Building a Life Aligned to Your Values Part 2

Any goal that you might have is going to require a change to how you’re currently doing things. You can’t simply sit still and expect to get where you’re going. To effectively make those changes, we first need to talk about how to set the right kind of goals. Most of the time when we set a goal, we think about the outcomes we want. We set goals such as “I want to have 6-pack abs” or “My goal is to perform in front of a crowd”. The problems with these outcome-based goals are twofold: They are closed-ended, and they are not affecting change at the right level.

The main issue with a closed-ended goal is that once it’s finite. It’s a specific target that you either hit or miss, and it doesn’t address the behaviors or lifestyle changes required to reach it. It’s way too easy to get discouraged and say “Well, I don’t know how I’ll ever get to perform in front of a crowd. I keep practicing but I’m not getting any offers. I suppose I won’t reach this one!” Or if your goal was to go to the gym every day, when you inevitably miss a day you’ll feel like you’ve failed. Your “every day” goal is shot, and you feel like there’s no point to keep trying. This is a very discouraging feeling, and we bring it on ourselves by setting our goals up to be unattainable.

The other issue is that if we do manage to reach a closed-ended goal, we’re often doomed to slip back into old habits because we have no motivation to continue our new way of doing things. Since we didn’t address the lifestyle changes that we need to support the goal, we simply found a way of forcing it to work, we haven’t actually created any lasting change in our lives. Now that your brain has checked the box of “I completed this goal”, it feels free to let go of the obligation to act differently and keep up with the changes you’ve made.

I couldn’t even count how many times I’ve set a weight loss goal, hit the mark somehow, then went right back to my old weight because I had no internal motivator to keep my eating and exercise habits going. I bet you’ve done something like that too, and I’m not judging because it’s not conscious, but it illustrates the flaw in closed ended goals perfectly. Your brain function simply does not give you the urge to act because it feels like the job is already done, and this is much worse for those who have ADHD or other neurodivergences. We need to shift our focus when creating goals to ones that are open-ended, meaning they can continue indefinitely.

Now, simply making an outcome-based goal open-ended still does not address the underlying mechanisms that your brain uses to change itself. To create an open-ended goal that supports the behaviors and habits needed to reach it, we need to dive deeper into the lower levels of change that drive our outcomes so we can understand how to work with our brains. There are 3 levels of change, and outcomes are at the top level because they are only the results of the lower levels. Examples of outcomes change would be hitting your weight loss target, quitting smoking, performing on stage for an audience, or writing a book. These outcomes are not bad things, but you need to understand how we can connect where we are now to those outcomes we want. There are two lower levels of change that ultimately create the results we seek, which are systems change and identity change. We will discuss how to create these changes in depth later, but for now remember that your systems and identity changes are what I mean when we talk about the behaviors and habits that support our goals.

Thanks as always for reading,

Aaron Frank