empty goals are worse than no goals
People do the best they can with goal-setting for themselves. They see the need for and usefulness of structure, but then they kind of just... pick an arbitrary metric and run at it.
Except it's actually not usually that arbitrary. Our default is to pick a goal that we think we're supposed to want. Things our parents want. Things that we think will make us feel less afraid (like money) but somehow that need for security ends up being a bottomless hole that we never manage to fill.
So, invariably, we feel unsatisfied when we reach that goal. Or, we fail to motivate ourselves to prioritize it at all, because--well, obviously, we don't care enough. Why would you go out of your way to have it?
We then proceed to make this lack of motivation and fulfillment mean something is wrong with us.
It can be super painful. And that's where the whole "I'm stuck!" thing comes from.
I call this one "Tunnel Vision"
In my course, Fearless Femmes, we author a "North Star" vision statement with a few strict requirements:
It must start with "Imagine a world where..."
It must somehow communicate your top 3-4 core values.
It may NOT contain metrics of any kind (e.g., instead of "I get two vacations per year" you say "I have the flexibility to travel as often as I need to to feel happy."
It must be phrased in the present tense.
It should touch on all the main elements of your life (career, family, money, relationships, creativity, health, etc etc etc).
Then, setting goals is easy: all you do is look at this statement and notice where the biggest gaps are, when you compare it to how things are right now.
Next, you'll take a guess on how much progress you could make on closing those gaps in 12 months, without compromising the other parts of your vision (like health and well-being or time with family).
Pick the most important gap to you right now...and there's your goal for the year. Clear. Actionable. Time-bound. Naturally motivating. A manifestation of YOUR values.
But you knew all this already. The reason why you haven't done it this way yet is because when you sit down and dare to dream your life perfect, your inner critic/saboteur pipes up and says "YOU DON'T GET TO HAVE THAT." "YOU HAVE TO FOCUS ON MONEY SO YOU SURVIVE." "YOU AREN'T GOOD ENOUGH YET /DON'T DESERVE THIS."
So we tackle the saboteur in Module 4 too, in parallel.
There's a few worksheets you'll fill out, plus community support in the group and from me--and you'll never look at (or listen to) your inner saboteur the same way again.
That's how we do it.
Would you like to do it too? Book a call with me and we'll talk about your flavor of self-sabotage, and how it's keeping you from dreaming.
When your vision is deep, true, and flexible--like the ocean--feeling satisfied is easy, and goals happen naturally. One Femme described her experience in the FB group last week: