Can our Goals Doom us to Failure?

It’s the new year, often when we set new goals and dream of where we might want to be. Goals are often set by imagining the end point and then pushing towards it, utilising the end goal as motivation for the gruelling journey ahead.

We then use the end point to drive our motivation and encourage us to strive towards our goal. Think about when your personal trainer or parent last pushed you to imagine the big picture or the end goal, did it motivate you? How about two days on? Or two weeks? How about two months?

“What do you want out of life?”

It’s a relatively simple question, and one every person has thought about throughout their life.

It’s a question that can create fear or elation. A question that can parade your hopes and dreams or drag out your biggest insecurities.

But after a few “um”s and “ah”s, most people can give out an answer.

“I want to own a property at [X location]”

“I want to be a partner at [Insert accounting firm here]”

“I want to retire by [X age]”

These goals often revolve around the end achievement. You, I and everyone else loves to talk about the part where we’ve overcome the problem and are enjoying the success and fruits of their labour.

This rings true for all our dreams: we want to be the CEO; we want to be married with successful children; we want to be strong; we want to have live a long and healthy life.

I personally was confronted with this question a year ago:

“What do you want out of life?”

My answer was straightforward: To be a successful lawyer and retire with properties all over the world. However, my questioner probed me even further:

“Would this truly make you happy? What would happen if you got there and weren’t happy? Would the journey have been worth it?”

I wasn’t sure I would be happy by attaining this goal. I always believed that the happiness would come once I had attained that goal, almost expecting it to be a natural consequence. But as I reflected I realised that my happiness was tied to an arbitrary standard I had set myself and I would likely dread any difficulty in the journey and wish that the current would carry me to the end goal.

I had tied my happiness to the end goal, with little or no vision to the road to get there. I had an expectation that it would be difficult, however I had invested myself heavily towards a clear fantasy that I assumed would make me happy

I had skipped over all the work that needed to take me to where my end goal was (better known as delusion)

Expectations vs Fantasies

It’s important that as we set goals we understand what we focus on and whether it helps or hinders us. Researchers from the University of Hamburg split test subject’s approaches towards goals and plans into two key categories: expectation and fantasy. Expectations are seen as beliefs about the future where as fantasies are images of the future (or daydreams).

One example is owning a yacht. The images of owning the yacht, sailing the yacht are all fantasies. Our expectations are whether we believe we will be successful to own the yacht, how confident we are about owning a yacht in future and so forth.

The 2002 study found that positive fantasies led to lower investment and attainment towards any goal. The study reasoned that by idealizing the future, they had felt they could sit back and enjoy the moment early, idealizing the process and becoming less willing to invest into their future and unwilling to deal with setbacks.

An earlier study by the same author found over a year long period those with a optimistic expectation and negative or neutral fantasies performed better than those with positive fantasies.

This of course doesn’t mean that we should be constantly thinking of the worst case scenario. The 2002 study points out that a negative fantasy allows for a more realistic view of the world, willing to consider unforeseen difficulties.

So what is the correct way to set your goals? The answer seems difficult to distill down to a formula, but from the studies we can draw out the following:

1. Ensure that our expectations are leading our actions. We should have an optimistic expectation of what will happen. Whether this is a new diet, exercise plan or an optimistic expectation will help us succeed and approach adversity as we journey towards the goal.
2. Ensure that we are realistic in the images (or fantasies) that we conjure of ourselves in the future, understanding that we will have setbacks and failures and that these can be part of our development and growth.
3. Make sure you look at the journey, on how we will grow and achieve through it. Base our achievements on this journey, rather than a single goal in the distant future. Try to enjoy the path we have taken and the problems that we have to solve.

This past year I’ve heavily reflected on what my goals have been and what I wanted to do. Ultimately while I’m continuing on the same path, I want to enjoy the challenge of what I’ve undertaken and find happiness in facing up and overcoming these challenges.

Ultimately I hope you’re able to find the same clarity, by choosing to keep your expectations low and your fantasies grounded. Life isn’t going to be perfect. So embrace the challenge, and make sure your goals reflect this. Or in the words of Mark Manson’s Disappointment Panda:

“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”