Why Bother Setting goals?

Why set goals? After all, most people fail to achieve them and for those lucky few that do, what then? What do you do after you’ve achieved your goal? Find out in this week’s episode.

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Episode 238 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 238 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

It always surprises me that many topics come round in cycles, and suddenly I am inundated with questions and queries about that topic. And that’s what happened with this week’s question. I got a podcast question and then a few emails about the subject, and then it came up in two of my coaching sessions.

Now I suspect the goals question has come up because of the realisation we’ve just gone past the halfway point of the year, and when we look at the list of things we wanted to do this year—our goals and projects—we discover we are way off achieving the things we wanted to do, and our goals appear on our radar again.

So, why do we set goals? What’s the point? With a statistic that claims only 8% of you will achieve your goals, it suggests even attempting to go after a goal is going to result in disappointment for 92% of you. 

Well, this statistic hides the real purpose of a goal—it’s not about achieving the goal; it’s about what you have to change about yourself to achieve that goal. And that is what we are going to look at in a little more detail today.

So, I guess that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Liam. Liam asks, hi Carl, I recently went through my goals for 2022 after your recommendation in your weekly newsletter, and I realised I am miles away from achieving them. If I am being honest, I haven’t really done much about them at all. What can I do to stay focused on my goals? I do this every year, and it’s really frustrating.

Hi Liam, thank you for your question and please don’t worry. You are certainly not alone. Most people will find themselves in the same position as you are right now. 

Okay, first, let’s look at what a goal is for. Setting goals gives you a roadmap—a direction, if you like—to help you grow and flourish as a human being. Without a goal or a set of goals, we drift. We will be pulled and pushed towards what everyone else wants for us, and that’s never usually what we desire or want. Without that direction, you are setting yourself up for a very disappointing life. 

I remember reading Bronnie Ware’s book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying several years ago, and it scared me. I realised I was heading in the same direction as many of the people in that book. Who knows when we will leave this world? All we do know is there will come a time for us to depart. So the only question we need to ask is what would I like to do with my short life? 

And that’s the key here. What do you want? If you don’t have an answer to that question, you will drift through life and become another dead being, having achieved nothing and done nothing. Sorry to be so dramatic. I hope that scares you, it should do. It scares me. 

So now we’ve dealt with the morbid part; let’s look at the bright side. 

Having a few long-term goals gives you a sense of purpose and a pathway to follow. You can change that pathway at any time if you feel you no longer want to pursue the direction you were going, but at least you have a direction, and you are growing and developing while you are on that path. 

If I look back at my early life, I wanted to be a police officer, a Royal Marine, a vet and a physiotherapist—these were all goals I had while I was at school. However, like all teenagers, I changed my mind and went in a different direction. But each one of those occupations were goals at one time or another that I abandoned. But the abandonment was not in vain. I learned what it takes to become a police officer and a marine. I also learned a little about animals and human physiology. 

Now, as I am older, my goals are more refined and more long-term, but I still have them. My goals don’t change much. Indeed, they haven’t changed much at all over the last ten years. I wanted to build a business—which I’ve now done, and now I want to grow that business. One change I have had to make about myself in the last ten years is to change my mindset from an employee one to a business owner. That was a lot more difficult than I expected, but it has been a wonderful journey. 

And that is where having goals brings its the biggest benefit. You have to change. If you don’t have to change, then there’s no goal. 

For instance, a lot of people set themselves the goal of losing weight. Great, with two-thirds of the western world population overweight or obese, that’s a good goal to have. However, the goal is not really to lose weight. Anyone can lose weight. Skip dinner tonight and weigh yourself tomorrow morning. You will have lost weight. But skipping meals long-term is not sustainable. Instead, what a weight loss goal needs to do is change your eating habits and lifestyle.

A weight loss goal is a lifestyle change. Most of us eat too much of the wrong types of food and develop painful, debilitating diseases as a result. So, the goal is to change our eating habits, move more and keep the weight off so we can live a healthy, active long life.

If your only purpose is to lose a few pounds, you’ll likely lose it, but if you are not changing your habits at the same time, you will quickly put that weight back on. 

One of my biggest current goals is to buy a piece of land and build our family home to our specifications. Right now, I do not have the money to buy the land, but the habit I needed to change to achieve this goal is to become less of a spender and more of a saver. I have cut out a lot of my expenditure, and I save a lot more money now than I did before. I became aware of just how much I was spending and was able to reign that spending in. 

If we choose to abandon that goal in a few years' time, it won’t matter. What matters is I now longer spend frivolously. I have become a saver, not a spender. My whole identity has changed. 

So, what about you, Liam? What do you want? 

For you to achieve what you want, what do you need to change about yourself? 

We humans can achieve almost anything we want to achieve. Millions of people before us have achieved incredible things. How did they do that? They did it by first learning what they need to change and then dedicating themselves to changing.

How do you write a book? You have to dedicate an amount of time each day to doing focused writing. To do that, you need to learn how to focus and do deep work without distractions. You need to change your habits. Rather than sitting down and consuming, you need to change to be a creator. 

If you desire to be the CEO of a leading company, you need to change from being a follower to being a leader. Again, it’s not easy, and you will need to learn about leadership by reading about leadership and learning from the greatest leaders. 

There’s a concept that Tony Robbins teaches. It’s called CANI (C-A-N-I), which stands for Continuous And Neverending Improvement. As humans, we thrive and grow when we are continuously improving ourselves. We can do that by learning—reading, and studying. We can do that through exercise if we want to improve our health or by learning more about the food we eat. 

There has never been a better time to apply CANI. We have an abundance of resources through YouTube and blog posts to be in a state of continuous improvement. 

And finally, a word about failing. You never really fail unless you quit. Altering your goals, refining them or changing them completely is fine. Quitting is not. However, if you start down a path and struggle, you are not failing; all you are doing is gaining data points. 

Failing is a part of achieving goals. The failure gives you data you can use to adjust your approach so you can try it a different way. This is part of the fun of having goals. 

My first attempted marathon was a complete failure. I remember the day well. It was a hot, humid day, and the marathon I was attempting was ten times up and down a large hill. Stupid of me to try this as my first marathon, but there you go. I managed to do half the course before pulling out. 

However, while I was disappointed, I learned I needed to change my training. I needed to add a few long runs of around eighteen to twenty miles, and I needed to get off the flat ground and start adding a few hills to my training runs. 

I changed my approach, and three months later, I ran my first full-course marathon. 

Did I fail at the first one? of course not. It turned out it was a training run (although, at the time, I treated it as a proper race). I learned a lot from that first attempt and was able to make adjustments so I could complete a full course marathon three months later. 

So, I urge you, Liam and anyone else listening who has struggled with their goals to focus on what you need to change about yourself to achieve your goal. What is it that has prevented you from achieving them before that you could change and start to achieve your goals? 

Remember, if you write 500 words a day for 120 days, you will have written a 60,000-word book. That’s just four months. Develop the habit of writing. 

If you cut out soft drinks full of sugar, refined carbohydrates and fast food, in three months, your blood sugars and LDL cholesterol will have returned to normal (or close to normal). Make some minor changes to your diet, and you’ll be a lot healthier. 

A goal is less about accomplishing the goal. It’s much more about who you become in the process of achieving the goal. 

Thank you, Liam, for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.