3 Practices that Will Change Your Life More than Traditional Goal Setting

I’m not a fan of goal setting. I’m a life coach who sometimes struggles to define the SMART goal acronym. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love to make plans and think about how to improve things in the future. I am a total self-development nerd. 

Yet, over the years, I’ve found that the practice of goal setting feels so constrictive. Do you ever get the feeling when you’re setting goals that you’re just setting yourself up for future failure and disappointment?

I find that traditional goal setting – where you project that you will have accomplished something by a certain date – feels too rigid for a world in flux (and where many things are out of your control) and also feels vaguely punitive (like you’re saying, do this or be a failure) instead of encouraging and intrinsically motivated. 

So let’s take these goals that you have in mind for the next few months or year, and see how you could use one or more of my favorite ways to create positive personal change. 

Use a vision

A vision is simply a description of your ideal life. It can be made using words, or with images. 

To create yours, think about how you’d like things to be in each of these areas so that when you arrive at the end of your life, you’d feel satisfied:

• Health

• Creativity

• Spirituality

• Home

• Relationships

• Impact/Activism

• Work

The more specific it is, the better.

Your vision can be like your north star. It can guide you as you take incremental steps to get closer to it. It is flexible, because while you may not know how you will get there or when (because life will always get in the way) it reminds you that the journey – rather than arriving – is the most important part. They can also be added to or refined, and we can focus on various parts of them as priorities as we move forward. 

Generally our visions are one of our mostly lovely expressions of ourselves and our values. As such, they are also beautifully motivating.

Try it out: Set the timer on your phone for five minutes. Write down as many elements of your ideal life as you can think of, using the categories above. 

Set an Intention

When you set an intention, you’re describing in a simple sentence how you would like something to be or what you’d like to do. It’s similar to what you might think of as a goal statement, though instead of describing a place you’d like to “arrive,” an intention is more about the direction in which you’d like to aim.

Setting intentions could sound like: 

• I will invest more in my friendships. 

• I will be a more present parent. 

• I will write my book this year. 

• I will look for daily ways to be more honest and speak my truth.

A variation on setting intentions is to choose a theme that you can use to guide you throughout a period of time. 

“This is the year of _____.”

“This is the month of _____.”

Then, choose a picture, scent, talisman or other sensual reminder of your intention that will keep it front and center for you.

Reviewing your intentions can renew your motivation when you hit a lull or any obstacles.

Create a Regular Check-in With Yourself

If you enjoy goal setting, it can be tempting to sit down once (or a few times) a year for an epic goal-setting session, which is then followed by a burst of energy that then dwindles down to … nothing but a dull feeling of vague failure.

What’s actually a lot better than a sporadic goal-setting sesh, is actually to have a regular time where you check in on your progress with your intentions, and overall on your vision.

You will need to find what works for you, but your progress check-in could happen monthly, weekly or daily, or at all three points.

Personally, I’ve found a weekly check-in is the most beneficial, where typically I go through these main questions:

• What do I want to celebrate from this last week? What are some wins?

• What are some things that I didn’t do or are still outstanding?

• What did I learn about myself this last week?

• What are my top priorities for next week?

• What are important things to do, or keep doing?

• What are some things that might get in the way of me doing these things?

• What short phrase could I remember to help me stay focused or encouraged this week?

It can be really helpful to pull out your intentions and your vision for your check-in too, and ask: Am I doing the things that will get me closer to my vision?

Before you head out to try these three tips instead of goal setting, I want to remind you of the very important principles behind them. They are meant to be:

Fluid, not rigid.

Encouraging, not discouraging.

Expansive, not constrictive.

Iterative, not conclusive.

Recently on the ReThinking with Adam Grant podcast, I heard Emmanuel Acho, former NFL linebacker, Emmy-winning TV sports analyst and New York Times bestselling author, share the reasoning behind his own anti-goal setting stance. He said, “Reaching a goal is a penalty you get for setting one.”

He continued, “... Essentially to say if you reach your goal, congrats. But what if you could have done more? Like you reaching that goal is a penalty that you achieve for setting it. And I'm just like, ‘Yo, let's blow the top off of all this.’”

I love that.

Create your vision and stretch your own ideas about what’s possible as you do it.

Set your intentions, those areas you’d like to focus and push yourself in.

Then, check in with yourself to see how you are doing and what you could do next.

Do these three things regularly and you will see incredible results.