Goal-Setting: Turning Your Ideas and Dreams Into Your Lived Experience
Defining goals and the purpose that they serve
Goals are a curious concept. They provide milestones and act as targets for us to aim towards. Destinations for us reach. They mark academic, work or personal achievements. Sometimes they are a minimum standard for us to exceed. At other times they are aspirational and may feel somehow just out of reach.
Goals can be set by us personally or they can be set for us by others. Sometimes we set goals for other people. At other times, we find that we have inherited goals from society, our families or our cultures which can create expectations for how we live and navigate our lives.
Goals can be specific: “I want to find a new job”, or lifelong: “I want to maintain healthy relationships.” They can be short-term: “today I want to walk 10,000 steps”, or more broad and aspirational: “I want to live a fulfilled life that meets my definition of mental, physical, and relational health.”
Goals can help us to track time and monitor our progress. They can give our lives meaning and direction, and they can help us bridge the gap between our ideas and dreams, and our lived realities.
Chances are, there are some goals that you are currently working towards. Some that have been abandoned, and others may already have been achieved and replaced. When we achieve some goals we feel great, powerful, and accomplished. Other goals come and go with little ceremony or celebration. Other goals still may make us feel uneasy, sad, or evoke longing, anxiety, paralysis, or feelings of failure.
Our early exposure to goal-setting
Goal setting as an endeavour is an idea that is built into the fabric of our family, academic and employment systems. They are baked into children’s developmental milestones and the educational systems that we traverse. As a result, they become part of the frameworks for our daily lives. We talk about having a “productive” day and define that as one that ticked off the goals that we had placed on our “to do” list. We can feel purposeful when we get things ‘done’ and lacklustre if another week, month, or year passes without achieving a certain goal that we, or others, have set for ourselves.
Setting goals well
So how do we set goals that are compassionate, realistic, and interesting enough to grab the attention of our brains’ reward systems? There are many goal-setting systems available and at their core, they invite us to connect to a future version of ourselves who is somehow further along that we are now. They also invite us to create some form of action plan for moving in a desired direction.
There are often steps involved: (i) define goal, (ii) break goal down into steps, (iii) take first step, second step, third step and so on. The challenge is that we often face obstacles at each of these stages. That doesn’t mean that we are doing anything wrong, rather, it is completely natural and part of the process.
Setting goals well involves exploring the emotional elements that often lie outside of our conscious reach. Firstly, are we clear about what it is that we actually desire? Is the goal that we are pursuing, ours or someone else’s, and if so how do we untangle the two? Do we feel excited or daunted when we imagine stepping forward in the direction of our goals? Sometimes our goals are so large that we get paralysed by their magnitude. At other times that first step is so small that we feel embarrassed, or silly when we struggle with it. Perhaps we need help and support in taking those first steps and don’t know where to turn.
How therapy can help
A therapist won't set goals for you, but they absolutely will provide a safe space for you to voice, scrutinise and understand the goals that you have for your life. They will help you to answer questions such as:
What is my history with goal-setting going well or less well?
Whose goal is this?
What does defining this goal mean to me?
Why is achieving this goal particularly important to me?
What would help me to increase my motivation to take a first step?
Is the current first step too large?
What would meeting this goal mean to me, my life and my relationships?
Therapy provides a safe space to return to along your goal-setting journey. The therapist can act as a companion and accountability partner as you move through defining, outlining, and actualizing the goals that you have for your life.
Therapy provides a space to unpack and normalise the fears and anxieties that you might have about getting started or achieving your goals. Sometimes there might be a fear of failure, and there might also be a fear of success that is operating and sabotaging your efforts to step forward.
Most of all, therapy is a place to help you understand what goal-setting means to you currently, what it has meant to you historically, and what you want it to mean for you in your life going forward. You don't have to set goals and navigate towards them by yourself.
You may find yourself struggling with setting goals or taking the necessary steps to achieve them. Fear of failure or a fear of success may be undermining your ability to take a first step. Other people's goals for your life may be crowding out your own. Therapy might be a helpful space to unpack all that is happening internally and externally to help you find a way forward.
Dr Erin Reid is a counselling psychologist offering online therapy to individuals, couples, adolescents, and families across the UK and internationally, and Walk and Talk' therapy in Northwest London green spaces. Visit drerinreid.com to find out more.
