I remember sitting curled up on the living room sofa of my cozy Dallas condo many years ago, notepad in hand as I daydreamed about the vision for the public relations firm I was running at the time. “Where do I want to take my business?” I asked myself. My answers all had to do with money and clients. What clients could we land? And how much money could the business make? These aren’t inherently bad questions for a business owner to ask, but they weren’t the first questions I needed to ask to pinpoint the goals that would most resonate with my soul. The truth is, I didn’t particularly love my work. The writing, the ideas, the strategy of it all – those things challenged me, but they didn’t evoke passion or purpose.
Instead, I was trying to create goals that would conjure up passion and purpose. I need to answer a question even more important than, “What do I want?” I started to think about what I wanted to feel and how I wanted to show up in the world, and here’s what came to me: I wanted to feel like the stuff I did every day was what I was meant to be doing. I wanted to look back and have no regrets about my choices. I wanted to feel courageous enough to live the life I dreamed of. I wanted to feel free to pursue what I felt was my life mission: inspiring others to live more fulfilling lives.
Getting in touch with what I wanted led me to one powerful coaching question that shifted my goal entirely:
What is it that you want your goal to give you that you don’t have right now?
We all need to ask ourselves this question about our goals. Why? Because ultimately our goals need “why.” There must be a deeper purpose that keeps us going when getting to the goal becomes difficult.
The goals I created that day on the living room sofa appeared to be about money and clients, but by asking this one question, I learned that they were really about what I believed the clients and money would give me: Freedom.
With that one question, my goal shifted from making more money in the career I was in to creating a transition towards the career I really wanted. It is not about the goal, but about what the goal will give you that you don’t have right now. What I really wanted wasn’t more clients or money, but the freedom that more clients and money would give me.
So where does this apply to your life right now? For example, the goal may not be about losing 20 pounds, but about feeling more in control of your behavior. With that as your goal, you may just see shifts not only in your weight, but in your tendency to overspend and overschedule yourself, too. Figure out how you want to feel, and it will point you in the direction of your most authentic goal.
My challenge to you:
Figure out what you want your goal to give you that you don’t have right now.
Journaling assignment:
In the area of your life where you want to make a change, how do you want to feel? What do you want your goal to give you that you don’t have right now? Is there a more authentic version of your goal that will deliver that?
Resources:
For more help in setting authentic goals, check out the powerful Goalsetters Coaching on Demand program. You can download and listen in a matter of minutes!
