Are you a goal setter? Do you periodically spend time planning for your future? Most people will have some New Years resolutions they want to fulfill at the start of the year. Whilst others routinely set goals and revisit and revise them on a monthly basis.
I love regular goal and intention setting. It helps me get very deliberate about my life. I do it in my business and in my personal life. I am quite obsessed with revising and finding smarter ways to live and work, so goal setting and planning help me do that.
Have you ever wondered why some of the goals you set for yourself don’t get fulfilled? It is very possible that how successful you are in seeing your goals reached is dependent on how many goals you set, the amount of decision making involved in fulfilling your goals and how committed you are to them.
Benjamin Hardy PhD is an organisational psychologist and author that brought the importance of giving yourself just one big goal to fulfill to my attention. He believes that it is not obstacles that block us reaching our goals, it’s going for lots of lesser goals. We have a much better chance of achieving success when we choose just one key goal that will get us to our desired future.
When we choose one goal then the hard work around decision making is made much easier. I know I struggle with decision making and have been known to experience choice fatigue. When you choose one goal then every decision you make is made in alignment with whether it helps you meet your goal or not.
When we go for one goal we avoid the overwhelm that comes with too many expectations we place on ourselves. We all live full lives and having lots of goals that come with rules to follow just leads to failure for most of us. It all gets too hard. One goal as your focus simplifies things.
As an example, you may make your one goal to be sugar-free, Sarah Wilson style. Once you know that is what you are doing it makes all decisions that follow easy. When you are offered a sweet thing at a party you get to automatically say “No thanks. I’m sugar-free”. When you are at a restaurant you skip dessert because you are sugar-free. When we shop at the supermarket you don’t need to push your trolley down the chocolate aisle.
Then your future self benefits form that committing to that one goal. The knock on effects of being sugar-free are vast. Not only will you completely reduce your risk of heart disease, metabolic diseases like diabetes and other inflammatory diseases. You also feel more consistently energised, lose any extra weight you are carrying and your mood is on a more even keel all the time. That’s an example of how being committed to just one goal has a major impact on your wellbeing and quality of life.
The other thing Ben Hardy talks about is the importance of distinguishing between whether you are interested in your goal or committed to it. I know I am interested in the goal of going alcohol-free. I know drinking alcohol and late nights are my kryptonite. I just don’t feel sharp or energised the day after. To be honest, I am not committed to being completely alcohol-free. It’s important to be honest with ourselves about whether we are ready and committed or just not there yet.
I will continue to think about what my future alcohol-free self will look like. The more attractive that person looks to me the closer I am to committing to that goal. Do you have one goal? If not what could be your one goal? And, are you interested in that goal or committed to it right now?