How Are Your Goals Going? Try This Tweak

Goal Setting

12 Feb

After talking about the Barking Dog and Wise Owl parts of ourselves recently, it got me to thinking about how this relates to goal setting.

I’ve been setting goals with people in my corporate career and in coaching for over 10 years and here’s what I’ve seen (stay tuned for a funny goal of mine too):

Pressure / being an a-hole to ourselves does not work. We think beating ourselves up, pushing ourselves to work late or go to the gym will create long term results and it really doesn’t. Short-term, it can work, but I inevitably see people fall back to old habits when they come from this approach (the Barking Dog essentially – also known as the Drill Sargeant).
What works (and research backs this up) is self-compassion. Taking yourself by the hand, understanding why you don’t want to do something, gently reminding yourself why you want to do it – all of that not only feels so much better, but it actually makes habits stick (hello Wise Owl).

MY OWN GOAL

You’ve probably heard me talk about how I reallyyyy hate washing my hair.

I put it off for days and it really bugs me, so I decided I wanted to finally work on this properly in January.

I observed why I wasn’t doing this seemingly “easy” goal.

Throughout the day, I noticed myself criticising my hair in the mirror thinking some version of “you should have washed it. It looks so greasy. Why can’t you sort this out?”

So my experiment became to start complimenting my hair (and listening to the Wise Owl).

I would brush it slowly in the morning, do slightly different hairstyles or use a different clip, noticing how nice it was looking, even if it wasn’t freshly washed.

Lo and behold, my goal has become easy.

I wash my hair regularly without much drama, because I’ve come at it from a place of self-compassion NOT bullying.

Instant relief.