Does this sound like you?
- Once I get the promotion, I will feel like my career is on track
- After this busy period, I won’t have to work so much and can spend time doing things I enjoy
- When I make just a bit more money, I will feel financially secure enough to move across the country / start a family / travel / write a book.
In our goal-oriented society, setting goals can often be powerful motivators that drive professional and personal success. But what happens when you achieve that goal? Is life different? Are you working harder than before? Are you confused that instead of feeling happy, you are perhaps haunted by anxiety?
A little over a year ago, I was struggling to feel happy. Happy in my own skin. Happy with success. Happy with life. To everyone who reached out, supported and helped me along the way, I want to say thank you.
I think some of it was hitting menopause early (I was almost 40), and some of it was fear of success. And that achieving my goals had not made me feel any different.
Right through school and my career, I have been an ambitious person. I am drawn to other ambitious people. I really love having a target to achieve. Setting goals became second nature – by this age I will have / be this and I will feel happy.
But whilst setting goals has its value, it also reduces my enjoyment of the process. It stops me recognising and celebrating all of the small incremental steps along the way.
In a business context, goal-setting can be very useful. But it can blind you to every bit of progress that gets you to somewhere new and better than before…because it is not quite achieving that one goal.
It is spring – the goal-setting time of year, so what am I going to do?
Well if someone would have told me 7 years ago that I would be running a business as successful as mine is today, with a team that I hugely respect and like, working for clients and projects that we believe in, I’d have been very happy.
So instead of that one big goal, we have a set of values and intentions about how we want to be, what we want people to know us for and the kind of work and clients that make us happy. As a team, we have decided to trust the process and enjoy wherever it leads us.
And I am going to practice feeling grateful. I am grateful for the flexibility and fulfilment that I have in my job. I am grateful that I don’t get Sunday night work dread. And I am grateful to be right here, right now, feeling at peace and not racing off towards the next goal before I feel happy.