Goals? What Goals?
Goals? What Goals?
New year, new you! So, do you want to set a bunch of goals that you most likely won’t reach? In fact, February 28th is the official day when all your set goals will die and won’t be thought of again until this time next year. Yup. But why? Why is it so hard?
Apparently, your brain ain’t so smart. According to Kara Loewntheil (Author, Yale & Harvard Graduate, Podcaster, Life Coach, etc.), as a human, once your basic material and safety needs are met, your brain’s tendency is toward comfort and stability. Nothing wrong with that. But, comfort and stability are also the opposite of change and growth.
Our brain has evolved to save energy and stay stable. So, if anything feels familiar and consistent, it signals to your brain that everything is safe. Nothing wrong with that. But, to your brain, ANYTHING can become familiar and consistent, even if it’s emotionally volatile, unpleasant, or damaging to you. Fighting at home, hating your own body, being in a dead-end relationship, over-drinking, over-eating, staying at the job you hate… they can all be familiar and consistent in your life, which means your brain is cool with it.
The thing is, most of us don’t want this for our lives; we have values of what we want our lives to be and look like. See the struggle? Our brain is prioritizing safety and stability to protect us from danger, but we need to step outside of that to change and grow.
This is where goals, or in our case, New Year resolutions, come in.
Goals are how you bridge the gap between your brain’s default operating system (familiar and consistent), which is the life you are currently living, to the life you actually want to live. Setting goals and executing them is how we bring our lives into alignment with our values.
Back to the original question: why is it so hard? The answer? It’s because we don’t have the right help. And the right help is determined by what each of us uniquely needs. What we uniquely need is determined by how we individually think and function (our tendencies) when it comes to goal setting.
I am excited to learn with you through our new series called “Goal Setting” as I am a constant goal-setter who struggles to keep it going strong throughout the year. I hope this will be the game-changer for all of us.
Stay tuned; I will explain the four types of tendencies and how they’re defined. I will summarize what we need to do once we figure out which category we belong to. I will even give you a link to take a 10-minute quiz to help guide you along in your discovery. With our new series, I hope to help us set goals and reach them. I hope to empower us from being comfortable and stable to wanting to change and grow. You with me? Let’s do this!
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