Start From Values, Not From Goals

In the first two articles in this series, we discussed how goals need to be powerful enough to motivate you to continue when things get hard. And that powerful goals came from aligning the goals with your core values. Then you figured out what your specific core values were.

Now I'll show you why you need to start from your values, not your goals.

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.” — E. B. White

If your goals are in conflict with your core values, you will not be able to sustain the effort required to reach them. That much is obvious.

But how do you reconcile the conflict? You can't start from goals.

Justifying a goal is not the answer

Consider the man who has the importance of family as a core value. He’s set a goal to be promoted this year, which will require him to spend a lot of overtime at the office. As the year goes on, he’ll start to resent that overtime, which is taking him away from his family.

He may justify the sacrifice, by reasoning that getting the promotion will help him better provide for his family. He tries to reconcile his goal (getting promoted) with his core value (importance of family).

Every time the goal and the value come into conflict, however, he will suffer. When he misses his kid's big game because he had to work late. When his other kid starts to do poorly in school because he isn't there to help with the homework. When he can't take his wife out for a date night because he's too exhausted.

If he sticks it out, he will end up miserable. Or he may give up on the goal of a promotion and be miserable for a different reason.

The problem is that you can't start from the goals and try to fit them to your values.

Lack of conflict is not alignment

Sometimes your goals are not in conflict with your core values. But they’re not aligned, either. They’re irrelevant.

Back in the first article of this series, we discussed how goals needed to be relevant to your values to be powerful. If the goal is not aligned with your values, it won't have the motivational power necessary to help you achieve it.

Imagine a woman who has core values of spirituality, service, and family. She has set a goal to lose weight.

There's no reason the goal can't be achieved. But as soon as something else comes up that’s aligned with one of those three core values, she will choose it instead. Even if it makes losing weight more difficult.

Her church is having an after-service social, and she's been asked to bring coffee cake. She not only bakes the coffee cake, but she serves it to the church members who attend. And shares some with them.

She stays up late to comfort her husband who is upset at something that happened at work. The next day at her job, she compensates for her lack of sleep with sugary snacks from the break room vending machine.

It's not enough to avoid conflict between goals and values. They must align.

Key takeaways

If your goals are not aligned with your values, you will have problems. Either they are in direct conflict, causing you to suffer and potential give up on your goal. Or they are irrelevant to each other, making it much harder to meet your goal, because other, more important things keep getting in the way.

You cannot retrofit your goals onto your values by trying to justify your goals.

You also cannot ignore your values when setting goals.

Keep reading to find out how to use your values to create your goals.