A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Charlie Gilkey’s Productive Flourishing blog called, How To Recover From I0 Types of Demotivation and it got a great response. One of the types of demotivation that I discussed was values-conflicts and quite a few folks said in the comments that they identified values-conflicts as causes of demotivation in their lives, so I thought last week I shared more about how you can discover your values and align your work with them, because that’s the first step to clear a values-conflict.

Another of the 10 types of demotivation that’s really common is when you’re working on the wrong goals, so I wanted to share more about how you can avoid setting demotivating goals.

There are a lot of goal-setting, project management and productivity methodologies out there to help you to make the changes you want more quickly and effectively, but if you’re working on toxic goals – goals that don’t reflect what you really value, then all of those systems aren’t any good to you. They’ll just help you to get up the wrong ladder more quickly. There aren’t many systems that teach you the most important aspect of goal-setting – figuring out what you really want.

How we end up setting demotivating goals

We’re biologically wired to be concerned with what our social tribe thinks and expects from us, so we tend to pay a lot of attention to worrying about what other people will think and trying to impress other people. Since we have such busy, noisy lives, with so many demands being made of us, and add to that the fact that we’re not really ever taught to stop and quieten down and listen to our inner voices, it’s easy to get caught up in setting goals that we think we “should” set, rather than working on things that we truly want to work on.

And stress and fear exacerbates this. Most of us only get around to setting goals and trying to change our lives when we find ourselves in a state of pain. We’re much more motivated to change through desperation that inspiration. This is the root of toxic goals, because when we’re stressed, afraid and in pain, our thinking and creativity shuts down, we’re more focused on problems than solutions, we find it hard to notice opportunities outside of our problem sphere, and we have a distinct sense of urgency, so we’ll tend to reach for the first solution rather than the best solution.

A big problem with goals is that a lot of people decide their goals and the changes they want to make when they’re in a fearful, stressed state of mind, and then they choose to work on changes that are important to other people, rather than being truly important to their Essential Selves. And when you’re trying to do and be something that’s important to other people and not important to you, it’s very hard to stay motivated and even harder to enjoy the process of getting there.

There are two simple ways to check that you’re choosing goals or changes that are aligned with your Essential Self:

1.) Check your body compass

Your body carries your non-verbal wisdom and because it’s non-verbal, it doesn’t know how to string together stories and rationalizations. Your body just speaks the truth.

Rather than looking outside of yourself to what other people expect of you, quieten down and take a few deep breaths. Now, as you’re relaxing and beginning to tune into what your body feels like, think of the goals you’re considering setting, one at a time, and notice what your body feels like when you think of setting those goals. Don’t just think of the goal’s outcome. Picture yourself working towards that goal, doing the things you’d need to do to get there. What does your body feel like?

Your body will typically relax and feel light, open, expansive and peaceful when you hold in mind a particular goal that’s an expression of your Essential Self. And when you think of a a goal that’s not an expression of your Essential Self – a toxic goal, your body will feel tight, trapped, constricted, tense or even painful.

As Martha Beck says, goals that are right for you will feel like freedom and that feeling of freedom is incredibly energizing and motivating, but the goals that you’re setting just to impress other people or because you think it’s the “right” thing to do – those goals always make you feel trapped, and it’s this sense of feeling trapped that’s so demotivating.

2.) Chunk up to eagle vision

Often, when we set a goal, we don’t really want that goal we’ve set – we’re only setting that goal because we think we need to have that goal before we can have the thing that we really want. You don’t have to be thin before you can find a great life partner, you don’t have to get your teeth whitened before you can start your speaking business and you probably don’t have to get a bigger house or car before you can consider having a baby. When you lose touch with what you really want, it;s easy to end up on demotivating wild goose chases, going after stuff that you think you need to have in order to get what you really want.

You can get back in touch with what you really want by asking yourself, “What will making this change/ having this goal get me?” a few times and discovering what the thing you really want it. Then question whether you need to have that goal in order to have the thing you really want – you might not need to. Perhaps you can skip the middle-man and go straight after the thing you really want.

The other reason why chunking up to eagle vision is so useful is that you can then check in whether the thing you really want is aligned with your values. If you struggle to come up with answers that feel compelling or if the answers you come up with aren’t aligned with your personal values, then those particular changes aren’t for you.

So take a moment now to check in with your body and your eagle vision – are you setting the right goals?

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