The Power of ‘Being’ vs ‘Having Goals
It seems trite to say it, but goals are important. They help you keep an eye on where you’re taking your business (and your life!), they translate your dreams into actions and they are a motivational force. I don’t think anyone is under any doubt that setting goals is a Good Thing. What we pay less attention to, though, is the type of goal we set. The default position of goal-setting is thinking about what we want to do or have in the future, and then set goals that will eventually get us there. They are a finish line to strive towards. The problem with that is, they’re a finish line to strive towards.
I don’t know about you, but I have always had a tendency to live in the future. I was ordering university prospectuses aged 15 and imagining myself in the corner office in my first job. We all feel we should be living more in the present moment and grounding ourselves in it, but when the future holds all our dreams come true, it’s hard not to spend your life mentally there.
I’ve found that setting traditional SMART goals can contribute to a lack of presence. They are incredibly useful in a lot of ways, but they fundamentally place all the value on a future event – they suggest that only once you have achieved the specific, measurable, attainable, relevant goal within the specified time period can life start. Until then we are in goal purgatory, stuck here in the pointless present working towards the golden gates of future actualisation.
We do this because it’s the way to do things. Because it’s what the experts say, it’s how we should operate within a business. Because throughout our school lives we spent our years working towards a month of exams which would then unlock another level of working towards a future event. Our goals have always been outside of ourselves, whether it’s those exam results or getting a good job or buying a house or having 10,000 Instagram followers. We tend to default to the things we want to have when we’re setting goals, these things that once we’ve acquired them will give us the life we want to live. The trouble is, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Once you’ve unlocked one door you realise there is another right behind it, and now you need to open that next door in order to have your dream life.
And what about our real lives in all of this?
While we’re striving towards those future goals, our lives become a waiting room. We are eager to end each day so that a new one to work on our goals can start. We drift through our days like ghosts through walls, wishing to always be that future version of ourselves. I know this may sound dramatic but I’ve been there. Wishing away my life, wanting to fast forward to the happy ending and feeling frustrated that I couldn’t have it all now. Maybe you have a tendency towards this, too.
I’m not saying that thinking about the future is a bad thing. I love to daydream about it as a spot of escapism on drab days; more than that, dreaming about the future helps you to actually know what you want from your life. What I’m saying is, there’s more than one way to act upon those dreams. And another way is to set ‘being’ goals.
You might call them habits, but personally that terminology has never really resonated with me – the moment you label something a daily habit I feel the walls of commitment close in. Thinking of them as ‘being goals’ feels less pressurised; if I miss a day it’s ok because it’s a goal I’m shooting for, rather than a habit I’ve just broken. Your ‘being goal’ doesn’t have to be daily either, I have some monthly ones too. The crucial thing is that instead of it being something you work towards having, it’s something you can be in the present.
Let’s think of some examples. In 2019 I was troubled by my lack of work/life balance and set about striving after all the things I thought I needed to have in order to fix it – find and start a hobby, go to classes, plan a trip. I was reaching around for an external thing to solve my problem, but work/life balance exists in the present moment. If you’re striving after it you’re still working and not living. This year, I set a ‘being goal’ to do one thing every day which I just want to do (I’m documenting these in a Highlight on my Instagram profile if you’d like to see).
I always struggled last year with the idea of The Thing I needed to find to unlock work/life balance, but the truth is that I’m a multi-passionate, curious person who doesn’t need to be limited to one thing. It also doesn’t have to be such a big deal, a hobby with equipment and courses to take and, yes, goals to work toward. True work/life balance comes from standing outside for five minutes longer, listening to a podcast that sounds interesting even though it’s not about business, mooching around the shops, reading a magazine, watching TV on the sofa (shock horror!). My ‘being goal’ is helping me work towards the life I want to live by actually living it in tiny daily moments.
Instead of set the goal of ‘have a fitter more flexible body’, I have the ‘being goal’ of ‘make it to three yoga classes a month’. Instead of the goal to ‘have a large, engaged community’, I have the ‘being goal’ of ‘calendar social engagement time every day’. Perhaps for you, instead of ‘have a well-populated blog’ you ‘write something every week’, instead of ‘learn about photography’ you ‘pick up my camera every day’, instead of ‘have a better mindset’ you ‘set a daily intention and reflection’.
What I’m proposing really is that we hybridise our goal setting. I have a few SMART goals on my list this year (read them here). They help me build and maintain momentum in my business, they make sure I’m moving forwards and in the right direction, they inform my tasks and give me the satisfaction of ‘ticking off’ and marking progress. But folded through with the ‘having goals’ are my ‘being goals’, the things that ground me in the present and not lose myself to the pursuit of the future. Goals are there to help you be who you want to be; we must be always conscious not to lose sight of what this is all for in our lives.
