A new and more fun way to set and achieve goals

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In the light of a new year approaching, when resolutions and goals abound, I thought I'd share a story that might help you when you come to think about yours :)

Recently, I had a client who felt overwhelmed with a capital O.

For years now she’s had a big dream; one that lights her up from the inside every time she allows herself to contemplate achieving it.

Innately creative, and with a passion for the written word, my client wants to be a published novelist.?

Now this dream has been with her a long time, and over the years she’s spent focused amounts of time on it; to the extent that a several years ago, when she was in-between jobs, she finished writing a book and secured an agent ??

Hugely exciting at the time and a massive achievement, things were looking good, but unfortunately, it never turned into the coveted publishing deal she was hoping for.

And so she got another job, and has been writing intermittently ever since.

For the last year though, she’s barely written a word.

She described how a day job that leaves her cold, and numerous family commitments, leave her little time for anything else.

The idea of squeezing writing into an already jam-packed schedule feels exhausting. It’s just another thing to add to her overloaded to-do list.

Plus she told me she needs a large bulk of uninterrupted time to write, because that’s how she finished her book and got an agent the last time.

All of which means she doesn’t write, but that just leaves her feeling frustrated, despondent, and like her dream is futile.

As we talked through her challenge though, she said something interesting.

She told me that the idea of setting a goal around her writing drained her energy.

When I asked her what she meant by “setting a goal”, she described the process most of us subscribe to; the process of setting specific, measurable actions at an appointed time each day, which ultimately lead you to your desired destination.

In her case, it meant setting a goal to write from 5-7am each morning.

Now accepted wisdom says there’s nothing wrong with this. We all know if you want to achieve something, setting and committing to a goal in this way is the only thing that works, right?

Well, not necessarily.

The caveat comes when the idea of goal setting creates strong mental resistance.

If the actions you're considering feel onerous, exhausting or downright impossible, the truth is that no amount of traditional goal setting is going to work.

So what’s the answer? Well, something that surprised my client:

Replacing regular goal setting with targeting “feeling states”.

What I mean by this is identifying the intrinsic motivations and emotions you feel in relation to the thing you love or want to do, and then making those feelings your only goal.

Here’s the example with my client.

I asked her to describe how she feels when she is just writing for the pure pleasure and joy of it, without pressuring herself, or thinking about the big publishing end goal.

She said “playful, connected, a sense of pride and flow”.

Then I challenged her to make experiencing any one of these feeling states a goal each day.

I told her it didn’t matter whether she wrote for five minutes or two hours. And she didn’t have to write at all if thinking about writing for a few minutes helped her connect to and experience those specific feelings.

I made it clear that the goal was not to schedule writing as an “activity”.

All she had to do was recognise and indulge her intrinsic motivations and emotions.

You can probably guess what happened...?

She started to write.

What felt like an impossible ask given her crazy schedule has become something that feels lighter, easier and fun enough to incorporate into her day.

It means that rather than feeling knackered and full of mental resistance, she's feeling re-energised and inspired to keep going instead.

So if you experience a similar level of overwhelm and struggle when faced with a goal you want to achieve, give this alternative goal setting approach a go.

You might just find you start to build momentum in ways you never imagined.

Plus it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining and enjoyable as you journey towards your desired destination!

Alison x

P.S. If one of your dreams or goals is making a career change, but you'd like some inspiration and want to understand what drives others to reinvent their working lives, come listen to my conversation with Amy McLean ?? Amy shares her own career transition story from corporate communications to community physiotherapy, and vulnerably shares the three big life events that caused her to deeply evaluate what she needed and wanted from a career. Come join us!