The 3 Most Common Mistakes Made When Setting Goals

This article is part of the series on How To Make The Next Year The Best Year.

Setting goals is widely accepted to be the best way to move your life in a certain direction. Only if you know where you want to go, you are able to take the necessary steps to get there.

But there are some very common mistakes in terms of goal-setting that will make it hard or even impossible to reach your goals.

Nobody with their mind in the right place would build additional obstacles to make it harder to reach a certain goal, would they? They want to get to a certain outcome with as little effort as possible.

Still when setting goals, many people put up some serious roadblocks in the progress of goal-setting without even recognizing. Let’s examine some of these mistakes to make you aware of them, and see how you can avoid them when you begin setting your goals for the next year.

1. Setting goals that don’t originate in your own free will.

Who is setting your goals? Most probably it is a mixture of your peers and so called authorities: Your boss, your family and friends, thousands of marketing departments, religions and gurus, or just social conditioning at large.

But who do you think is the single best authority in your life in terms of what you want to do, and where you want to go? Right, it’s you, and only you. Of course you can consult with whoever you want, as long as you are the one who judges the facts, balances different points of view, and in the end decide just for yourself.

As I said before (and this whole blog is about!), it is all about your dreams, not about the dreams of someone else.

2. Setting goals in terms of ways, not in terms of outcomes.

Have you ever heard someone “I want to win the lottery”? Probably yes - but is this really what they want? Are they really looking for the experience of winning the lottery, or is it more for the winnings they get? Sure it’s the winnings, right? And most of the time this is a huge amount of money.

You recognize what they are doing? Instead of being open to all the possible ways to earn money, they limit themselves to one particular way, ignoring everything else. A man could knock on their door and offer them a million dollars as a gift, and they would refuse to let him in because the guy isn’t the one who delivers lottery winnings.

Many people don’t feel capable to get a huge amount of money any other way than by pure dumb luck (or being the heir of some rich person they don’t know yet). They are afraid to set a goal when they don’t see a way to reach it. But it as always been the other way around:

People were setting goals that were a lot bigger than themselves, and sooner or later they found a way to realize their vision.

3. Setting goals in terms of outcomes, not in terms of ways.

Am I really saying the exact oposite than just before? Well, yes and no.

Sometimes it is important to focus on outcomes, no matter what it will cost to get there. But what if you calculate a prize in terms of money, time, effort or something else that you are simply not willing to pay? Is it likely that you will ever take even the first step on the path to your goal? Probably not!

In this case it is better to focus on the process itself and make that process as enjoyable as possible. The key here is to set goals that enhance your present moment.

The question to ask here is: How does your goal make you feel? Do you feel like you have to suffer for a long time until you eventually reach a point where you feel good again? Or do you feel motivated to get to work, and enthusiastic to reach your goal?

A good example is the goal of losing weight. Most probably you are going for it like “I have to forget about all my favourite food and only eat those boring, but healthy food and have to do sports every day until I have reached weight x and can then enjoy my life again.”. Yeah, right. You will need a lot of willpower to reach your goal, and most probably you will not be able to maintain your weight. And if you are like most people, you will not even begin the process.

But what if you could enjoy the process at a whole? What if you don’t focus on some end goal, but on the process itself? You life will become healthier every day, you will feel the energy coming back in your body, you will find that healthy food tastes better and better, while you enjoy unhealthy food less and less. You will learn to listen to your body again, and notice how it reacts to different foods? Wouldn’t that be a great experience?

And the best of all: You can enjoy the whole process, because you made it an adventure full of new and exciting things to discover, instead of a long time of sufferings.

If you have additional ideas on what to avoid when setting goals, or want to share your own experiences on this topic, please use the comment form or send me a private message using my contact form.

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