Aim for Targets not Goals3 min read

How are you doing on your New Year’s Goals?

If your answer is, “Janine, they are doing great, I’m on track, making progress and moving along my road to success.” Then keep on doing your thing and share this article with a friend who needs some support.

However, if you answer in the negative on this question then you find the rest of this article helpful. It took me awhile to learn the value of goal setting. Once I had goal setting in the bag, it took additional years to learn the value of targets over goals. Year after year I would set goals and couldn’t understand what I was doing that was causing me to fail. That’s when I started calling my goals targets and began training my mind to think in systems.

1. You Start with a Vision

Once I learned the value of vision boards and started using them every year, the need for targets became apparent. Vision boards helped remind me every day why I was doing what I was and what I wanted the end result to look like. When you look at a picture of a temple in Mexico long enough with the strong desire to see it, you’ll eventually find a way to make that trip. How? By making your first target, “obtain passport.”

2. You get Credit for “Close Enough”

Once I started to view my vision board with the use of targets rather than goals, my brain relaxed. I found that by using strict goals with defined quantities was causing me to really feel like a failure each time I didn’t hit them. Why? Because I grew up in a family of football fanatics. Goals were binary. You either hit them or you didn’t. You either got points or you were zero. Goals didn’t work for me.

However, Targets did. I got credit for getting “close” to my target. In my mind I didn’t “fail.” My self talk was telling me, “good enough.” Close enough is better than zero. I was moving toward my targets and even though I didn’t hit them every time (think deadlines for writers) it didn’t matter. I was making progress and I was staying motivated and energized by the use of targets over goals.

3. Your Focus is Fixed

With the use of a vision board and the word “target” in your head rather than goals, you’ll find you stay on track much more easily. You’re walking down your road to your dreams and no matter how many side trips you may make, you’re still on track because your eye is firmly fixed on your target and your vision board. These visual cues keep your aim and your mindset fixed on what you want to accomplish and acquire rather than on what “didn’t” happen. The thing about targets is that your inflight trajectory has great aim even though your actions may wander and curve, but your eye is firmly fixed on the bull’s-eye.

I highly encourage you to take some time 20-30 minutes tops and go over the New Year’s Dreams you have for yourself. Evaluate if those goals are yours or someone else’s. Is what you were working on really for your happiness or were you trying to please someone else? Figure out what really makes you happy and excited and start making targets that cause you to feel energized rather than burdened.