What Is The Point?
What is the point of setting goals and trying to improve yourself?
Whatever the goal might be…
To get a new job
To be more productive
To reduce your stress and anxiety
And however you might be striving toward it…
Through coaching
Through a new productivity system
Through meditation and mindfulness
WHY? What is the purpose of all this striving and improvement?
There are two answers to this question.
One that I think is so ingrained in us as to seem obvious — but is actually counterproductive and unhelpful.
And one that is unintuitive and goes agains the grain of how we usually think about goal-setting and self-improvement — but is massively more effective and helpful.
Here’s the typical but unhelpful answer:
You set goals in order to be better.
To have a better career. To do more things. To feel better.
All of which implies that there’s something objectively WRONG with where you are right now.
Your current job is wrong because you made some bad decisions that led you here. Use this coaching to fix your career path and get on the right track.
You’re not getting enough done because you procrastinate too much. Use this productivity system to fix your procrastination so you can do as much as you’re supposed to do.
You’re too stressed and anxious because you focus too much on the negative. Use this meditation app to fix the way you think.
The message is: Your current state is wrong, because YOU are doing something wrong. Stop doing that wrong thing, and you will become what you are supposed to be.
And all of this wrongness and rightness is being determined by some external standard that you need to measure up to by fixing whatever is wrong with you.
Here’s the unintuitive but more effective answer:
You set goals in order to connect more deeply with YOURSELF.
There is nothing objectively wrong with where you are right now.
There is reason, logic, and intelligence driving your current state.
AND there is reason, logic, and intelligence driving your desire to change your current state.
The purpose of setting the goal is to understand and connect with yourself more deeply and to find the most internally ALIGNED path forward.
Not the “right” path. The path that is MOST YOU.
You made a series of intelligent decisions that brought you to this job. And there is something rubbing you the wrong way about it now.
What’s bugging you? What’s holding you back from quitting right now?
Let’s get all the different but equally intelligent concerns, arguments, and intuitions out on the table, and then build the answer that works for you.
You’re watching TV instead of working.
What legitimate need is that TV-watching serving?
Why do you want to do work — not “should do” but WANT to?
And how can you have both? How can you meet your own legitimate needs AND do the things you want?
You’re stressed and anxious all the time.
Who is that version of you? What is she trying to tell you?
How can you build a better relationship with her AND feel the way you want to feel?
Goal-setting, coaching, self-improvement, new systems of doing things…
All of these are just tools.
You can use them to connect more deeply with yourself, get curious about the parts of you that you don’t yet fully understand, and become more and more YOU over time.
Or you can use them to disconnect from yourself, shame and judge the parts of you that you deem wrong or inconvenient, and strive endlessly to get to someone else’s “right answer.”
The intention and purpose with which you use a tool matters a LOT.
You can use a hammer to build a house, or you can use it to beat someone to death.
And it’s very, very easy to use self-improvement tools to beat yourself to death.
But I want to encourage you to use them to build a cozy home for yourself instead.
It’s not about getting to the right answer or “becoming better” or fixing what’s wrong with you.
It’s about connecting with who you really are and learning how to become more and more YOU.
And if you want to get out of the self-shaming self-improvement cycle where you’re endlessly fixing the next thing that’s wrong with you…
And instead get into a loving, curious conversation with yourself where you’re always connecting more deeply with who you really are…
Then come talk to me and let me show you how :)
📸 Instagram | 💌 Newsletter | 👋🏽 New? Start here