Why we need to redefine goal setting?
A woman came to me recently and she asked for help.
She's been disappointed with her results in goal setting and she was also struggling not only with setting goals and her priorities,
But also with staying the course and just getting there.
If you think,
Well,
She's not alone with that,
You are absolutely right.
I see it in my work,
This is a huge struggle for the majority of people and it's mostly a result of a common misconception about goal setting and visioning in general.
There are a few pitfalls of quote-unquote common sense goals or goal setting methods.
And you know,
A well-known teaching in pretty much every wisdom tradition is that the only thing you have control over is how you are in any given situation.
You rarely ever get to control anything outside of yourself,
Like the people around you,
The situations you find yourself in,
The things that life just throws at you seemingly randomly.
So why do we try to set goals and create future visions that focus entirely on things that are outside of our control?
Like I'm going to get three new clients this month,
Or I want to triple my email list by the end of the year,
Or even I want to sell this project by the end of the quarter.
I mean they are great intentions,
But as far as goals go,
They are not exactly the kind of goals that are going to work well if we keep setting these kind of goals in the long term.
So anyone who's ever tried doing a yearly,
Quarterly or even weekly planning this way knows that life just gets in the way most of the times.
It's rarely ever going according to plan.
And while having a list of tasks that need to be done is clarifying and can be really beneficial,
Letting those tasks define your goals and define your vision is most likely going to set you up for feeling like you failed or even worse,
That you are a failure.
The biggest mistake people can make when defining a vision is to focus solely on activities and tasks and end results,
And not take into consideration the only thing they have control over,
The how and the who they want to be in the process.
When you're too focused on activities and results,
You'll be blindfolded to opportunities that come your way,
Opportunities that you couldn't have imagined doing when you were setting your goals,
But that can make your life and work better in ways you couldn't have even grasped before.
And this is what happened to the woman I mentioned.
During our session,
She realized she already had an idea about who she wanted to be.
She had this beautiful and powerful vision of that version of herself.
So during the weekend,
She started to ask herself one question.
What would this version of myself do?
And this question,
This simple question,
Led her to take out a closet with drawers from her daughter's room and replace it with friendlier furniture that helped her daughter feel much less irritated in her own room.
And while doing this,
Her creative juices just started to flow and she repurposed the drawers,
Planting a whole new section in her garden.
Now gardening would have never made it to her weekly planning or any kind of to-do lists,
Because she made her tasks and goal lists only with actions in mind that were based on who she believed she was,
Someone who's not at all good at taking care of plants.
And this is the mistake we all make when trying to follow common sense goal setting.
So back to what she did,
This spontaneous activity,
It didn't just feel fun and fulfilling for her,
It opened her up to possibilities.
After she got a boost of energy and motivation from gardening,
She went on to do meal prepping for the whole week ahead and that made her feel spacious to do her work in the coming days,
Because she knew that whatever happens,
She'll have meals ready.
It also made her feel accomplished and proud of herself,
Which is in and of itself a huge motivator for getting things done.
So how do you set goals and create a vision to work towards?
It's by starting with finding the person you want to be in the process.
Goal setting in this way becomes a way of envisioning who you want to be instead of what you want to do.
When you are clear on who you want to be,
Like how you want to feel and what posture you are taking on,
That will inform the thoughts you will think and ultimately the actions you'll take.
But you can't really plan actions too far ahead,
Because life is changing and moving around.
The only thing you can plan is how you will be.
That's the only thing.
I know this can feel scary and actually also liberating at the same time.
When you let your focus rest on who and how you want to be,
The right activities and opportunities will arise,
Without you needing to figure them out.
Now that's a huge load off your shoulders,
Isn't it?
You don't need to figure out what you'll be doing a year from now,
When it's even pretty difficult to know what you'll be doing tomorrow,
Right?
So rest into who you want to be and watch life unfold in front of your eyes to help you live that vision.
