The Trouble with Goals

I’ve been teaching setting goals for over 25 years. When I teaching it was hard work to coach business owners to set up goals for their marketing, sales, employees and products.

They got the principle but were afraid to set up a goal that they might not reach, especially when I was pushing them to dream BIG.

It became even harder when I was asking them to set goals for happiness in life and measure what will be a successful LIFE for them beyond their business.

Today no one even raises an eyebrow when I ask to set goals, it is the most acceptable practice in business and in life.

By now, you probably know, that if you wish to be successful in life and business you need to set goals that would define for you, what success or happiness will mean.

However, as I went through the years I came to realize that the issue is not setting goals, but it is attaining goals. It is how to reach those goals that we set, that makes most people resist setting goals.

About 12 years ago Nisandeh (my partner) and I wrote and created the book and program “Elements of Success” (“Leef Lekker” in Dutch) that teaches you how to create your own reality and how to achieve those goals you set up. In the book we teach you the 5 steps of creating success and how to do it in a balanced way.

As you can probably understand I’m a big advocator for goals. However after working with more than 120,000 people all over the world and teaching goals for more than 25 years I’ve been rethinking this whole concept and asking myself a question that I never thought I would ask.

I started to question do we really need to focus on setting goals?

What I’m starting to realize, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things. It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What’s the difference between goals and systems?

If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a successful business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you let go of your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a runner and you wanted to run the marathon and you would let go of the goal of running a marathon and focused on the weekly and daily practice of running, would you be able after a year to run a marathon?

I think you would.

Which means that once we focus on the system we can reach both the goal and at the same time develop habits that would stick with us beyond just that specific goal.

Here are 3 more reason why you should focus on the systems and not the goals

1. Goals reduce your happiness.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. If you are not a professional writer telling yourself “my goal is to write a book this year”, your minds, will immediately go – “no way would you be able to pull it”

However if you only stick to writing twice a week a blog post of around 700-800 words at the end of the year you would have written 78,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000, which means that you’ve written more than a book!

Setting goals that way is creating unnecessary stress on you. Setting goals of losing that weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel.

Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal. It’s about the journey not the destination!

2. Goals have the habit of being a one-time thing and not a long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Goals have this tendency to push you only until that moment you reach it and after that most of you tell yourself, now I need a break.

This creates a type of “yo-yo effect” where you go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results. Focus on the system to reach those goals.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, it’s shocking. Isn’ it)

But every time you set a goal, you try to do it. You try to plan out where you will be and when you will make it there.

You try to predict how quickly you can make progress, even though you have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Create a feedback system and listen to it on a regular basis

Feedback systems are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything.

Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win.

Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

Now I’m curious…

What would be your system to replace the goals you have set up?

Share it with us in the comment box below - What tips, suggestions and experience you discovered that helps you in reaching your goals

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Have a magical week! Vered