Reach for Your Dreams | Shallow Goals
Today I want to talk about determining shallow goals from shift goals when we reach for dreams.
What determines success when you are working towards a goal? …There are multiple variables. One very important variable we sometimes forget is, what type of goal are we working towards?
This is the time of year when New Year’s Resolutions are popular. Often times we jump on the bandwagon and write a goal list of things we’d like to accomplish this new year. All the while, missing some extremely important steps. One of those steps being, determining the quality of the goals we’re setting.
I like to break them into 2 types, for the purpose of this step, Shallow Goals and Shift Goals. I mentioned this in a recent video, Focus in on Your Goals, today we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into what these 2 goal types are and how to know what type of goals you may have listed.
Why is it important to know the difference? I am glad you asked. The way we spend our time matters and I don’t think any of us want to wake up in 5 years to realize that not only has little progress been made towards our goals, but we’ve been chipping away at the wrong goals entirely. Sounds like a bit of a nightmare, would you agree?
To go a little more in depth than my previous post went, a shallow goal is those brainstorm items we jot down on New Year’s Eve. The ones that tabloids impress upon our subconscious minds. Things like “Lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks” and “Keep a spotless home”. They’re not shift goals, they’re taglines designed to make us buy their magazine.
The problem with shift goals isn’t that they’re bad…It’s that they are empty. Void of meaning. They hold no real value in our heart and therefore are worthless goals. Does that mean shallow goals cannot be accomplished? No. It means it makes it much more difficult to accomplish and, more importantly may not even be worth your while in the end.
I say this because sometimes the goals we set don’t align with our values, I will talk about that in another post, Identify Your Core Values. Before we get to that, that’s look deeper at what a Shift Goal is.
Shift goals are valuable to us. Oftentimes we encounter some type of pain or discomfort in our life before we accept a shift goal. I used the word accept here on purpose because shift goals can be hard to accept at times.
An example of a shift goal is when you see the disappointed look on your child’s face for the 50th time when you tell them you’re too tired to play, and this time is different. This time something inside you activates and you feel an almost empowering sense that something has to change.
You know you have to rearrange your schedule to make time with your child a priority. You drop a note in your calendar to remind yourself this Saturday to brainstorm what changes you can make. This is a shift goal.
A shift goal is often accomplished NOT all at once, but in incremental steps. A process if you will. It’s as if a switch has flipped inside of you and you are unwilling to go on living the way things were. It no longer matters if the change is quick so long as you’re making progress.
A shift goal aligns with your values. A shift goal brings you closer to the person you want to be. The person you’re meant to be.
Let’s look back at the shallow goal “keep a spotless home”… now depending on where you re in your life, this could be a perfectly perfect shift goal. If you have children, it likely is not. If I made this my goal, my life would be miserable. I would be obsessing over ever piece of trash and dirt and misplaced thing…it would be a never-ending nag-fest. I would be relying on other people to behave a certain way in order for me to reach my goal or committing myself to go behind them constantly and clean up all the messes. It is never healthy to base our happiness on the behavior of another human and I think most of us have more important ways to spend our time than tailing the family’s every move in order to enforce spotlessness.
Instead, a healthier goal would be to keep a clean house. Clean does not have to be spotless. Some things can be out of place, but the floor gets vacuumed on a regular basis. Shoes may get sprinkled around throughout the day, but kids are asked once a day (or once a week) to put them up neatly. Expectations are reasonable for the phase of life, happiness and peace are not sacrificed in the name of spotlessness.
Goals are such an important aspect of our lives, they help propel us towards our dreams. I hope this post was helpful as you consider what goals to spend your time working towards. Be sure you’re subscribed to my emails, I will soon be sharing about how to identify your values which is a crucial step in goal setting.
Until next time.
