2023: Goal Setting
As someone with achiever in their top 5 Clifton Strengths, I am no stranger to striving for goals and crossing them off the list. In fact, I have been able to essentially make everything I desired come to fruition through manifestation combined with hard work and determination and while sounds like my life should be all peaches and cream, the reality was not the case.
There’s a difference between achieving goals and celebrating them. Desiring things for the sake of the challenge and desiring things for the hope that you will be free from the things that plague us as humans. The high that comes with validating your awesomeness by overcoming challenges to make your dreams come true and the high that comes with validating your awesomeness as other people perceive it.
In grade 10 I remember we had to make a goals list: 3 short term and 3 long term. I can’t remember all the short term goals but I remember my long term ones:
Write a book before I’m 27
Travel to Japan
Be the first person in my family to graduate Uni
All 3 of these things happened before I was 23! This is how you know someone has achiever as a strength - they see your 5 year goal and will accomplish it in less time. However, in the process of achievement they can lose themselves in their work and the climb - and this is exactly what happened to me. It’s taken me a few years to realize that my accomplishments don’t make me a more or less deserving/worthy person and while they might look good on a resume or make for good stories at a dinner party - the excitement I feel with achievements is fleeting and designed to get me thinking about the next one. Because of this, I felt I was never good enough, successful enough, or striving enough - because the more I tried to be all of those things, the more squidgy I got. I was achieving for the sake of achieving and no longer for purpose.
In my positive psychology class we learned about process vs. outcome praise and it gave me a lot to think about. Growing up, I learned early on to let my body be of service to make up for how it looked. As such, the accolades I received were for my accomplishments and achievements: when I was featured in the newspaper for sports, when I won a scholarship for the arts, when I received the MVP award at a volleyball tournament, and when I’d get high marks at the piano festivals. Sure, I am proud of myself for working hard to gain those titles, but what it bred in me was that the outcome was more important than the process. I should preface, it wasn’t my parents putting this pressure on me - it was me. They couldn’t care less if I won or lost or passed or failed - as long as I was happy - but for me, I wanted to make them proud and in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, pride was attached to outcome and visible success and hardware.
As such, this followed me into my jobs and careers as an adult. This is partly why I was called Teri 2 Years - I would work my way up, get the title, then get bored. I would achieve the awards for best customer service or the most accolades for my diligent hard work and then I would get bored and peace out. Then, when I became an entrepreneur and the CEO of my photography business I really gave myself the freedom to achieve as much as I could as fast as I could. Whether it was to be the highest ranked photographer on Google within 3 months (check!), to become an educator with a well known photography academy within 3 years (check!), to have a fully booked studio and be speaking on stages within 4 years (check!), and so much more - I thought “If I can just get this goal THEN I will be happy.” What I was really saying was “If I get this goal THEN I will be taken seriously. Then I will be a professional. THEN I will be happy.”
It should be no surprise, then, that I felt depressed after reaching milestone after milestone:
I was still a human.
There is no better place to bring all your squidginess into the light than running your own business. I realized that I had been extrinsically motivated to achieve outcome praise: Essentially, wanting to make other people proud/jealous so that they could boost my ego. No wonder that wasn’t sustainable. Within that one squidgy we can explore so much: scarcity, people pleasing, worth and deservingness, fixed mindset, daddy issues, etc. We can also see why it would impact me negatively when things DIDN’T go my way. When I didn’t win the award or get a spot on a lucrative platform or become chosen to be an educator for a group of people. I would get jealous and upset and think I was a failure. That I wasn’t good enough. It reinforced my stories that started this striving in the first place.
It was shortly after recognizing this that I had to reframe the way I thought about goal setting/goal getting. I had to release the outcome and focus on the process - recognizing that if I just show up every day and do the best work I can - it will be what it will be. I am not responsible for the outcome. My only job is to show up and trust that it will all work out in the end the way that it is meant to be. I have to get excited about the rainbow more than the pot of gold! I can still hold the vision for the goal in my mind, but I cannot be SO attached to the outcome for it will become my undoing. I also realized when I do achieve those goals and milestones that I need to make space for gratitude and thanking myself for putting in the hardwork to get there.
My most exciting goal planning time is in December, where I can lock myself in my room, watch the snow fall through the window pane, and take in the soft bokehd christmas lights while I reflect on the past year and look forward to the next. I create vision boards and lists of things that I want to call in and then create action plans and strategies to help me move in that direction. I now think more about how I want to FEEL vs. what I want to achieve. In fact, in doing the To Be Magnetic manifestation work they ask you to think of some things you want to manifest - like tangible items - and I had a really hard time because I know the tangible things won’t be the things to bring me fulfillment. So I hold onto the feeling that I want to have in achieving those things. I think about what a new camera would bring me. I think about what certain podcasting/video gear would allow me to do. I want to manifest/work towards the feeling of freedom and creativity. I want to achieve rebalancing my hormones in my body and making myself a priority. I want to serve more people through my writing and creativity in whatever form I am called to serve in. I want to achieve space in my calendar to make room for opportunities while becoming financially free so I can not worry or stress.
So, as we head into this new year I want to encourage you to take a look at your goal list and remove yourself from the outcome just a wee bit. Have a picture of it in your mind, but make sure to figure out what feeling you want that thing to bring you and be open to what that might look like. Then set to work creating an action plan with the feeling in mind, more than the outcome because this will ensure you do it in a way that’s not only in alignment with you, but also ensure you don’t feel deflated if the outcome looks different than your expectation. I truly believe that while we might get what we want, it isn’t always what we need. So - happy goal setting and process celebrating - I can’t wait to see what magic you create in your life!
