Emotional Goal Setting

Emotional goal setting – How to make your emotional goals your primary goals - how you want to feel and what you expect to feel from achieving your tangible goals. Most people set tangible goals to the detriment of what they are really looking for - The emotional goals.

Take for example a young man buying an expensive car. Why does he buy it? If he buys the car because he thinks it will make him feel a certain way then he will eventually be disappointed. Things do not change the way we feel on a foundation level. If the purchase of the expansive car was the tangible goal then the feeling he was really aiming for was the emotional goal. His attention and energy was focussed on the wrong goal. Tangible goals are important but what we are looking for is generally the emotional goal. So we are disappointed when the tangible goal does not provide the achievement of the emotional goal. If he had set a goal of feeling success as his primary goal, rather than as a secondary goal, he would have been satisfied when he achieved that. Tangible goals are important but your emotional goals should be the primary goals.

A different example is in the dating arena. What are you looking for? Someone tall, good-looking, wealthy or who drives a fancy car?

Unfortunately if that is your primary goal you may miss out on the goal you ultimately look for – that emotional connection, comfort and support which is essential in an intimate loving relationship. If you get all the tangible things you asked for does this make you feel satisfied? Are you happy?

If instead you create a list of what you want in a relationship from an emotional point of view, that level of comfort, connection, communication and the real delight of the presence of the one you love and you get that - are you happy? Do you feel satisfied?

So how do you set your emotional goals?

Take a look at the tangibles you desire in your life and look at what you think you’ll get emotionally from them. When setting your emotional goals how you want to feel is far more important than what you want to happen. Have you ever looked back and realised that you are glad that a specific event you wanted to happen did not in fact happen as certain information came to light that made you realise that the tangible goal was not in fact a great idea or was set far too low?

If you, however, set an emotional goal of being happy, experiencing joy or satisfaction no matter how it looks or the tangible achievement if you achieve that goal of satisfaction you feel great and a success.

If you set a tangible goal of completing a few projects but the day goes a bit off track and you do not complete those specific projects though you may have completed many other tasks that the day threw at you will you feel satisfied and successful? Take instead an emotional goal of getting into bed at night and feeling the joy of a fantastic day, one that stretched you and was thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying. No matter what the day throws at you if you have a day with all green traffic lights and achieve that ownership of each achievement you will feel satisfied and successful.

This does not mean you should not set specific achievable tangible goals. In fact those are important. What it does mean is you should add your emotional goals for the day as your primary goals. Have the tangible goals as the secondary goals for the day.

Richard Riche  is a Motivational speaker and Self-esteem trainer at www.emotionalpictures.co.za