The big benefits of setting small goals
Many of the clients I work with come to me with beautiful and audacious goals. As a psychologist and life coach, one of my many aims is to help them achieve those goals.
Sometimes my role involves helping clients define their goals. For example, while “Feel better about myself” is a great aspiration, what does that mean to you? Can you tell me what that looks like? How would you know if you are making progress? How do you know when you have achieved that goal? What would be different in your life? By adding some structure and encouraging my clients to think about how we would track and measure progress, it becomes easier to determine if we are making progress toward a goal or if we need to change up our tools and approach.
Goals that are vague and not well defined are impossible to achieve. If we don’t know where we are going, how are we supposed to get there? But unfortunately a well-defined, measurable goal still doesn’t guarantee success. There are plenty of obstacles that can get in the way. One of the biggest obstacles to achieving a well-defined goal is when our goals are too big.
Hear me out. I absolutely believe in having big dreams, pursuing exciting passions, and pushing ourselves to achieve and become more. I simply believe that in order to actually start this process, our goals need to be smaller. Yes smaller. Setting smaller goals is the key to big success.
The problem with setting large goals is that they require massive belief in ourselves, massive action, and often represent a massive change from our current state. For example, if your goal is to go to the gym six days a week and you currently only go once every other week this goal requires 1) A belief that you are capable of increasing your gym going by 200%, 2) Putting in place a lot of logistics (think traveling to the gym, blocking time from work, waking up earlier, taking time away from other activities, planning meals differently, etc.), and 3) The ability to integrate this sustainably and consistently into our lives for the foreseeable future (because nobody sets a goal to go to the gym six days a week for only one week).
While a belief in ourselves might sound simple, many people fundamentally doubt it’s possible to achieve the goals they set. If you don’t believe in yourself, then certainly when #2 and #3 (logistics and consistency/repeatability) get hard, self-doubt is going to derail you.
Whether it’s the lack of belief in yourself or the massive overhaul in our daily routine, most people set out in pursuit of their big goals with great intentions but find themselves coming up short. It usually looks something like this:
- Set THE BIG GOAL (maybe the same goal you’ve been setting for yourself year after year…)
- Get started, take a few steps, make a little bit of progress…
- Then BAM! Life happens and we inevitably misstep, miss a deadline, fall short of perfection, have a setback, or otherwise find ourselves off course
- With that first misstep comes a whole variety of emotions and thoughts. Maybe guilt, sadness, inadequacy. Our inner critic comes out. Maybe we tell ourselves we just didn’t try hard enough, we don’t have as much will power as other people, we aren’t cut out for this. We get down on ourselves for not being able to do the really big goal.
- So we double down, we tell ourselves we will be better, more motivated, try harder next time. Start again tomorrow or next week.
Stay trapped in this pattern long enough and missteps start to feel like failure. A one-off mistake starts to feel like a permanent state of being. Our self-talk shifts from, “I’ll try again tomorrow”, to “What’s the point, I haven’t been successful in the past so what makes me think I will be successful next time”. Doubling down starts to look more like procrastination, pushing off, and avoidance. Repeated failure can be hard. So hard that in an effort to avoid feeling repeated failure, we give up the goal altogether.
The key to success is to avoid these demotivating thoughts and feelings by setting goals that are super small. So small they are easily achievable. Because when we achieve a goal, we feel good about ourselves. This builds confidence, belief, momentum. We change our self-talk to “I am the kind of person who can accomplish the goals I set”. These thoughts and feelings are inspiring and motivating. The exact opposite of the ones above.
When I say small I mean small. If your goal is to “stop eating junk food”, try reframing it as eat one meal this week without processed ingredients. If your goal is to “meditate for 30 minutes a day”, try changing it to 3 minutes a day. If your goal is to “start a business”, try changing it to spend 10 minutes every day this week interviewing business owners, doing research, or filling out and filing forms.
Remember to make any goals actionable (i.e., The difference between “Reduce my social anxiety” [not actionable] versus “Use 3 anxiety reduction tools each time I find myself anxious in a group setting [actionable]) and within your ability to act on (i.e., The difference between “Go on 5 job interviews this week” [not completely in your control to influence] versus “Apply to 5 positions this week” [within your control]).
While setting small goals technically moves you closer in the direction of THE BIG GOAL, that is actually not the purpose. The purpose of setting small goals is to build your confidence, your belief in yourself that you can set and achieve goals. Think of it like building a new skill set or learning to flex a new muscle. Each time you set and achieve a goal, you become more confident that you can set and achieve the next goal.