Goals Are Homes for Energy, Intentions, and Dreams

Thriving requires goal-setting, but it doesn't have to be as "extra" as you think

“What are your goals for the year?”

I could see her tense up when I asked the question. The second I saw her tense up, I already knew how the conversation would play out.

“You know, K asked me that same question. I’ll tell you the same thing I told her.”

She smiled and raised up her hand and made a zero with her fingers.

“I have no goals, Charlie. None.”

This client’s transformation over the last four years has been remarkable. She’d changed her career, exited a terrible marriage, remarried an as-close-to-perfect partner, and moved to live and play in a city she loves. She’d found parts of herself that she hadn’t known were there or had forgotten a long time ago.

But she was still just as ambitious and energetic as ever. There was zero chance that she didn't have any intentions, dreams, or ideas that she wanted to pursue. She was still human, after all.

“You’re lying to both of us now,” I replied. “Lie to yourself all you want, but I’m not having it and that’s not what we do here.”

No, I don’t talk to all of my clients this way, but it’s how she and I roll. Outside of our sessions, she’s the smartest, most commanding person in the room — no one questions or pushes her. Or when they do, it’s so tepid and oblique that she’s exhausted by trying to figure out what they’re saying.

The glare she gave me in response is part of why no one questions her. Her glare softened immediately to pleading.

“I don’t want to do it this year, Charlie. I don’t want to put a bunch of goals out there and break myself trying to achieve them. I don’t want to stress about the future and I want to live in the moment. I’m so much happier living in the moment and I don’t want to try to control everything.”

Her face conveyed “Don’t make me do it.” As if I could.

“Hmm. You’re bringing a whole lot to the conversation about what a ‘goal’ means that I’m not. I know you well enough to know that you have some intentions for the year.”

She thought about it and softened up a little bit.

“I want to collect experiences for the year. That’s what I want.”

We were getting somewhere.

“Okay, what type of experiences?”

She immediately tensed back up, seeing the ghost of goal-setting come back.

“You tensed back up. Let me be clear about what we’re doing: we’re NOT creating a bunch of work goals right now. With the situation you’ve created for yourself, you don’t have to do that and being adaptive will be just fine. We’re just trying to find a home for your intentions. That’s all goal-setting has to be: creating a home for your intentions and energy.”

She lit up.

“You know what happens when your intentions and energy don’t have a home,” I slid in when as she was getting it.

“I LOVE that. It feels so grounded and right.”

She was back in the game. From there, we were able to create homes for three major intentions she had for the year, then sequence them in an order that made sense, and talk about how much time it may take to turn those intentions into reality.

She was inspired and surprised by how quickly she was able to speak to what she wanted to do. Towards the end of this phase of the conversation, she was also feeling a bit frustrated that that’s all she was going to be able to do for the year, at the same time that she knew it was about all she’d be able to do well, too.

I reminded her that it was okay that she wasn’t going to be able to do ALL THE THINGS. She had next year to home those intentions and it’d feel so much better to have this year’s experiences behind her.

I go through this dance all year, but it’s a dance I’m in a lot during December and January.

So many Creative Giants create an intense aversion and antipathy toward “goals” and all the hullabaloo of this time of the year. It’s exhausting for them to just exist the way they are, let alone add more to do on top of that and strive even more.

I get it. I really do.

Every year, I’m torn about how much I want to participate in, reinforce, and capitalize on the “New Year, New You” cultural mania. There’s a lot of extra in the season.

And yet, it’s not just cultural and marketing shenanigans that make it a very natural time of the year for people to be thinking about what they want to emerge in the spring and summer. While I can temper some of the extra, people are already in the visualizing and planning vibe and our tools and services help people make better use of the vibe. It’s not a good business or mission move to peace out when people are having the conversation your body of work is linked to.

I stay in the dance, though, because thriving requires finding homes for your intentions, dreams, and energy aka goal-setting and prioritizing.

Sure, you can get by without it.

You can savor the precious moments and experiences that come to you. You can be grateful for the abundance and opportunities that come your way. You can opt out of the endless striving of Jacob’s ladder.

But there are some kinds of experiences and outcomes that you need to consciously make homes and space for.

Books don’t publish themselves.

The logistics of transformational travel don’t just take care of themselves.

“As perfect as can be” jobs or gigs rarely show up on their own and/or are kept by just going with the flow.

Conscious parenting or caretaking requires, well, being conscious about it rather than just being reactive and getting through it.

Humans are goal-creating and goal-seeking by nature. Yes, goal obsession can create suffering, but so can denying our nature. Simplistic understandings of Stoicism fail to be compelling over the long term precisely because they often write out parts of our nature.

So, if you get to the point where you feel like you don’t have any goals or that you’re just so over goal-setting, it’s more likely that you’re over the seasonal or social hype and expectations about it or, like my client, you’ve baked in unnecessary meanings into the word ‘goal’ or the goal-setting process.

Consider that “keeping things exactly as they are” is a goal.

When/if you get there, I hope the idea of goals just being homes for energy, intentions, and dreams helps you find your way back to thinking about how you want to start thriving differently or keep thriving the way you are.