move forward when your Worthy Goal feels clear as a bell, strong like titanium, or generates a "Hell yes!" response in you. This claiming process requires you to slow down and settle into your commitment. It's like that moment when an Olympic swimmer takes a deep breath before the starting gun, or when a speaker pauses in the wings before walking onstage. Your body is rolling up its metaphorical sleeves and saying: "OK. It's time. Let's do this thing." Once you've claimed your Worthy Goal with confidence, you're ready to move to the next phase: commitment. This is where you'll examine what's holding you back, what you stand to gain, and what you might need to leave behind. The journey ahead will be challenging, but having a clearly defined, compelling goal that you've claimed as your own will provide the foundation you need to persevere.

Chapter 4: Commit Despite Fear and Resistance

Commitment begins with understanding where you currently stand and what's been holding you back. This requires honest self-examination of your past attempts and current behaviors that sabotage your progress. Bungay Stanier calls these "False Starts" - previous attempts at similar goals that trailed off, were shelved, or scaled down to nothing. By acknowledging these patterns, you gain insight into what might derail you this time. In his podcast journey, the author confessed to a "juicy and somewhat embarrassing history" of False Starts - six previous podcast attempts, only one of which was substantial. For his CEO transition goal, he identified patterns of either "dumping and running" (hoping others would read his mind) or micromanaging (nominally giving power while holding onto decision-making). Even more revealing is what he calls "Mosquitoes" - all the things you're currently doing or not doing that undermine your Worthy Goal. These aren't fatal individually, but together they irritate, weaken, and distract you. For his podcast goal, these included investing in a consultant then ignoring her recommendations, downgrading his ambitions, and refusing to figure out marketing. For his CEO transition, he was keeping his successor overcommitted to her current role and staying ambiguous about what would remain with the company. This forensic accounting of your resistance isn't about beating yourself up - it's about recognizing that reluctance and hesitation are natural responses to anything Thrilling, Important, and Daunting. As Bungay Stanier points out, in the Hero's Journey, the hero always refuses the call at first. Your resistance confirms you're on a path that matters. The next step is weighing the status quo against your Worthy Goal. We're far more committed to how things are than we realize. The "Prizes" of not changing include comfort, status, authority, and avoiding vulnerability. For his podcast goal, the author would maintain his "lucky/competent amateur" story and avoid the risk of failure. For his CEO transition, he'd keep his status and control. Against these comforts, you must consider the "Punishments" - what you and others lose if you don't pursue your Worthy Goal. For his podcast, Bungay Stanier would miss opportunities to meet brilliant thinkers, master a new specialty, and use his privilege for good. For his CEO transition, Box of Crayons wouldn't reach its full potential, and his successor would miss a chance to fulfill her leadership potential. When the punishments of inaction outweigh the prizes of the status quo, you're ready to commit. This commitment isn't blind optimism - it's a clear-eyed choice based on understanding what's truly at stake. By facing your fears and resistance head-on, you transform them from obstacles into confirmation that your goal is worthy of pursuit.

Chapter 5: Take Small Steps Toward Progress

The journey toward your Worthy Goal doesn't begin with grand, confident strides. Instead, it starts with small, deliberate steps that generate feedback and mitigate risk. Bungay Stanier draws on his experience in product development to illustrate this principle. Early in his career, his team would spend months developing new desserts in isolation, only to see them flop when launched. In contrast, Silicon Valley embraced the principle of "fail faster to succeed sooner" - taking small steps, collecting feedback, and adjusting course. There are three powerful ways to take these small steps: through History, Experiments, and Practice. The first approach, History, involves searching your past for "peak moments" where a version of your best self already appeared. These stories provide evidence that you're the right person for this Worthy Goal and help calibrate what's really at risk. For his podcast goal, Bungay Stanier recalled his experience self-publishing "The Coaching Habit," where he committed to doing it professionally - hiring great people, creating budgets, and investing in marketing. This countered his persistent "lucky amateur" story and reminded him he could operate at a professional level. For his CEO transition, he remembered successfully trusting a designer with important work, proving he could delegate effectively. The second approach, Experiments, involves constructing contained, toe-in-the-water tests that generate useful information without risking too much. For his podcast goal, the author designed an experiment to create a limited series of pilot episodes to test audience reaction, his own interest, and resource requirements. An even smaller experiment was writing a pitch document for experts to review. For his CEO transition, he planned to give his successor contained pieces of the CEO role to practice the transfer of power. The third approach, Practice, builds on experiments by adding persistence. While habits aim to make behaviors unconscious, Practice keeps you conscious and open to learning. For his podcast, Bungay Stanier committed to daily immersion in the podcasting world with a learning mindset, monthly coaching sessions with his producer, and listening to his own episodes. For his CEO transition, he established regular meetings with his successor to reflect on how the transfer was progressing. These small steps create a virtuous circle: progress leads to good feelings, which lead to more progress. By starting small and collecting feedback, you avoid both the paralysis of perfectionism and the risk of catastrophic failure. You build momentum through what Teresa Amabile calls "the progress principle" - people feel good when they make regular progress on stuff that matters to them. The beauty of small steps is that they make the daunting feel doable. They transform your Worthy Goal from an intimidating mountain into a series of manageable climbs, each one building your skills, confidence, and understanding of what's truly required to succeed.

Chapter 6: Remember Your Best Self When Challenged

When pursuing your Worthy Goal, your feelings will swing between confidence and doubt. There will be times when you're in the flow state - every step assured, your confidence unbounded. But inevitably, there will also be moments of confusion, anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. These feelings aren't signs of failure; they're normal responses to doing something that matters. In these challenging moments, Bungay Stanier offers a powerful tool for reconnecting with your Best Self. He calls it "This/Not That" - a technique he adapted from brand marketing during his early career. While working on a new whisky called Loch Dhu (which failed spectacularly), his team found that defining a brand through comparison created more clarity than abstract descriptions alone. For personal development, This/Not That means building pairs of words - the first describing you at your best, the second describing when you're slightly off your game. It's not about contrasting triumph with disaster, but about the subtle difference between being "On Your Game" and "Slightly Off." For his podcast goal, Bungay Stanier identified pairs like "Top 3 percent not Amateur" and "Ambitious not Fake-Modest." These challenged him to "claim his place" in a way that wasn't immediately comfortable but felt helpful. For his CEO transition, he created pairs like "Calm not Reactive," "Deep Trust not Loose Reins," and "Offstage not In the Spotlight" - reflecting his need to deliberately reduce his profile and surrender control. You can create your own This/Not That list by recalling peak moments when you felt unstoppable and in flow. What were you doing and not doing? What was in your mind, body, and spirit? Then identify what "less than this" looks and sounds like. Alternatively, start with moments when you felt anxious or tight, then imagine the better, more confident version of that experience. The power of This/Not That comes from its specificity and personal resonance. When Bungay Stanier recalls being on edge during a workshop - leaning forward, heels up, leg jiggling - versus the calm anticipation before his TEDx talk - standing still, open, breathing, rooted - he immediately connects to both states. This physical and emotional memory becomes an anchor he can return to when challenged. By remembering your Best Self through This/Not That, you create a compass that guides you through difficult moments. You recognize when you're drifting off course and can consciously shift back to the qualities that represent you at your peak. This isn't about perfection - it's about awareness and choice. When doubt strikes, you can choose to embody the version of yourself that's most capable of meeting the challenge of your Worthy Goal.

Chapter 7: Build Your Support Network

No one achieves a Worthy Goal alone. Just as Dorothy had companions on the Yellow Brick Road and Luke had the Rebellion against the Dark Side, you need the right people around you for your journey. Building your support network begins with a crucial but often overlooked step: deciding who to leave behind. Not everyone in your current circle will help you achieve your Worthy Goal. Some may want you to stay unchanging, take more than they give, sow seeds of doubt, or trigger the worst in you. Bungay Stanier encourages you to identify at least one person who's not needed on your journey - someone whose absence would bring a lightness, a sense of freedom, or an excited nervousness. With space created, you can now assemble your support team. Drawing from Indigenous traditions, the author suggests gathering wisdom from four cardinal directions, each representing an archetypal role that can support your journey. The Warrior has your back, stands by your side, and helps you channel anger and frustration. The Healer/Lover brings gentleness, encouragement, and unconditional support. The Teacher/Magician offers insight, creates space for reflection, and points out what you're missing. The Visionary/Ruler stretches your ambition, role-models courage, and demands better of you. Beyond these four, there's a fifth role: the Trickster. This character teases, provokes, challenges, and mocks you - disrupting the comfortable path and turning things upside down. While potentially irritating, the Trickster serves a vital function by preventing complacency and self-deception. For his podcast goal, Bungay Stanier identified specific supporters for each role. His Warrior would be a production team to fight for quality and balance his "that will do" tendency. His Healer/Lover would be friends also launching podcasts who could gently keep him moving forward. His Teacher/Magician would challenge his "high-performing amateur" mindset. His Visionary/Ruler would be his "Jedi Council" of inspirational creators like Jack White and Stacey Abrams. His Trickster would be someone who keeps suggesting the project is self-indulgent. For his CEO transition, he needed a different support network. His Warrior would be his successor and team holding boundaries to prevent him from stepping back into the spotlight. His Healer/Lover would help him mourn the loss of identity. His Teacher/Magician would be writers about the nature of power. His Visionary/Ruler would be CEOs who've gracefully exited their roles. His Trickster would be someone who relishes staying in control. By deliberately assembling this support network, you create a system that compensates for your blind spots, challenges your limitations, celebrates your progress, and keeps you moving forward when obstacles arise. You recognize that achieving something worthy isn't a solo performance but a collaborative endeavor that draws on the strengths and perspectives of others who believe in your goal and your capacity to achieve it.

Summary

The journey to unlock your greatness through worthy goals is both challenging and profoundly rewarding. Throughout these pages, we've explored how to set goals that are truly worthy of your time and energy - goals that are Thrilling, Important, and Daunting. We've examined how to test and refine these goals, commit despite resistance, take small steps toward progress, remember your best self in difficult moments, and build a support network to sustain you. As Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us in the poem "The Man Watching," which deeply inspired the author: "Winning does not tempt him. His growth is: to be the deeply defeated by ever greater things." Your next step is simple but powerful: choose one worthy goal that matters to you and begin today. Not tomorrow, not when conditions are perfect, but now. Take that first small step - whether it's a history reflection, a tiny experiment, or the beginning of a practice. Remember that when you take on worthy goals, you wrestle with the angel and it changes you. As the author concludes: "We unlock our greatness by working on the hard things." The world needs your contribution, your growth, and your willingness to step beyond comfort into possibility.

About Author

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Michael Bungay Stanier

Hi - I'm a book reader, writer and lover.I'm best known for *The Coaching Habit*, the best-selling book on coaching this century. (Close to a million copies sold!)I'm also the host of the podcast *2 Pages with MBS* where brilliant people read the best two pages of a favourite book.

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