Level Up Your Goals

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

When Goals Become an Obsession

Self-help books are awash with ideas and well-intentioned advice on the benefits of goal-setting. Between Brian Tracy’s Goals: How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, Caroline Adams Miller’s Big Goals, perennial bestsellers in the self-help section, such as Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, suggest that we ought to ‘begin with the end in mind’. These popular press books provide compelling reasons for why we should prioritize setting clear, inspiring goals to spur motivation and achievement. You would likely have heard of the SMART acronym, which recommends that our goals be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. While intuitively appealing, some studies criticize the idea as lacking empirical evidence – the SMART goals approach turns out not to be the smartest way of formulating our goals [1].

A theory that has considerable scientific backing, however, is goal-setting theory. Goal-setting theory prescribes that setting specific and challenging goals while ensuring we are committed to and regularly receiving feedback on goal progress boosts motivation and performance [2]. Critics, however, have argued that the benefits of such an approach have been overstated. Challenging goals can instead cause us to disregard non-goal domains, promote unethical behaviour, and reduce intrinsic motivation [3]. One study shows that setting high-performance goals leads to what researchers call ‘diminished self-regulatory capacity.’ Challenging goals can become nearly all-consuming, lowering an individual’s ability to control their impulses and restraint, subsequently promoting unethical behaviours [4]. Further, setting challenging goals that encourage comparison with others tends to lead to cheating. This suggests that setting benchmarks and standards of expected performance shown by others may not be the best way to sustain healthy goal efforts and behaviours [5].

The findings might not surprise researchers who have examined the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion. While harmonious passion is associated with goals that help align and shape the kind of lives we want, the latter, obsessive passion that comes from these all-consuming goals, is associated with negative emotions, more rumination, and lowered vitality [6]. Think about goals that become obsessions. You might have started working longer hours, your goal being career progression, but this came at the expense of diminished quality time with loved ones and loss of friendships. Workplaces are where the merits of goal-setting are studied and applied. But, on more than one occasion, the push toward a certain sales target, number of clients recruited, or a certain target for a profitable bottom line has led to ethically questionable business practices.

Phrase Your Goals for Regulatory Fit

Think now of a personal goal you previously set for yourself as a New Year’s resolution. Come the end of every calendar year, many of us find ourselves setting new goals – in the form of resolutions. We aspire to eat more healthily, be more financially prudent, or commit to being more present for our families. A poll by market research company Drive Research shows the real-world challenges of sticking to New Year’s Resolutions – 92% of adults will not follow through on them, and 23% quit these new goals by the end of the first week of January [7]. One large-scale study showed that those who framed their goals more as approach-oriented were also more likely to achieve them [8]. So, “I want to feel fitter and look better” tends to be more motivating than “I want to avoid being made fun of by relatives for my belly fat.” This tells us something about the importance of ‘regulatory fit’ – a concept that has been extensively studied in the psychological sciences.

Are you more likely to be driven by a need to feel ‘right,’ engaged, eager, and enticed by achieving gains? If so, you are likely to be promotion-focused. If, instead, you are more likely driven by the need to avoid loss, safeguard yourself from feeling ‘wrong’, or find it safe to adhere to established conventions and regulations, you are more likely to be prevention-focused. Our regulatory fit – be it approach or avoidance-oriented – tends to shape how we frame our goals and how motivated we are to continually pursue them. Regulatory focus is consistently predictive of work outcomes beyond that of personality and attitude [9] and also predicts both job performance and satisfaction [10]. When phrasing and framing your goals, ask yourself if they are more motivating if presented as an approach or avoidance orientation. “I want to progress in my career and achieve financial stability for my household” is promotion-oriented. “I want to progress in my career and safeguard myself and my family against financial instability” is more prevention-oriented. Both are motivating goals in their own ways – but you will likely find one a more motivating goal than the other. Decide on which motivates you more when you develop your next set of goals.

Align Goals with Your Authentic Self

The science of motivation has long distinguished between extrinsically-motivating and intrinsically-motivating goals. Externally-motivating goals that drive your actions because they address external pressure (societal obligations, parental expectations, organizational KPIs) and also those that offer the promise of tangible, often material rewards – money, fame, and status. Intrinsically-motivating goals, by contrast, are those that drive behaviours because they are aligned with your strengths, core values, and authentic personal interests. Self-determination theory posits that we are intrinsically motivated toward goals that help us fulfil three core psychological needs – of mastery, relationships, and autonomy [11]. Building on this idea, the psychologist Kennon Sheldon highlights how most individuals aren’t always aware of their authentic selves. As a consequence, many then set goals that do not align with who they are. He suggests that a clear understanding of one’s authentic self lays the path for what he calls self-concordant goals – goals that are in harmony with the self and pursued simply because [12]. These intrinsically-motivating goals are genuinely ‘owned’ – self-determined and aligned with our deepest, truest selves.

Both self-determination theory and the idea of self-concordant goals offer a lens through which to see our deepest, underlying motivations for our goal efforts. When people set goals to seek wealth and material success, they are likely attempting to fulfil a wish to feel competent and to be seen as successful by others. When people set goals of becoming famous and noteworthy in the public eye, they are likely aiming to fulfil the wish to matter to others. When people set goals that offer them outlets for personal expression, they are likely aiming to fulfil the desire for autonomy and perhaps, greater control over their lives. Setting goals that are in harmony with the self – those that align action with values, predict optimism and well-being [13]. Self-concordant goals also lead to the satisfaction of core psychological needs – competence, autonomy, relatedness because it promotes an authentic awareness of the self [14]. That is, when people set self-concordant goals, they see themselves more clearly; their values, internal desires, and wishes are aligned with their actions, leading them to pursue goals that ‘speak to who they are.’ Recent reviews of the idea of self-concordant goals show that this harmony of the self with one’s strivings has broad-reaching consequences on mental health and well-being. The positive effects also include increased psychological empowerment, goal persistence, and even creativity [15]. The ‘why’ of your goals may be the most difficult question to ask – but it is an important one. Are your goals serving as a reflection of who you are and who you really want to be? Are they helping you meet the three basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness?

Practical Tips:

Make your SMART goals smarter by enhancing your regulatory fit. Revisit your goals and rephrase them so they better fit with how you are genuinely motivated. Are you more likely to be motivated by an approach-oriented or avoidance-oriented focus?

Are your goals aligned with your values in helping fulfil your three core psychological needs? Set goals that are intrinsically motivating – you would pursue and persist on them even in the absence of, or under conditions of limited external pressure. What goal would you freely set for yourself if money and others’ approval were side effects of your efforts?

References

[1] Swann, C., Jackman, P. C., Lawrence, A., Hawkins, R. M., Goddard, S. G., Williamson, O., Schweickle, M.J., Vella, S.A., Rosenbaum, S. & Ekkekakis, P. (2023). The (over) use of SMART goals for physical activity promotion: A narrative review and critique. Health Psychology Review, 17(2), 211-226. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2021.2023608

[2] Locke, E., & Latham, G. (2015). Goal-setting theory. In Organizational Behavior 1 (pp. 159-183). Routledge.

[3] Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37007999

[4] Welsh, D. T., & Ordóñez, L. D. (2014). The dark side of consecutive high performance goals: Linking goal setting, depletion, and unethical behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123(2), 79-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.07.006

[5] Van Yperen, N. W., Hamstra, M. R., & van der Klauw, M. (2011). To win, or not to lose, at any cost: The impact of achievement goals on cheating. British Journal of Management, 22, S5-S15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2010.00702.x

[6] Curran, T., Hill, A. P., Appleton, P. R., Vallerand, R. J., & Standage, M. (2015). The psychology of passion: A meta-analytical review of a decade of research on intrapersonal outcomes. Motivation and Emotion, 39(5), 631-655. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9503-0

[7] Drive Research Team (2023). New year’s resolutions statistics and trends. Available at: https://www.driveresearch.com/market-research-company-blog/new-years-resolutions-statistics/

[8] Oscarsson M, Carlbring P, Andersson G, Rozental A (2020) A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS ONE, 15(12): e0234097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234097

[9] Lanaj, K., Chang, C. H., & Johnson, R. E. (2012). Regulatory focus and work-related outcomes: a review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 998-1034.

[10] Gorman, C. A., Meriac, J. P., Overstreet, B. L., Apodaca, S., McIntyre, A. L., Park, P., & Godbey, J. N. (2012). A meta-analysis of the regulatory focus nomological network: Work-related antecedents and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 160-172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.07.005

[11] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The" what" and" why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

[12] Sheldon, K. M. (2014). Becoming oneself: The central role of self-concordant goal selection. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(4), 349-365. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868314538549

[13] Sheldon, K., Gordeeva, T., Sychev, O., Osin, E., & Titova, L. (2022). Self-concordant goals breed goal-optimism and thus well-being. Current Psychology, 41(9), 6549-6557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01156-7

[14] Milyavskaya, M., Nadolny, D., & Koestner, R. (2015). Why do people set more self-concordant goals in need satisfying domains? Testing authenticity as a mediator. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 131-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.028

[15] Wan, P., Wen, T., Zhang, Y., Gao, H., & Wang, J. (2021). Goal self-concordance model: What have we learned and where are we going. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 23(2), 201-219. https://doi.org/10.32604/IJMHP.2021.015759

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