How I Use Stories for Personal Goal-Setting and Life Planning
I don’t know about you, but goals haven’t been working for me lately.
To be honest, goals haven’t been working for me… ever.
In the past, my personal goal-setting pattern has looked something like:
set a goal that’s ‘SMART’
Start down the path of pursuing the goal
Get some early wins and feel extremely motivated by my own commitment and initial action,
Then… life starts happening. Work gets crazy, or I have trouble in one of my primary relationships. Or, maybe my ‘shiny object syndrome’ kicks in and a new more exciting or more urgent goal pops up. I start losing momentum, promising myself that I’m going to get back on track. But weeks pass, maybe months, and I may completely forget about the original goal or decide that it wasn’t really that important to begin with.
So, this year, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of starting with goals (aka, the trees), I decided to start with a story (aka, the forest).
I’m a big picture thinker, so context and the larger story are always important to me. When solving problems at work, I usually start by getting an understanding of the systems, people, and structures surrounding the problem or challenge, because that’s… what a good consultant does.
So why not take the same approach for my personal life?
