Ep. 47 Perfectionism and Goal Setting
After a real-life, in-person conversation between the two of us about perfectionism, we decided we needed an episode about how a fear of mistakes can hold us back from the goals we really want to achieve.
We talk about:
Why trying to prevent messing up our goals isn’t the right approach -- and what to do instead
Asking ourselves what we’re REALLY trying accomplish by setting a goal: is it to check off the boxes or to create a transformation?
Why we don’t necessarily think goals need to be specific and measurable
The difference between creation goals and maintenance goals
What it would look like to create your own definition of failure
Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching the progress project. Listen on itunes by clicking here and picking ep. 47
Highlights from our episode on Perfectionism
What are we actually trying to accomplish by setting a goal?
Is my goal just to be a person who filled in the boxes and did something perfectly every day? Or is my goal to transform into a person who lives or becomes a certain way?
Let your goal be more about transformation than a specific behavior. Then let the “how” describe the specific behavior.
Laura: “I remember last year I didn’t have a lot of very specific goals but I had certain feelings that I wanted to achieve and ways that I wanted to be as a person and I think that’s what worked so well last year for me.”
Kristin: “That’s one of the main things I’ve learned about goal-setting in the last year: it’s okay to have a goal that’s not necessarily super specific and measurable even though that’s what we’re told makes a good goal. I like making something specific and measurable in the how. But my goals are usually something like a way I want to feel or something I want to change about my character or how I want to be or how I want to act towards the people I love. And those aren’t always measurable but at the end of the year I still know whether I’ve achieved that or not.”
When we don’t do something that we’re afraid of because we’re afraid of failing, we’re just failing ahead of time.
Questions to ask about a goal:
What would it look like to create my own definition of failure for this goal?
What am I willing to sacrifice?
What am I not willing to sacrifice to achieve this goal?
you got this!
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