Years ago, I found myself at New Year’s Eve, beating myself up again for not accomplishing my goals for the year. But that particular year, something clicked. Something that said, What if this isn’t your fault?
For an overachieving people-pleaser, this was almost impossible to believe, but I decided to investigate. Why couldn’t I seem to honor my resolutions and achieve those goals I’d set for myself?
What I realized — no exaggeration — changed my life.
Make your goals your own
First of all, I will be honest: I was setting the wrong goals. I was setting the goals I thought I “should” be setting for myself. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that, at the end of the year, I didn’t accomplish my goals, because they weren’t really my goals. They were someone else’s idea of appropriate goals.
I didn’t really want to run a marathon or spend more time studying Spanish. (Ultimately, I completed 1000 hours of yoga teacher training and learned Japanese. But that’s a different story.)
Base your goals on actions, not outcomes
Crafting resolutions that felt more like me was a good start, but it was just the beginning. Even when I sat down to create specific goals that I truly did want to achieve, I still felt constricted and rebellious. I found that I was still clinging to the outcomes of the goals, and that felt really uncomfortable. If I failed, I thought, it would really mean something about me.
So I changed my strategy entirely. Instead of focusing on the outcome of my resolutions, I come up with themes. I look for places I want to focus, instead of a list of things I want to accomplish. The fact is, our accomplishments aren’t always up to us. Our efforts? We can control those. The outcome? Most of the time, it’s out of our hands.
If I failed, I thought, it would really mean something about me.
Let’s say you actually do want to run that marathon. You can make a plan and train for the marathon. You can join a running group and buy the shoes and sign up for the race. But maybe you get injured. Or the event is cancelled due to a pandemic. (For instance.) Those things are out of your control, and have no bearing on whether you “succeeded.”
Focus on themes and intentions
Now, I focus on themes and intentions. My themes ask the question: Where do I want to focus my energy? In my life right now, I’m focused on my family, my creative practice, and my activism. It’s not about what will happen in those areas. My themes are the places I want to offer the best of myself.
My intentions ask the question: How do I want to show up for what matters to me? It’s not about what I want to do, it’s about how I want to be in relationship to those areas of my life. When you focus on your themes and intentions, you are better able to keep promises to yourself over which you have control.
Accomplishing specific things
Do I still have specific things I want to accomplish? Absolutely. I’d love to publish a book. I want to knit a blanket and a sweater in the next few months. There are specific trips I’d love to make this year (if it’s safe). I’d love to see my family and create particular kinds of change in my activism. But I’m holding those things lightly and not getting attached.
When you focus on your themes and intentions, you are better able to keep promises to yourself over which you have control.
When things are difficult, you might have less control over where you spend your time and energy. Family members get sick. You may not be able to quit that terrible job right now (because rent and food cost money). It may not be safe to take that trip you’re longing to take.
When you focus on themes and intentions, you’re giving yourself a permission slip to be flexible. What matters isn’t the specific form a goal takes, but that you’re striving to make an impact. You can be present with what’s meaningful without it turning into a story about your value as a person. Your themes and your intentions are under your control.
You just have to ask yourself: Where do I want to be present and what do I want the quality of my presence to be?
Your turn
How do you approach goal-setting? Do you focus on your actions and on broader themes, or on defined goals and specific results? Share your thoughts in the comments.
I think setting themes instead of goals is a great idea and something I’ve been doing too. Over the last year I’ve tried to keep goals loose, and not set a target number on anything. My professional, where-I-earn-my-money life is very uncertain at the moment (I work for a festival) so I have said I will simply do my best and be as useful to the rest of the team as I can. Other aspects of my life, my craft, my home, my family, I have also kept loose. I want to do some work on the garden, decorate some more of the house, help my kids with their schoolwork, all achievable but very broad.
I’ve always thought to be the only responsible for what happens to me and for this reason I have always invested too much effort in doing more than expected to get closer to the goal (whatever it was…). I started failing when I got adult (as in the childhood is easier to get what you want) and the first times I was grieving for regrets and guilt… Only when I hit forty, I realized that I cannot control what I get, but only what I do in order to get it and as soon as I realized it I felt a sense of relief… Now I’m satisfied and I take it easy when I do everything in my power, even though it doesn’t mean to get what I want…
This is what annoys me about studying languages with Duolingo. That app focuses on goals, achieving lots of points, moving up the levels, getting badges and unbroken daily lessons. I don’t care about all that. I just want to learn Spanish! So I ignore their prompts.
I really like how you have framed this discussion Christie thank you this approach is a much more compassionate route to creating our dreams and sharing our gifts too. Learning this now, is a major step to self acceptance. Being your own best frienemy only gets you so far in life. I slowly make more spacious
I focus on the feelings I am wanting to feel, the energy I want to draw towards me, rather than envisioning what that might look like in tangible outcomes. That way I can be flexible and have been pleasantly surprised about what is actually possible.
I love this John. “the feelings I am wanting to feel, the energy I want to draw towards me” Yes, please!
This is brilliant advice. A few years ago I defined five priority areas (after reading another article on this site) and I try to make sure everything I do fits under one of them. Because they are quite broad (e.g. Creativity, Wellbeing, Connections) the activities change from day to month to year, and that’s ok. It means even if I don’t achieve specific goals, I have still lived in a way that fits with my values, and keeps me somewhat sane… and sometimes I make progress in an area that is important to me.
It’s curious that, before I discovered this “magic” website and the woman I will try to get married with in my next life, after years of anxiety, frustration, and a lot of FOMO I started to shape my “goals” into “projects”, i.e in focus areas . I even changed my activity tracker layout (todoist , sour and sweet for multipotentialite) to reflect my focus areas. Luckily most areas are really connected: IT, electronics, telecommunications. Then I found that maybe I’m not totally wrong striving to focus on more than one specialization in my life. I’m still afraid (from ancestral fears) that this means never achieving anything, but I feel different these days, like something like a “stargate” is opening in front of me. Let’s see.
Hello!
I also believe that what Christy Tending wrote on the podcast makes a lot of sense for multipotentials, which is the focus on intentions and themes and not so much on results. But I believe that for this to happen it is necessary, first of all, to know what are the standard existential resources that the person already has and their pains that accompany them to make better decisions from there, so that it becomes clear that when the problem appears the person already has in mind what to do, to the point of becoming automatic and not all the time being surprised by the assaults of adversity that cause people fear in order to make decisions. Just to remember, that people’s existential pains and resources are standard and happen in the same way for anyone, as they have been studied, tested and approved by the scientific community. Examples: The person who feels rejected is a person who has the fear of rejection as pain. So, as a resource she will need someone to pay more attention to the ideas and creations that she is trying to develop. Another person may have the fear of abandonment as pain, so as a resource they may want to appear more in public to be seen and not feel so abandoned. In another situation, someone may experience the fear of being manipulated as pain. In this situation, that person has recourse to the power of negotiation, that is, he negotiates with someone, as long as it is favorable for both involved in the negotiation. Then another person appears, whose main pain is the fear of humiliation. This person has as a resource the method, planning so that everything comes out in the smallest details and never gives shit again. Then there is yet another person who has as pain the fear of betrayal and of being exchanged for someone. That person has competitiveness as his main resource so that everything he does, comes out as perfect as possible and never loses to someone else.
To conclude, these are some of the standard pains and resources that I learned in the course “The Body Explains” and that are the same for all people. This is my collaboration.