How To Set The Right Goals
“I’m going to read 104 books this year. One nonfiction and one fiction book per week, every week, for a whole year.”
That was what my friend, Sarah, said when I asked her back in January if she had any goals for 2020.
“That’s awesome! How many books did you read last year?”
I assumed she must be a pretty big reader.
“Four.”
Cue the awkward silence.
Here’s the thing— Sarah’s goal really was awesome.
And 100% do-able.
If she made it her absolute number one priority for her non-work hours.
That means it would need to out-prioritize things like:
time with her husband and daughter
exercise
cooking meals
watching television
socializing with friends
Yes, some of these could be combined with reading (exercise and audiobook for example, or reading snuggled up to her husband).
And yes, there are people in the world for whom two books a week is manageable without exceptional effort.
But Sarah isn’t one of them.
For her, this goal was the reading equivalent of climbing Mt. Kilamanjaro (aka, not Everest per se, but requiring some serious dedication and a high level of sustained commitment).
We caught up the other day and I asked how her reading goal was coming along.
“Well…”
As it turns out, she’s read nine books this year and it’s June.
Which is more than double what she read in the entirety of 2019.
That’s not nuthin’ is it?
It’s admittedly not on track for reaching her goal of 104 books in 2020, but was that really the goal?
Was it? Really?
Of course not.
The real goal was to read significantly more than she had been. And to use her down-time in a way that felt meaningful to her.
And she is, indeed, on track for that.
I want you to dream big for your life.
I also want you to feel the power of keeping the promises you make to yourself.
I want you to feel the momentum created when you actually reach goals that you set for yourself.
Goals that stretch you, that challenge you, that push you beyond the edge of what is easy or comfortable or predictable for you.
But not so far that you would have to sacrifice everything else that matters to you in order to reach it.
There is a balance there.
It’s where sustainability lives.
Where we grow in our lives and are able to continue growing because we didn’t commit to one thing at the exclusion of everything else we love..
This requires some real honesty, some diving deep into what you are willing to give to a goal.
How much time (or energy or money or whatever) will it truly require?
Where will you take that from in your real day-to-day life?
I have an exercise I like to do with my coaching clients and I invite you to give it a try when you begin considering a goal for yourself.
I call it “What Suffering Do You Choose?”
I know what you’re thinking: "Well, that got dark fast.”
Hear me out, though, because this is big stuff.
You know that old cliche about there not being any such thing as a free lunch? Well, it turns out that it’s absolutely true.
Everything in the world comes with a specific kind of cost, a kind of suffering— to do one thing, we have to give up something else.
Acknowledging right from the beginning what that suffering is, what the cost of that thing is, is the key to setting goals that are right for you.
When we acknowledge the suffering that something we want requires of us, it gets very clear very fast whether that suffering really feels worth it to us…and we get to choose whether or not to proceed.
Maybe the goal is achievable, but not worth the entirety of the suffering required to actually, you know…achieve it.
Maybe there is a version that moves us down the path toward the bigger vision, one that will push us, but also be worth what it asks of us.
Setting goal after goal and routinely falling short, getting totally overwhelmed, or feeling like you’re failing toward them is a recipe for believing that you can’t meet your goals. That you lack something necessary (motivation, discipline, etc).
And that’s simply not true.
You absolutely can meet your goals and you are absolutely not lacking what it takes.
You just need to be setting the right goals for yourself.
Sarah could decide to take two weeks off from work and hole herself up in her bedroom seeing and speaking to nary a soul while she “caught up” on her reading goal.
But was the number of books read the real point?
Would it be worth the suffering of using her two weeks of vacation time in such a manner?
Would she get real growth out of it?
Likely not, right?
But what if, instead, she held herself to a goal of a book or even two per month, alternating between fiction and non-fiction?
That would add up to 12-24 books for the year, far short of the original 104 goal but at least triple the number of books she read in 2019.
It would require likely giving up some tv time or maybe time spent scrolling social media. It would likely require some real intention to read.
It would still likely stretch her beyond where she began and give her an opportunity to be uncomfortable, to learn, to grow.
Also, it might help prevent what I like to think of as the “phoning it in” side-effect of goals that push a little too much.
In Sarah’s case, that might look like ripping through a bunch of audiobooks, for example, but not giving herself the chance to absorb them or process them sufficiently. I mean, what’s the point of reading 104 books if you don’t remember any of them?
It’s reaching a goal via technicality and I can’t help but feel that that kind of misses the point.
So.
All of that to say: dream big.
Build an incredible vision for what you want for your life and don’t hold back.
And then begin the business of setting some goals to get there.
Choose goals that will stretch you, but that are within reason. That you can actually achieve without self-destructive behaviors like pulling all-nighters or damaging meaningful relationships or sacrificing every other thing that you enjoy in your life.
You’ll know you’ve hit the sweet spot when reaching that goal requires making choices…often choices that interfere with one or more of your “bad habits” (i.e. Sarah likely can’t finish reading a book or more per month and also spend every free minute binge watching Netflix).
There is power in momentum, in the energy and excitement of keeping our promises to ourselves and hitting the goals we’ve set.
That’s how big dreams happen. One goal gets met and another is built on top of it. Then that one gets met and another is build on top of it.
We’re halfway through 2020, and it’s looked very different than any of us imagined it would.
But we still have a full half of the year ahead of us and I want to know: what are you going to do with it?
Think about any goals that you set for yourself back in January and give them any tweaking they might need and re-commit. Or maybe toss those goals out the door— sometimes new information means new decisions.
Either way, tell me one goal that you’ve set for yourself, something reachable by the close of the year.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
In the meantime...
Stay curious out there, my friend.