The way you word your goals can make a big difference in terms of whether you actually reach them. Self-compassion in goal setting can normalize negative feelings around your goals because it acknowledges that discomfort is a natural part of the human experience, and it can also allow you to let go of paralyzing perfectionism. It also can heighten your ability to recover from setbacks.
There are a few strategies for you to try as you phrase your goals. First, phrase them differently. Use descriptors that feel expansive and genuine and break you out of the connotations you’ve developed with common goal buzz words. Second, focus on what you will do, rather than what you’ll stop. Third, celebrate the steps that get you to your goal, rather than just the end result. Finally, embrace the process and use if-then statements to increase your potential for success.
Stay off social media.
Lose 20 pounds.
Make $1 million in sales.
Do these kinds of goals ignite you into action or cause you to recoil in dread? For some, direct, concrete wording is motivating, clarifying, and effective. For others, this verbiage makes them want to give up before they’ve even started. If you find yourself in the latter category, a kinder, more self-compassionate approach to wording your goals may be the best approach for you.
Talking to yourself in a self-compassionate tone supports the achievement of your goals in multiple ways. For one, it can help you normalize any negative feelings around your goals because it acknowledges that discomfort is a natural part of the human experience. Self-compassion can also allow you to let go of paralyzing perfectionism because it leaves room for human fallibility and frailty — the acknowledgement that we all make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay. And self-compassion can help you to stick with your goals by heightening your ability to recover from setbacks instead of getting stuck in endless rumination about what went wrong.
In short, self-compassion could be the difference between giving up on your goals (or avoiding them completely) and achieving them step by step — even when that may require a few steps back before you move forward again.
Where should you start? Try these strategies, which are based on both my work as a time management coach and research on goal setting and results.
Drop Words with Baggage
We all have a past, and that past can impact our perception of what is possible in the future. And just the way we phrase our goals can bring some of those negative associations in. If every time you had a goal to “network,” you ended up in awkward transactional conversations with no real substance or productive result, you’ll start to develop negative associations with the word. Why do you think so many people hate the word “diet”?
To help you write goals that you’ll feel excited to pursue, phrase them differently. Use descriptors that feel expansive and genuine and break you out of the connotations you’ve developed with common goal buzz words. For instance, “I want to live a healthy lifestyle, and choose the activities and nutrition that help me feel my best every day.” Or, for the aspiring networker, “I plan to seek out meaningful connections with new people each week where I look to add value.”
Decide What You Will Do
Goals focused on what you will do, instead of what you’ll stop, can be the kindest and most effective. For example, the book The Willpower Instinct shares a study done by Laval University in Quebec where they found that focusing on what research participants should eat lead to two-thirds of the participants losing weight and maintaining that weight loss 16 months later. This was a much better outcome than the results of most approaches emphasizing what to cut from their diet.
The “I will” strategy can be applied to goals in all areas of your life. For example, instead of having a goal to spend less time on email, you could have a goal to have a focused block of time each day to work on tasks without distractions. Instead of telling yourself to stop watching TV at night, make your objective to get ready for bed and start reading a book after dinner. Positive action goals not only sound better but also can be much more effective in terms of getting results.
Celebrate Progress
Goals that include only the end result such as “get a new job” can lead to quickly losing motivation and feeling defeated. It’s okay to want an end goal, but I’ve found for my coaching clients that defining and celebrating the steps that get you there is critical for success.
For example, if you are looking for a new position, your steps could include contacting a certain number of people in your network each week, updating parts of your LinkedIn profile, or doing other concrete activities that put you in contention for new opportunities. Make these shorter targets your aim so that each week you can celebrate completing something where you had control of the outcomes. This improves your sense of agency and allows you to feel successful along the way, instead of feeling like you’ve failed when you haven’t reached your final desired result yet.
Embrace the Process
A powerful tool for change is the idea of using if-then statements where you tell yourself, “If X happens, then I will do Y.” This strategy has been shown to lead to significantly higher success rates for all types of goals. As someone who works with people over the course of months, one of the most important if-then statements you can make in regard to your goals is, “If I get off track, then I will stop, think about what I could have done differently, and then begin again on the right track.” So as part of your self-compassionate goal setting, include statements like: “If I end up on a social-media rabbit hole, then I will think about what triggered that event and how to prevent that trigger and my unhelpful response to it in the future.”
Don’t think of it as failure, but just another step in the process. The only way that we change, especially in areas of longstanding difficulty, is to give ourselves the space to trip up, and then get up and try again, again, and again.
If you’re struggling to stay motivated with your goals, consider these ideas to phrase them in a kinder, more supportive way. You can move forward in your life, and the words you choose can create that future.