The conventional wisdom is that we all need clear and challenging goals for our lives; that life without goals is leads to failure and dissatisfaction. I wonder if this is correct? After all, many people give up on the goals they have set themselves. From New Year’s resolutions to ‘new me’ decisions, it’s goal setting that seems to lead to failure more often than to success.
Why should this be? Why should people find that giving themselves something to aim at leads to being in a worse position than when they started? Setting goals seems to be such a simple process. You take a look at yourself, decide what you want to change most, think about how to get started, then do it. What is it that goes wrong?
Here are some thoughts about potential pitfalls. They don’t happen to everyone, but they are definitely common enough to be worth avoiding.
Being unrealistic
I think this is the most common reason why so many people fail to meet their chosen goals and end up feeling worse than when they started. Their goals were never realistic. The targets demanded more effort, more motivation, more determination, more ability than the person had to offer. They were based either on wishful thinking or on whatever targets were fashionable at the moment.
Setting yourself unrealistic goals is the equivalent of picking a fist-fight with a professional boxer twice your size.
Setting yourself unrealistic goals is the equivalent of picking a fist-fight with a professional boxer twice your size. There’s only ever going to be one outcome. What’s uncertain is just how badly you’ll be hurt.
One of the greatest benefits of goal setting ought to be the opportunity to stand back and take a long, slow, realistic look at yourself. It’s odd how often people fail to do this. Instead, they get swept away by the nonsense about ‘big hairy, audacious goals’ being somehow the best kind. They believe the myth that aiming for the moon will somehow call up the skill and resources to get there.
Until you know exactly what you can do, and whether ’stretch’ goals motivate or intimidate you, it’s surely best to stick with things you know are within your capabilities. Far better to build success slowly and surely than risk everything on a single throw. Big bets lead to big losses — maybe on a scale you can’t really afford. If failure hurts badly enough, you may never try giving yourself a target in life again; and that would be far too high a cost to pay for getting it wrong once.
Who are you trying to impress?
It’s foolish to set yourself a goal that’s chosen mostly to look good or impress other people. It’s equally foolish to go along with whatever is fashionable, rather than stick to what truly matters to you. You’re setting goals for yourself, right? So who are you trying to impress?
Dieting probably offers the best example of what I mean. Many folk are overweight — I know I am. They ought to lose a few pounds, if only for the sake of their health. Yet the fashionable target for body size and shape is set by the media, especially for young women. The reality is that people’s natural body sizes and shapes vary as much as their height. Some are genetically programed to be tall and skinny, other smaller and more bulky. But when some super-model is the ideal being aimed at, the ordinary person is pretty much bound to fail.
Setting yourself a target that doesn't fit who you are and what you can reasonably achieve is always going to lead to tears.
The consequences of that failure can be anything between giving up on weight control totally to suffering eating disorders like bulimia or anorexia. In the same way, setting yourself a target that doesn’t fit who you are and what you can reasonably achieve is always going to lead to tears. You either won’t get close to making it or you’ll do so and be wretched as a result. Besides, creating goals aimed at impressing others will probably never get you sufficiently fired up to achieve what you say you planned. Guess what? Those other people weren’t impressed or even interested. They knew it was only hot air.
Keep quiet about your plans
I suspect that one of the worst mistakes you can make is to talk too much about what you aim to achieve. Some people say you should enlist friends to help keep you on track, but sounding off about your plans has much greater drawbacks.
Talking about your goals is a wonderful substitute for action. It feels like you're already there — only minus the effort.
First, talking about your goals is a wonderful substitute for action. Talk about your goals enough and it feels like you’re already there — only minus the effort. Of course you’re not; you’re no further forward, but lots of people manage to spend a lifetime talking about what they plan to do, yet do nothing at all.
Second, it encourages you to make statements that come back to haunt you. It draws attention to setbacks along the way. Rather than face the humiliation of admitting they went off track, many people prefer to give up. If they’d kept quiet, they could have put things right and pressed on, minus the embarrassment.
Third, it gives lots of people the chance to start in with their own stories, problems and advice. You have enough to cope with. You don’t need to hear how it went wrong for others, or how brilliantly they coped (with the silent suggestion you will never do as well as they did).
Too many goals, too few priorities
People often set themselves too many goals at once. They see everything as a priority, throwing themselves into change full of enthusiasm and excitement. When that wears off — as it surely will — they suddenly come up against the reality that have taken on much more than they can manage.
When everything is important, nothing is. You must prioritize or increase the risk of failure.
When everything is important, nothing is. You must prioritize or increase the risk of failure. Focus on what truly matters most — just one thing, if possible — and get it done. Then move on to the next. Success breeds success. Facing a mass of goals is so daunting, it’s no wonder most people give up.
I’m not suggesting that setting yourself goals in life is wrong; nor that some sort of objective can help you have a sense of direction and fulfillment. What I am suggesting is that you should approach both with care and deliberation. It’s easy to get it wrong and waste time and energy on something you’ll never attain. You don’t even need to have a long-term goal, let alone one that sounds tough or impressive.
All you really need in life is to go along, putting one foot in front of the other and doing whatever seems the next most important task. It won’t be flashy and it won’t impress the neighbors, but it might still give you a life worth living. Even small successes feel better than gigantic failures — and they can add up over a long enough time to achievements that you might well be proud of.
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