How to Define a Goal That Will Provide You with Self-Motivation
Goals are the building blocks for self-motivation. However, most people fail to define their goals in a way that provides them with self-motivation, and as a result fail to achieve their big, audacious, difficult goals.
To have a goal that you never achieve is painful. Especially when you know there is nothing legally, physically, or mentally preventing you from achieving it. This is why every goal you set should follow a simple approach to increase your chance of achieving it.
This approach for defining a goal is nothing you probably haven’t heard before in one place or another. But I still believe reading this again today will help reiterate the fundamentals of goal setting and help get you unstuck if you’re struggling to achieve a goal.
1) Difficult Goals are for Lazy People
I know this sounds crazy but hear me out. The only reason people have big, audacious, difficult goals is because they are too lazy to spend the time to break those goals down into small, short-term, attainable goals. This is not a sign of being physically lazy, it’s a sign of mental laziness.
It’s frustrating to accept, but the reality is that hard work does not always lead to success. Mindless hard, physical labor is not how you achieve a difficult goal. Instead, it’s better to put the mental work in first and understand what’s the smartest way to achieve a goal.
With that said, the smartest way to achieve a difficult goal is to define small, short-term, attainable goals that continuously provide you with self-motivation. For a goal to fit that description, it must be only difficult enough to push you slightly out of your comfort zone. Any goal that is more difficult than that won’t provide you with motivation, and as a result will likely go unachieved.
Therefore, when you have a big, audacious, difficult goal, the first step is to always invest the time thinking about how to break it down into detailed smaller, short-term goals that are only slightly difficult. Then as your comfort zone expands, expand your goals.
You can’t skip this step.
2) Forget About the Goal
Once you do the work of breaking your big goals down into small, short-term goals, the next step is to stop thinking about the big, audacious, difficult goal each day. Instead, focus on the journey, the process. Process is about the present. Achieving your big, audacious, difficult goal is an outcome in the future.
Moreover, outcomes are not within your control. So, as a rule of thumb always remember that the key to self-motivation is to focus on goals that are within your control, and those types of goals are process goals.
3) Define Goals that Leverage Your Strengths
Finally, your process to achieve your smaller, short-term goals must leverage your strengths. It’s a fact that you’re at your best when you’re doing what you’re best at, and that’s using your strengths.
Don’t overcomplicate this either. Too often people think their strengths must be complex skills that they have developed over time. While this may be true in some cases, it doesn’t have to be that deep. The simplest way to think about your strengths are to think about your natural behaviors when you have the choice to do anything you want in your free time.
- What activities or environments are you repeatedly drawn to?
- What kind of skills do you seem to pick up quickly and easily?
- Which type of activities are you excited about doing again and again?
- What are you doing when you’re enthusiastic and fulfilled?
- When do you become so focused that you seem to lose track of time?
These are the activities, skills, and environments you want to define your goals around and leverage to build your process for pursuing your goals. If you do this, self-motivation will take care of itself.