Follow These 3 Steps to Set Your Goals Fearlessly

When are engagement and energy highest for setting and committing to achieving goals? It’s when the goals align with your strongest values and motivators, when you are at full choice for what you are setting out to accomplish, and you decide how you will achieve these goals.

Consider the willingness, enthusiasm, buy-in, and motivation in these phrases:

I need to take training.

I want to take training.

I choose to take training.

Higher levels of energy help you envision more opportunities and possibilities, while lower energy narrows and limits your view of what’s achievable.

How would it be to have a mindset that sparks high energy for creating and achieving your goals? 

When I work with individuals and teams on setting the stage for change and goal planning, I talk about the mindsets they can adopt as they plan ahead:

Needing comes from outside direction or an inner sense of obligation, judgment, or even desperation. You might be told to do something by someone else (boss or company says to take XYZ training class), or you feel you “should” take this on, e.g., “it’s the right thing to do” or “if I don’t do this, [bad thing] will happen to me.”

The engagement and commitment that this mindset yields will be low. Acting on these goals set out of “need” will feel burdensome or inconvenient. You might question the value of doing this in the first place, doubt that you can succeed at it, or carry a significant stress as you think about serving an agenda that isn’t yours. 

Wanting is rooted in desire and aspiration. You have some outcomes in mind, you’re clear on the benefits that will come to you, and you have some idea of the steps to achieve your goal. There might be some conditionality or expected resistance here, such as “I want to take training if I can fit it into my schedule,” or “I want to take training, but I don’t think it’ll be approved.”

While commitment and engagement to these goals will be higher than those you “need” to do, there is still a bit of a hedge here. Setting goals from “wanting” might come from not measuring up to an internal or external standard, a sense of lack, or low power or influence to accomplish what you’re setting out to do.

If you perform in either of these frameworks, sustainability becomes an issue. Clearly, if you operate reactively from “need,” you will burn out sooner than later. When that occurs, you can slide from being reactive to feeling defeated.

And, while setting goals from an aspirational perspective of “want” is more proactive and can deliver incremental change, it’s not sufficient to generate truly transformative results.

Conditionality and comparisons limit your perspective to what’s practical. They lead you to play it safe from a position of fear – fear of mistakes, failure, embarrassment, or the unknown.

Ask yourself, if I were fearless, what would I do? 

There is a mindset that is key to performing fearlessly, expanding your perspective, and setting goals to deliver lasting, transformational growth and change.

Choosing is fully empowered, self-directed, and unstoppable. You are wholly committed and have unwavering high energy for the goals you establish. You embrace complete ownership for what you are setting out to accomplish, operate in alignment with your strongest values and motivators, and are completely confident that you will transcend any obstacle that arises.

When you operate from choice in developing your career goals, here’s what happens:

• You conceive of new possibilities that weren’t on your radar screen.

• You have a passion and drive that far eclipse what you believed you could generate.

• You develop powerful, implementable ideas to overcome what has previously held you back or convinced you to “play small.”

Follow these three steps to shift yourself into this mindset:

1. Get to your “why.” An executive I know refers to this as your “noble purpose.” It’s the fire in your belly that drives you to do what you do. It’s your core motivation stripped down to its most basic essence. Take time to reflect on your “why” and write it down in no more than 15 words.

   If it’s longer than that, it’s too complex.

2. Write your vision statement. Imagine that it’s one year from now and you have accomplished all that you had set out to do. What are you doing professionally and personally? How do you feel? What experiences are you getting from life?

   Now, write it in the present tense as if it has already occurred, using statements like “I am…” instead of “I will…”. Take 10 or 15 minutes to write your vision. Let your creativity and intuition flow.

3. Frame your goals in terms of your “why” and vision. Find that connecting thread between your deepest motivations and what you’re setting out to achieve. When goals align to the most vital parts of what you do and whom you want to be, you’ll be inspired to take on challenges and develop solutions with new and increased clarity and confidence.

Finally, share your goals. There are multiple benefits to doing this. Speaking about your big goals shifts you from “willing to dream” to the “courage to dare and do.” It also helps you enlist allies to bring these dreams to reality. 

. . .

This is how setting goals from a mindset of choice helped me when I was at a career crossroads a few years ago.

I was in the midst of a successful career as a finance leader within the wealth management industry. My influence and accomplishments continued to grow, yet I felt dissatisfied and stuck. 

As I planned my goals for the year, I recognized that I had a choice in my mindset.

I could be reactive – justify my frustration about the things that were outside my control, tolerate the lack of opportunities and the difficulties of mobility at the firm, and stay in my current role. 

I could be proactive – update my resume and LinkedIn profile, carefully begin letting my network know that I was open to new opportunities and start applying for new roles. This seemed like the logical, practical thing to do.

However, I didn’t have conviction or certainty about what I wanted to do next. In the absence of a plan and direction, being reactive or proactive would not serve me well. I needed a different mindset to give me the clarity I lacked. 

I reflected on what motivated me daily about my job beyond the paycheck.

Even though I was very good at what I did, what came from deep down was the realization that I didn’t want to do it any longer. 

Doing this actually opened a pathway for me to realize that the reason “why” I come to work every day was because I want to be for others the kind of career resource I would want myself (my “why” in 15 words). 

This activated two things for me – the awareness of who and what I truly wanted to be, and the agility to shift my focus and direction to an entirely different career. 

Time to create my future! 

I set specific goals for where I wanted to be in a year – to have enrolled in and graduated from an accredited coach training program, to have shed the aspects of my current role that didn’t resonate with me, and to BE A COACH (my vision). The first part was all on me. I knew that I needed support on the final two pieces. I decided to share these goals with my manager. 

I told her that I had this idea for a “grand experiment” to create a coaching program for the analysts and managers on my team. It would focus on their professional development and career planning, things that were sorely lacking throughout our organization (frame goals with my “why” and vision). 

She immediately saw the passion and energy that I had for this experiment.

She also saw the value and win-win of my idea. My team would get support in their professional development in new and unique ways that were never available to them, and I would be working in line with what motivated me in ways that I hadn’t for a very long time. 

Simply opening myself to the possibility of change led to opportunities materializing for me in ways that they never did. 

. . .

Now, it’s your turn.

Are you in that all too common space of feeling stuck or performing at less than your best?

Setting your goals fearlessly by operating from choice is a simple yet powerful tool for uncovering or rediscovering where your passion lies and activating your energy to create and attain meaningful, transformative goals.

What do you want to create, right now?