Loosen Your Grip on Your Goals, and Hold Tight To Your Vision

In the business world, we’ve long elevated goal-setting as a critical exercise. Twice a year we revisit our goals and re-write new ones: time-bound goals, short-term goals, long-term goals, performance-based goals, SMART goals, etc! When it comes to our personal lives and matters of health, well-being, career, personal or professional transformation, we tend to revisit our goals around key milestones like New Years, graduations and birthdays. 

Many of us have a love-hate relationship with our goals. 

We like to know where we are going and what ‘good’ looks like. We relish the sense of accomplishment that comes from getting things done...but we also rebel against the obligation to complete ‘required’ tasks. We turn away from goals unmet and we are verrrrrry good at spinning tales or scapegoating the external factors that made it “impossible” for us to succeed:

Too much work...too many distractions...incompetent leadership...imposter syndrome...a global pandemic!

In 2012 I set a goal for myself: Become a coach. I signed up for a coaching course at Columbia University, but on day one I read through the syllabus, I listened to the professor and I glanced around the classroom, only to talk myself out of it. I convinced myself that these were “not my people” and it was “not the right time.”

In 2015, after the birth of my first child, I set a goal for myself: Become a professional Coach. I enrolled in a coaching course with the Co-Active Training Institute and prepared to shuttle to Seattle on weekends. I completed one course before hitting pause...for a year...to stick with a safer bet: my consulting career. I convinced myself that this choice was “better for my family.”

In 2017, while I was pregnant with my second child, I set a goal for myself: Become a Co-Active Coach. I returned to Seattle and knocked out all the weekend courses as my belly grew. I hired a coach and I built a local client base...until my husband informed me that we needed to move cross-country not once, but twice, over the next 24 months. 

So...we uprooted, leaving behind a city and community I loved, to briefly plant our family in a new state. Once again, I felt I was losing momentum around my goal of becoming a professional coach, and inner voices started to convince me that external factors were standing in my way: “but my kids…” and “but it doesn’t make financial sense right now…”  

In 2019, I set a goal for myself: Become a certified professional Co-Active Coach. (Call it insanity or call it perseverance - I just couldn’t shake the idea!) I told myself this was going to be my year! I hired a new coach. I enrolled in months of certification coursework. I even helped facilitate multiple coaching courses, and I logged hundreds of coaching hours...and then BOOM! A global pandemic.

In a matter of months, everyone was confronted by insecurity and loss. It was only fitting that I lost some clients and I lost some momentum. As before, the inner voices and questions returned, mixed with fear and a new kind of guilt: “Who goes after their dreams during a pandemic?? This is not the time for dreams.” 

But this summer I reconciled something big for myself. I realized that my long-held goal was just one detail in a much bigger vision - a vision that buoyed me in a difficult year, when little else made sense. I still wanted to be a Coach, but what I really wanted was to nurture a career that inspired me and sustained me. I still wanted my work to be a seamless expression of who I am, who I care about and what I care about. I still wanted to be able to work from anywhere and make my own schedule, so I could be present for my kids and an active member of my community. More than ever, I wanted to reach people across the country and build a community of learners and leaders. I wanted to help people connect with purpose at a deeper level, to move their lives and careers forward - in spite of hardships, slowdowns, and detours!

My audacious and compelling wants had been there all along, but they were never written into my goal statements. They didn’t fit neatly into the SMART model!

Over the last eight years, I’ve learned how hard it can be to stop focusing on the timeline as a measure of success. I’ve learned to give my attention to who I am and what I can offer...and to accept that how much I can offer will ebb and flow with the tides of my life. 

I have also learned that a strong vision holds far more than a well-written goal statement. A strong vision holds vivid pictures of our ideals, our selves, our relationships, and the kinds of experiences we want to have. As such, our visions give us a lot more room to play, create, try, fail, rest, learn, and try again. 

This fall - arguably mid-pandemic! - I did add four letters to my name and I can now call myself a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach...not because I made it my yearly goal, but because I held on to a strong vision of what I wanted for my life, now and in the future. 

And because I didn’t back down when I fell short of my first, second and third goals.

So, as we stare down the last month of this unprecedented year, and a season in which reflection and goal-setting are trendy, allow me to emphasize three things: 

1. Goals are useful, but visions are imperative for when things get hard...and they will get hard!

A big, beautiful vision will give you the time and the space to iterate and learn. It will help you stay buoyant when things get hard. When you hold tight to a vision, your slowdowns or missteps are not your undoing. 

2. Don’t mistake a goal for a vision, and don’t let your vision be the size of a goal.

Back in 2012 I knew I wanted to accomplish something. My goal was about completing some course work so I could add some credentials to my name. Since nothing went according to plan, I had to change the goal: both my understanding of it and my relationship to it. Over and over again, things changed. It evolved, until I realized that my goal was just one part of a bigger, more compelling picture - the vision that picked me up and kept me moving, again and again.

3. Really think about what needs to be different, when all is said and done.

If you find it’s easiest for you to imagine a list of measurable outcomes you want to see, you are outlining goals. But if you can imagine a qualitatively different outcome, that includes new kinds of achievements, relationships and experiences, then hold on tight and allow this vision to pull you forward. 

You will get there.

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