What I learned about Goal Setting that will be very valuable to you.

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Updated 6 years ago

Separate your Goals
from your Expectations.

Why and how to change what you know about goals and expectations.
Get a pardigm shift for your goals and expectations TODAY.

WHY?

It will be valuable to you because it will help you differentiate and not give up.
That's why I want to give the same value to you.
Because you still will be going for your goals.
Without becoming buttheart or concerned that it will never work out.

HOW?

Many people have things in their mind they want to reach.
But they want to know how they can do this.
This will be done by separating your goals from your expectation.
Therefore you're now able to set your goal as high as possible.
And your expectation have to be as low as possible.
They should never be equal.
Because this will kill your motivation.
And make you give up.
Because you will deplete all your willpower after a while.
And another point is: Make it measurable.
Manipulate your expectation consciously.
How? Sit down and think about where you want it to be. Be conscious about it.

What?

a) What normally everyone is doing.

So what is this now all about?
To make it clear:

Example one: Singing

Let's imagine your goal is to sing a song.
Hit every note. And sound like a super star. Closest as possible at least. ;-)
But you never sang ever before. You have no control over your voice whatsoever.

And your goal is: To sing the best you can after a certain time, e.g. 2 months.
By practicing.

Now what many will be thinking:

I try it once. (once might mean several days here and then they get struck that it does not work.)

Because you expected to reach your goal then.

Now let me get back to the how:

Separating your goals from your expectation.

I'll explain further down below how to do that.
It means: Your goal is the endpoint so far, to say: I reached that milestone.
Your expectation is more a like where you hope to be. It's more wish thinking.

Example two: Long / Broad Jumping.

(Is that the right term you'd use as a native speaker? :-) Correct me if I am wrong.)

Here the same principles apply as for singing.
But it's a far easier way to measure your results.

Let's imagine you never jumped. Or never measured how far you may be able to jump.
Standing. Not running. At first.

Getting a Feeling for where you're at right now:

So you get your first try. You jump and you see: It's 50 cm (1.64042 ft).
You try it again and you land at 75cm (2.46063 ft.)
Third try and you hit 80cm. And whatever you do, that day you see, your limit is 80cm.

Now there is this Expectation.

Now you have an idea: You get ambitious and you want to hit 3m which is about 9.8ft
(from your stance, no running involved).

Setting the Goal - Equal to the Expectation (Bad Idea)

Since you learned from others that having high standards is a good thing.
You set the expectation equal to the goal.
This basically means you want to hit the 3m the next day.

Come on guys, you know that's not possible if you couldn't reach the 1m mark the first day, is it?

And now I'll explain to you in a bit why this is a very bad idea.
Because this basically means: Tomorrow you want to hit the 3m mark.
So you try and try and try. But you don't set your expectation lower.
You have a "end goal" view in terms of "I must be there now. Today."

You try it all day. It doesn't work out, your willpower gets depleted...
And.... you give up. That's it. Doesn't work.
"Stupid goal setting, it doesn't work", you tell to yourself.

b) What you have to change to make it work.

Set your expectation as low as possible.
Yes, have still your goal in mind. But set your expectation as low as possible.
What would that mean in terms of singing?

what this means for the singing example:

Can I improve my singing at least 1 percent today?
Or maybe even 0,1%?
This would be enough.
Because then you're moving towards your goal.
And that's all you have to do to stop spinning your wheels and depleting your willpower.

But how do you know if you got a little bit better?

You can for example put your efforts into a singing forum where people can give you feedback.
You could upload it on soundcloud and do a singing study.
You could upload it on youtube and make a story out of it that shows your progress.

But if you'd like an even more technical approach where you don't have to put yourself out there:

Use melodyne. Or any other program where you can measure notes. And see how far you from hitting the actual note.

Make your measurements criteria clear.

1.) How much Hz Or in Melodyne cents are you off?
2.) Next measurements: Do you know the text? (if you're doing lyrics).
Because if you know the text you can concentrate more on the melody and the singing itself.
3.) Can you feel what you are singing?
4.) What about your breathing, intonation, voice control, tone drift, pitch drift, vibrato and so on.

Let's imagine, if you hit all that you got YOUR 100%.

Goal reached. But your expecation was only to improve a little bit every day.
And not hit home tomorrow.

what this means for the long/broad jumping example:

It just means: Did you manage to jump one inch further at a time? Or a day?
Or maybe even a cm?
Then you're good to go. Because you're moving towards your goal.
Well done.

So therefore: It's still good to set your goals quite high.
They should always be compared to your expectation.

Only if you set your goals astronomically high, which might some now think could also be a good idea.

No. Don't do that. Set the goal for example double of what you might be able to do now.
Because when you reach it, you can set a new one again.

Procrastination Addiction vs...

If you set your expectation equal to the goal and the goal to high as well,
you only create an addiction to procrastinate. This is what we don't want.

...vs reaching your Goals Addiction

Let's say your expecation is the shift that should be slightest unit making you move forward.
And the good thing is: It has a positive side effect.

Because if you far exceed your expectation (that is crazily low, thank god)
you will be rewarded with a better mood.

In the longterm you got a positive addiction to reaching your goals.

Implement it today.

Because you can (continue reading below...)

apply this on any area on your life.

Now you will be much more thriving instead of coping.

~Holger :)

P.S.: For mathematical nerds: It's like a vector. The vector has a direction that points towards the goal. It's not important how much you're moving towards the goal a day.

Only important thing is: Did you move at all?
If you did, you're good to go.
If not, there might be something holding you back.
But that would be material for another article.

And now, have fun, remove your blockages and go for it.

Like others say:

(Now you can...) Just do it!

Have a nice day and a wonderful weekend.