If Setting Goals Stresses You Out, Read This!
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 reasons why setting goals might stress you out
⋒ How you can make setting goals less stressful
⋒ How using the S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method™ can support you when setting goals and pursuing your dreams
I feel like there are 2 camps when it comes to goal setting: people either love setting fresh goals or the thought of it stresses them the heck out. Not gonna lie, I’ve always loved setting new goals; since I was a little girl, I would get so stoked at the start of a new year, dreaming up all of my goals and mapping out what I wanted to accomplish in the year ahead.
But I get quite a few DMs and emails from people telling me that goal setting is something that they dread because they feel like they’re doing it wrong or they’re bad at it.
We are going to toss out those lies in today’s blog post because I came up with 5 reasons why you might dread goal setting and a solution for each one of those, so let’s jump in!
01. You go into goal setting putting a lot of pressure on yourself.
Listen, goals are not meant to cause you stress. Now, yes, sometimes little parts of a goal journey can be stressful but the thought of the goal itself that you’re pursuing really shouldn’t make you feel uneasy or heavy.
I’m all for holding ourselves accountable and keeping promises to ourselves but I feel like putting outrageous pressure on ourselves oftentimes stems from perfectionism.
Perfectionism: refusal to accept any standard short of perfection.
That sounds terrible. There is no room for perfectionism when you’re living a peacefully productive life because a peacefully productive life requires flexibility and grace and perfectionism doesn’t allow those.
So what is the solution if you’re having a hard time with goal setting because you’re putting a ton of pressure on yourself?
Solution: Redefine what goals are and the purpose that they serve. And work on your self-talk.
Let’s start with the first part of that – redefining what goals are and they purpose they serve in your life.
Goals can be tricky because it’s tempting to focus on the destination, but most of your time is spent on the journey on the way to goals. Goals aren’t a metric to measure whether or not you’re doing enough; they’re vehicles that move you toward what matters most to you. Goals are tools to help you show up intentionally for your life.
And the second part – work on your self-talk.
I used to really struggle with my self-talk. It was mostly negative; I was very harsh in the way that I spoke to myself. I called myself names like a failure, lazy, not good enough, unworthy, etc.
Those kinds of conversations were the norm in my mind. And because of that, I was showing up burned out, hurried, and overwhelmed in my life. Y’all know that I’m a believer that our thoughts have a direct impact on our actions.
When I started my Hustle Sanely journey, I learned how powerful our self-talk is and I did some inner work through journaling and therapy to learn how to shift my thoughts and actually change the neural pathways in my brain by implementing positive self-talk.
My favorite way to step up my self-talk game is by practicing affirmations. We have a few episodes on the show that dives into affirmations so if you need support there, scroll back and check those out.
02. You don’t have a goal-setting strategy.
Tell me if you can relate – you whip out your goal-setting worksheet for the year and stare at the page with absolutely no idea what to write. You feel like the heading “Yearly Goals” is staring back at you, mocking you – daring you to try and figure out what to write on the page.
Your brain feels like it turns to mush when it’s time to write goals and you get really frustrated and overwhelmed by the thought of coming up with goals.
The reason you might be feeling this way is because you don’t have a goal-setting strategy. Blank pieces of paper can be intimidating AF when you’re trying to do anything without a game plan.
So what’s the solution if you don’t have a goal-setting strategy?
Solution: Use your vision to help you set goals.
When it comes to goal-setting, you shouldn’t be pulling things out of thin air – that is not helpful and not the vibe around here. You are not a magician reaching your hand into a hat and hoping to pull out a rabbit. You should be strategically crafting goals based on your season of life and the direction you want to head in.
The only way to know what direction you want to head in is to be clear on your vision and use that vision to set goals that align with it.
How can you get clear on your vision?
My 2 favorite exercises to help with this:
~ Imagining my ideal day
~ Filling out a life vision map
I won’t go into too much detail because I could do a whole blog post on this (maybe I will) but these exercises are actually in the 2023 Peacefully Productive Planner®. At this time, we are sold out of the paper version and will not be restocking, but you can snag the digital version here.
Also, I can’t NOT mention my favorite tool when it comes to writing goals: the Hustle Sanely S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method™. S.W.I.T.C.H. is an acronym so let me tell you what each letter stands for:
Specific
Why attached
Impact-driven
Timeline-based
Check-in meetings scheduled
Habits & routines to support you
Writing your goals using the Hustle Sanely S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method™ helps you focus on who you’re becoming as you work toward your goals and it positions you to take major and meaningful action on your goals while prioritizing your mental health and the important relationships in your life.
We have an entire podcast episode dedicated to me walking you through the Hustle Sanely S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method™ in detail so if that sounds like something you want to learn more about you can listen to that here.
03. You create unrealistic timelines for your goals.
Raise your hand if you’re a fellow recovering workaholic or hustle culture-aholic? Cool – you’re in good company because my hand is very much raised.
Hustle culture tells us that we have got to go, go, go when it comes to our goals. There is no time to rest, to take care of our mental health, to pour into the important relationships in our lives - not if any of it is going to slow you down when it comes to achieving your next goal.
Well I’m here to tell you from personal experience…that is B.S. When you operate that way, viewing a timeline that you created for yourself as a chain, you’re missing the mark of pursuing your goals.
When we have that mentality – that goals HAVE to be done at super speed, sacrificing everything else in our lives on the way there, that’s when we crash and hit burnout. Making the journey on the way to a goal sustainable is just as important, if not more important, than the goal itself.
I’ve reached so many of my goals in the past by rigidly following timelines but by the time I get to the goal, I’m a shell of myself, completely burned out and I don’t even have the energy left to celebrate the goal.
Solution: View a timeline as a tool to hold you accountable.
Here’s the truth – most timelines are arbitrary, meaning they’re based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system. So many people treat timelines as these life or death situations, when in reality, they’re not.
You are in charge of the timelines attached to your goals.
Like I said earlier, I’m all about keeping promises to ourselves but sometimes life happens, our seasons shift without notice, and we have to pivot our goals and timelines.
Example: I had no clue I would be pregnant for most of 2022. When that happened, I had to shift around a lot of my business and life goals and their timelines. Some goals I had to get rid of altogether and some I had to move to this year
I made this post on my Instagram stories back in November and so many people reached out to me saying how much it resonated with them and it really fits here so I want to repeat it:
“Life isn't meant to be the same during different seasons. It's your job as the leading lady of your life to reflect on and adjust your habits + routines to support where you are now so you can get where you want to be as the healthiest version of yourself”
Instead of viewing yourself as a failure if you don’t meet the expected timeline of your goal, flip that mindset and remember that you really are the leading lady of your life and it’s far better to shift your timeline to support you than it is to run yourself into the ground trying to meet a timeline that you created in the first place.
Just like I always say, our schedule and routines are tools, not chains and that includes timelines!
04. You’re setting goals based on what you see other people doing.
It can be very tempting to kind of copy and paste other people’s goals into your own life, especially when you see someone so hype about their goals. Like that energy rubs off and you’re like, “WOW YEAH I want to do that, too!” And hey, I’m sure your heart is in the right place when you do that.
It’s totally okay to be inspired by others but expecting to be able to take someone else’s goal and insert it into your life doesn’t make sense because you and your life are completely different! You are your own person with your own experiences and circumstances and that’s important to keep in mind when creating your goals!
Just because your neighbor has a goal to revamp her front porch this year doesn’t mean you have to.
Just because your co-worker is committed to losing 15 pounds this year doesn’t mean you have to.
Just because your friend is working toward having her first million-dollar year in business doesn’t mean you have to.
I could go on and on.
You can admire someone’s goal for their life without having to take it on for yourself.
Solution: Set goals you actually care about and that make your life better.
One tip that I talk about in some of my courses when it comes to getting clear on your vision and setting goals, is if you really have no idea where to start when it comes to setting goals in your life, think about the deficits in your life. What is a pain point in your life? Use that to inspire you – make your life better by creating goals that fill those gaps.
So let’s say you bust out your Peacefully Productive Journal™ and start brainstorming pain points in your life and your list looks something like this:
~ I am late for work a lot because I hit snooze too many times in the morning.
~ I struggle with the Sunday scaries and have a lot of anxiety on Sunday evenings.
~ I don’t feel fulfilled at my job.
Some goals you might decide to work toward are:
~ Create evening and morning routines that help me get to bed on time and give me something to look forward to waking up to.
~ Creating a routine that helps me get ready for my week before Sunday so that I can spend Sundays resting and relaxing.
~ Figure out what type of job would fulfill me and create a plan of action to make the move toward leaving my current job and pursuing that.
Instead of copying other people’s goals because they sound good, take some time to reflect on your pain points so you can set goals that YOU actually care about and that will make your life better!
05. You’re setting too many goals.
This is probably the one that I think most people have a hard time with and I’m here to tell you that sometimes, honestly most of the time, less is more when it comes to goal setting! Goal-setting is not the same as an easter egg hunt – you do not need to run around your life looking for goals to throw in your basket just for the sake of having a long goal list to pursue.
A question that I get asked pretty often in regard to goals is “Do you have to have a new goal to pursue every month?”.
I want to talk about that after I share the solution to setting too many goals – which I’m sure you can guess is:
Solution: Set fewer, more intentional goals.
So let’s answer that FAQ:
Do you have to have a new goal to pursue every month?
I think a lot of people get hung up on how the Peacefully Productive Planners are set up – there is space at the beginning of the planner to write a goal you are pursuing every month and each month has one of those S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method™ planning pages for you to take one of your yearly goals and make it a S.W.I.T.C.H. goal.
But what people tend to skip over is the very important part of the planner that says: “Don’t feel pressured to fill this all up at once.”
The way the planner is set up is a guide – I am by no means telling you that you HAVE to be pursuing a new goal every single month. Sometimes certain goals take way longer to pursue than a month and they carry over into other months.
Or sometimes we are working on 3-4 goals at once because they are goals that require less capacity from us and we feel comfortable goal stacking.
Here’s the truth – there are no rules when it comes to how many goals you pursue at once.
You can pursue 3 goals a year or 23 goals a year.
You get to decide that. No one knows your capacity better than you. And also remember that it is very normal for your capacity to ebb and flow based on your season of life. And when I say capacity, I am talking about your output – what you’re able to do.
Stop putting yourself in a box. You can pursue as few or as many goals as you’d like. Don’t get hung up on the quantity of goals but focus on the quality of your goals instead.
The key to each goal you pursue is making sure that it is intentional and appropriate for your life’s vision!
And that is what I’ve got for you today – 5 reasons why you might be having a hard time with goal setting and some solutions to try. I hope this was helpful - if it was, I’ll love you forever if you take a screenshot and share this episode over on Instagram stories and tag me @jessmmassey! I really do love and appreciate seeing your takeaways from these blog posts!
While we are sold out of our 2023 paper planners, we still have so many other productivity tools to support you as you pursue your goals!
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