You’re not broken if you avoid goal setting like COVID-19. Even if you’re a high-achieving business woman, and you know goals are how to make progress and increase your impact, and you tryyyy to set S.M.A.R.T. goals and blah blah blah, there’s nothing wrong with you.
But every entrepreneur and her grandmother seem to LOVE goal setting, so shunning it seems like a personal failing, right?
Goal Setting is Broken, Not You
The problem with goal setting for many high-achieving women is that conventional goal setting makes us feel trapped, overwhelmed, and even hopeless. This is especially true if you struggle with perfectionism and control (hi! Guilty!).
Listen, If you love goal setting and it motivates you, great. You can stop reading now. But if you don’t….
You’re not doomed and you’re not screwing yourself over. There’s a radical way to rethink and set goals so you always achieve them, without wanting to hide under your bed.
But first, WHY is goal setting repulsive?
When Goals Clobber You
When I was in 9th grade, my high school reopened for the first time in 30 years. It built up starting with freshmen, so my year never had upper classes.
As you can imagine, we had no chance against other schools in sports.
My field hockey team was routinely trounced by teams with older, stronger, more experienced players. Yet before every game my teammates would try to rally: we’re going to win this one! We have to win this!!!
I guess it was an attempt at positive psychology? But I always thought, this is asinine. Winning was an impossible goal, and no amount of psyching could change the reality that we were outmatched in every way. When we inevitably lost, everyone’s spirits plummeted. It was depressing.
Why Goal Setting is Broken
It took me years to realize that every time I thought about conventional goal setting, I felt like I was walking on to the hockey field.
Yet goal setting is put in a pedestal in business and entrepreneurship. Hashtag GoalDigger! So what’s my problem? Why did I avoid it?
I sat down to figure out why I hated conventional goal setting, and I discovered five issues:
1. Goals are arbitrary
From winning a high school hockey game to generating half a million in revenues, goals are made up. They don’t inherently matter. Plenty of the goals you “should” strive for, according to our culture — marriage, a white picket fence, 2.5 children, a 6-7 figure business, 10k Instagram followers, no wrinkles — might not be personally meaningful to you.
The tyranny of “shoulds” will make you feel like you’re supposed to care about these milestones. And when you don’t, or you don’t achieve them by the time you’re 30 or 40 or 50, there must be something wrong with you.
2. Goals create pressure
Everyone knows goals are supposed to be S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. The problem with specific and time-based is they create false urgency, pressuring you to achieve an arbitrary thing by an arbitrary time. WHY? Do you even care?? Deadlines are useful only if they make you feel motivated, not pressured.
3. What if you change your freakin’ mind?
When you set a goal, it becomes A THING, and specific, time-based things are by definition inflexible. But what if your circumstances or priorities change? Well, now you’re trapped. Do you “break your word” to your goals… especially if you’ve made them public? Does that mean you’re GIVING UP!? Or do you keep at the goals for the sake of finishing them? AUGH!
4. Goal setting sans planning is an epic fail
You know what’s easy and fun? Creating a goal. It’s like having an idea: enjoyable to think of and a lot of work to execute and plan.
I’ve done this so many times: set a goal (which was probably arbitrary and made me feel pressured and trapped) without making a plan. The problem is, “goal setting” sounds like doing ONE THING: setting a goal. It should actually be called goal-setting-and-breaking-down-and-planning-and-executing-one-tiny-step-at-a-time.
5. You don’t have control
Deciding you’re going to achieve a specific thing by a certain time implies that you have control over outcomes. And you don’t. None of us do. We have control over our efforts, but we can’t guarantee that our efforts will lead to achieving the made-up goal.
The Goal Setting Problem that Rules Them All
If you’re wise to how fear and the mind work, this dawned on you already: goals are scary AF. The Biggest Problem with goals-setting is what you’re afraid of. What if you fail? What if you succeed? Are you worthy? Do you deserve it?
How to work with and love your fear (note: fearlessness is not a thing) is beyond the scope of this article, but I’d be remiss not to mention it. I recommend the work of my client Tracy Litt for more on this topic.
Goals not your Bag? You’re Not Doomed
Even as you learn to love your fear, conventional goal setting might not be your bag. There’s nothing wrong with you.
Our rigid obsession with goal setting is closely tied to our white, patriarchal, Christian culture — no wonder it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Think about our cultural heritage in the west: time is money and idle hands are the devil’s workshop and our false association of success with worthiness.
In fact, goal setting became an area of study and theory only within the last 100 years, pioneered by (you guessed it) two white men. It’s not the only way to get things done. What studies will Black, Indigenous, and queer women perform in the next century, that will offer new paradigms for how to progress and achieve and make impact?
In the meantime… goal setting CAN be a useful tool, and you can use it without feeling like garbage. They can help you focus, get clarity, and take action. The key is to reframe goals as emotional, detached, and flexible. Here’s how:
3 Radical Ways to Rethink and Set Goals You Love
Make them emotional
Let’s say your goal is to generate a million dollars in revenue this year. WHY is that goal important to you? Your reasons might be, to practice more philanthropist, hire an employee, be financially secure, bragging rights, or qualify to join a coaching program.
How do you think that WHY, that reason, will make you FEEL? It might be generous, supportive, like a mentor, safe, worthy, proud.
What you truly want is the emotion you think the goal will give you. But you don’t actually need $1M to feel generous, supportive, mentoring, safe, worthy, or proud. You can cultivate the emotion as you reach for higher revenues, ensuring that you feel good no matter the number on your P&L.
If you don’t break a million in revenues, you can have the feeling anyway, and then that specific (and ultimately arbitrary) goal isn’t holding you hostage. It becomes the icing on the cake of how you feel.
Effort over outcome
Earlier we talked about control: you can’t control what happens. You can put forth your best effort, but there’s no guarantee your efforts will lead to a specific outcome.
That’s why I now set goals around what I can do, not what I hope to get. It ensures that I always achieve something, whether or not it’s what I expected. And I can’t be disappointed in the results, because my focus was on effort. Whatever my outcome is icing on the cake of my efforts.
Set multiple or stacked goals
I’m a weightlifter, and for every strength-building period my coach and I select five goals. Normally that would make me break out in hives, but here’s the catch: we assume I will only achieve 2-3.
I like this because “failure” is built in. The goals are purposefully almost impossible, but the point is to make an effort and progress — not reach every goal. The goals I do reach end up being a fun surprise, and in the meantime I get stronger and more confident overall. The goal is to not reach all the goals. This is so soothing for a perfectionist!
It doesn’t trap me because it’s flexible. Plus, I know how I want to feel: strong, proud, capable (which I will feel no matter what, because even if I don’t reach the goals I will get closer to them).
I also like stacked goals, which work great for revenues. If your goal is to break a million, stacked goals are good, better best: good = $900,000; better = $1,00,000; best = $1,200,000. Good should be almost guaranteed achievable, which means that no matter where you fall between $900K and $1.2M, you’ve surpassed your first goal.
Yes You Can
As I’ve opened up about my goal setting allergies, I’ve heard many women say “me too!” I’m not the only entrepreneur with a conventional-goal-setting allergy and neither are you.
If you feel like You’re The Problem because you dislike goal setting, I promise that admitting goals’ shortcoming and rethinking how you set goals will ensure you achieve ones you care about.
Where many women entrepreneurs get stuck with goal setting is marketing. Marketing is a huge topic with a zillion shoulds everywhere you look online. It can feel like rubbing your forehead against a zester to figure out how to market strategically, sincerely, and effectively when all you really want to do is work on your actual business.
If that sounds familiar, let’s connect for a Discovery Session. We can talk marketing strategy that feels targeted, effective and authentic to you and your new, unconventional goals.
We’ll map out how to boost your engagement, build your network, and attract new opportunities like a magnet. It’s free and it’s fun. Click here now to complete a brief form, and my team will be in touch to set up your Discovery Session!
