Thirteenth exercise: Identifying Your Goals

Initial advice from our authors – don’t confuse goals with solutions!

A goal is a desired outcome. One of my goals is to persuade Krispy Kreme to make a gluten-free doughnut. I feel sure this will happen one day, but I would like them to hurry up.

A solution is a method used to bring about a desired outcome. I’ll start writing to Krispy Kreme head office today.

This exercise is about matching goals to problems. My goal is to make all my problems vanish at the same time via the creation of a steam-powered green energy problem zapper. I may ask Great British Energy if they’d like to invest.

Okay, to focus. The book advises starting with manageable problems rather than huge ones. Let’s take the issue of what I eat and how much I exercise. I’m not doing badly here, but I need to step it up a bit because not taking sufficient action on this front affects my mood.

So  goals here would be

1)   More time at the gym with (if I can muster the extra energy needed) increased levels of exercise.

2)   Eat more plants!

I already have methods to track my endeavours – my gym app logs my visits and time spent. And I have a specific app where I can log my plant life (consumption of) progress.

Next  I need to check that my goals are realistic. More gym, more plants – these seem doable.

And finally – I need to ask myself – “If I achieve this goal, will I  think I made progress on this problem? Will it lead to any emotional change?”

Here the answer is yes – increased exercise and a better diet will have positive short and longer-term benefits. The exercise will help me to manage stress and anxiety, and a different diet will help with my health worries.

But, the authors advise, “if the answer is no, consider whether you might actually have a different goal.” Here I think they mean, come up with a goal that’s meaningfully linked to a problem you have.

“If you find yourself unable to identify a goal for any given problem, consider whether you are thinking in all or nothing terms. Is there an outcome that might represent progress, even if the problem wouldn’t be completely solved?”

Next exercise  - Brainstorming