Goals are a useful tool, but achieving a goal has no guarantee to make you feel good. This misunderstanding causes stress and anxiety.
As human beings, we are like ‘meaning machines’, we look for reasons all the time, none of these meanings are true, they are all just ideas, some are useful, some not so useful.
To add meaning to anything, whether it is the purpose of a goal or the meaning of numbers we have to be doing something on the inside, that something is ‘thinking’, and goals, like any thought has no power at all.
The power isn’t in the goal. Having a goal can be described as a useful tool, like the blender I use to make smoothies is a useful tool, a blender wouldn’t be so useful to fry bacon.
Many people set new year goals or resolutions to lose weight and get fit. Most of these resolutions are forgotten by March and all that has been accomplished is a sense of failure. The reason being that people are hoping the goal is going to make them feel good and happy and this never happens, because true happiness is an inside job.
Have you ever achieved a goal and felt a bit lost? disillusioned?
I love to run and have completed three full marathons over the past few years, I enjoyed the whole journey of training with my buddies and although I had a goal of 4.30 hrs to finish the marathon (and I did achieve this goal on my third marathon), I honestly didn’t mind whether I achieved this goal.
The goal gave me a direction, an aim on the journey, the joy I received seemed to come from the training and culminated in the fabulous energy, love and connection I felt on the day from other runners and the supporters on the sideline, knowing also that a great deal of money had been raised to help people in need.
Goals are a useful tool in business, and in many everyday situations we set goals without really calling them goals, I had a goal this morning to take the poodles for a walk and drink coffee. I didn’t have any conscious awareness of this being a goal until right now as I write this post.
Other goals I have for this year for example are to keep writing a regular blog, newsletters and increase my coaching practice, but I know my wellbeing isn’t attached to achieving these goals.
So what’s the true purpose of goals
The only purpose of a goal is as a tool to give us direction. The power from a tool comes from how you use it.
The goal helps to focus attention, helps to inspire us to take action. Helps to gain clarity and work out what the goal is behind the goal. For example, my goals of increasing my coaching practice is ultimately to give me more freedom to travel, see family and have fun along the way.
But in reality, NONE of my good feeling comes from achieving any goal!
If you believe that your feeling is coming from anything other than thought in the moment, this is a toxic goal. There isn’t really such a thing as a toxic goal, but I heard one of my mentors Jamie Smart make up the term and liked the idea. Being half way through Clarity Practitioner Training with Jamie Smart and having recently read his latest book, 
‘Results’, I am deepening my own grounding and understanding around the principles behind clarity.
You can create whatever you are inspired to create when you realise that you can’t get it wrong. Nothing can hurt who you really are and nothing can help who you really are.
All you have to know is everything is created from thought.
“We all live in our own thought created reality. If we don’t think something, it doesn’t enter OUR reality. It doesn’t matter if it’s “there” or not, the only reality we can see and experience is the reality we create via our own thinking: – Sydney Banks
When you realise that you are the source of power, you tap into who you really are, the source of ideas and creativity, and if like me sometimes you have no idea what your goals are, or get confused about your vision, remember that all we have is now, this moment, reset, take a breath and then you can do, or not do something towards your goals for this year.
I personally find it useful to just take a step and the ideas begin to flow.
This morning I had the thought that I ‘should’ write a blog but had no idea where to start or what the subject would be, then I listened to Jamie’s podcast and this post took shape, even then I didn’t know what I was going to write about till I sat down, opened my laptop with the intention to write a post.
When you realise that you can’t fail, what goals are you aiming for this year? what inspires you to take action?
I invite you to pick up a pen and paper and write down a whole page of things you would like to do and then take a moment to organise your top three goals and take a step towards them.
Just for fun, knowing your wellbeing is not attached to the outcome.