Goals? No thank you

I love goals

I love achieving goals

Some of my earliest adult goals included working abroad and living in Camden (both swiftly achieved)

I’ve had personal goals, professional goals, short term goals, long term goals.

ALL the goals

But what I’ve learnt is that sometimes focusing on those goals isn’t actually the most helpful thing you can do…

Sometimes, setting the goal aside and focusing on the PROCESS is actually what you need to do, both for your own enjoyment and also to give you the best shot at achieving the goal

What do I mean? Surely focusing on the goal, aiming high and trying to get there is what pushes you through to succeed, right? Well, it has its place, its good to get the belief in what’s possible, to really see yourself doing it and really KNOW you are heading in that direction and that you WILL get there.

But then PROCESS comes in really handy…

A process is a set of actions that you can repeat, tweak, experiment with and repeat some more that move you forward

If you get the process right and keep refining it, you can achieve anything…

Personally, I want to build my coaching business, so focusing on the processes of coaching people to the best of my ability, continuous learning, systematic marketing and refining and tweaking all of this is what will build that business.

By focusing on these elements, which I know will create the value I desire to give to my clients, I know I will head in the direction I want to go in. I don’t NEED a specific goal, other than the goal to continue to focus on refining and developing the processes involved in my business.

Similarly, you might be looking to progress your career – focusing on your next promotion is a valid goal, but really looking at the processes involved in your job and what you need to tweak and improve to move yourself forward in your role is actually what is most likely to ensure you are successful long term in your career.

Or if you wanted to lose weight, focusing on your weight goal is notoriously they worst approach you can take. Focusing instead on the processes of what you are eating, your emotional stability, your daily activities and managing these is a much better idea than obsessing about the actual Kgs you want to lose

This is all quite new to me, considering my previous addiction to goals, but it has some amazing benefits:

• Focusing on the processes calms my mind and makes me feel in control
• It increases my curiosity – you naturally start to focus on what really matters and what really is delivering positive growth
• It is continuous – rather than a huge effort towards a specific goal, a moment of joy and then a huge fight towards the next one, this is a continuous journey, moving incrementally forward.
• You can feel good every day – you’re winning every day instead of just once you reach your goal
• There’s no moment of major failure. Things might not work, so you tweak them and keep going, rather than hitting that brick wall when you decide you won’t reach your target and are left devastated
• You don’t need to conjure up some monumental toxic positivity to keep going to reach your goal, you just need to keep following the process, just keep doing what you’re doing, tweak when needed and keep going
• It is sustainable.

Ok, so I still have my goals as I am a planner and it helps me focus on where I want to be, but I know it is the process that is going to get me there!

If you need any more convincing check out Atomic Habits by James Clear or So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport