Goal Setting is NOT about Goal Getting

Have you ever felt attached to one of your outcomes before?  Ironically when we make goal setting about ‘goal getting’ it decreases the likelihood that we will achieve our desired outcomes and paradoxically when we let go it can increase the likelihood of actually achieving your outcomes.

In this article I will share with you some of the major problems of over-attachment to our outcomes as well as some more useful ways of thinking about goals to live more intentionally and better enjoy the journey.

One major issues with getting attached to outcomes is that the end result of our outcomes are not in our control. There are no guarantees in life and when we become attached to things that are out of our control we create states of disempowerment in ourself along the journey. Not only that, but in the event that we don’t get what we want we have set ourselves up for disappointment. According to Richard Bandler, one of the founders of NLP, “Disappointment takes adequate planning”!

Not only can it lead to disempowerment and disappointment, but the perspective that a goal set is a goal that must be achieved is one of the factors that actually prevents many people from setting goals in the first place. If I must get the outcomes I set then I may fail. This perspective is core to generating the meta-state of ‘fear of failure’. And so they avoid setting goals in the first place, all because of this mis-belief and over-attachment to the end result.

Another problem with this perspective shows up when circumstances change and our outcome is no longer ecological for us and even could be harming us.  I have seen many times where someone continues pushing for an outcome they set that no longer serves them for no other reason than they made a commitment to their outcome.  They are so attached to the end result that they don’t have permission to just let go of it, even when it is potentially harmful!

So if goal setting isn’t about goal achievement, what is it about?

What if goal setting, rather than achieving the end result, was more about exercising your ‘intentionality muscles’.  Nothing more than just taking some time out of your life to get clear on what it is you want and to point yourself in a direction.  About getting clear about what you want, whether or not you get it.

What if goal setting was just a hypothesis or an experiment.  “My hypothesis is that I can achieve X, by Y date, if I do X, Y & Z.”  

When we think about goal setting in this way we are no longer attached to the outcome, but curious about the process of experimenting. Curious to discover if our hypothesis was correct or not.

With this new perspective fear of failure melts away because our attachment shifts from the outcome to being attached to doing the things we need to do and seeing what happens.

If something comes up along that way and we realize our goal is no longer valid or valuable we can easily let go of the outcome and re-exercise our intentionality muscles. We can just re-hypothesize where we would like to go with our lives and set up an experiment to test our new hypothesis.

The prospect of failure ceases to exist. There is only information that helps us to improve our skills of hypothesizing, experimenting, receiving feedback, learning, and growing.

So again I will pose the question. What if goal setting wasn’t about goal achievement but about living more intentionally and hypothesizing, regardless of whether you achieve your outcomes or not.  Would that make a difference in your life?

Feel free to leave your questions and comments here and I wish you a journey of living more intentionally, with less attachment and higher levels of joy.