Change Academy

3 types of goals and what they reveal about you

Aug 6, 2024

Discover the three types of goals: emotional, behavioral, and outcome. Learn how understanding these can reveal the clarity and alignment of your aspirations. The discussion emphasizes the need to support emotional goals with concrete behavioral actions. You'll also explore how misaligned goals can hinder progress. Engaging exercises prompt reflection on your current goals and their alignment with your values. Tune in for insights that can help you create a more fulfilling and productive life!

18:22

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Quick takeaways

Emotional goals reflect how we wish to feel, while behavioral goals represent the actions that support achieving those feelings.

Aligning our goals with personal values ensures that our aspirations lead to fulfillment rather than being driven by external pressures.

Deep dives

Understanding Goal Types for Personal Growth

Goals can be categorized into three main types: emotional, behavioral, and outcome goals. Emotional goals focus on how an individual wishes to feel, such as wanting to feel confident, connected, or at peace. Behavioral goals represent the specific actions that can support the achievement of emotional states, such as meditating to feel calmer. Outcome goals are tangible results one aims to achieve, like getting a promotion or completing a marathon, and they often reveal personal values and priorities.

Embrace Emotions, Unhook From Them

01:29

Understanding and Aligning Your Goals for Personal Growth

18min

Goals come in different flavors--and they don’t all work same way. By understanding the differences, we can uncover ways in which our goals may be a bit fuzzy, lacking support, in conflict with one another, or even just out of balance. That insight can help us fine-tune our efforts, helping us create lives that are healthier, happier, more productive, and more meaningful!

Key Takeaways:

Make sure that your emotional and outcome goals are supported by specific behavioral goals.
There’s an important difference between emotional goals (how we want to feel in our lives) and the desire to simply “feel better right now,” which can often lead us to act in ways that thwart our progress toward our actual goals.
It can be hard to stay motivated by behavioral goals alone, so try to be clear on what emotional or outcome goals your behavioral goals are in service of.
We also want to check our goals for alignment with our other goals and our values and adjust as necessary.

Lab Experiment:

Make a list of your current goals, objectives and aspirations and sort them into behavioral, emotional, and outcome goals.

Does one category dominate your list?
If most of your goals are behavioral, what sort of outcome or emotional goals will these behaviors lead to?
Are your emotional goals supported by behavioral goals?
Are your outcome goals supported by specific behavioral goals?
Why do these outcomes matter to you; how do they align with your values and long-term vision?
What emotional goals might your outcome goals serve?
Do you have goals that are in conflict with one another? Can these two goals co-exist?
If not, how do your values suggest you ought to proceed?
Do your goals reflect the things you care about most? Do they bring you closer to a life that is aligned with your deepest values?

Mentioned

Weighless Program for sustainable weight management

Overcoming stress and emotional eating

Happiness Trap by Russ Harris

Ep #146: Sense foraging: How to do an end run around the DMN

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