the power of exchanging goals for intentions and plans

Goals. They’re how we achieve our dreams, right? Make them SMART and we have a greater chance of success or so we’ve been told. But how helpful is this approach? What if we let go of goals and focussed on intentions instead?

As we came to the end of 2024 and the classic point at which people start to look to the year ahead, make plans and set goals, I wrote about why I no longer set goals but rather set intentions. I would have probably left it there for a while, but there seems to be another flurry of posts and articles about goal setting (perhaps as the enthusiasm and motivation of January starts to wane?). So I decided to revisit this topic, especially in light of a wonderful analogy I heard recently.

We’re going to Italy, right?

It was at one of the recent sessions of the Parent Support Course I am currently running. We were discussing the "should-ing" that often happens in parenting and families and the difficulty of acceptance (one of the Nine Attitudes of mindfulness) One of the participants has a daughter with Autism and their journey as a family has been fraught with struggles as they learn to understand each other's needs and how to meet them. This mum said she'd heard the challenge of parenting a child with Special Educational Needs described like this:

It's like all your friends have been to Italy and they keep telling you how marvellous Italy is and how you've got to go! There's the Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Colosseum, Vatican City, pizza and pasta. It sounds so good you decide to book a trip to Italy.

You get on the plane. You're so excited to experience Italy! But when the plane lands and you get out, you discover you're not in Italy at all. You're in The Netherlands. You're angry, disappointed and frustrated. "But I didn't sign up for the Netherlands, I signed up for Italy!" you cry. There's no Colosseum or Vatican City. No pizza or pasta. As long as you keep hoping for Italy, you stay miserable and disappointed.

But when you let go of your Italy idea and accept that here you are in the Netherlands, you start to see that the Netherlands has charms of its own... it has windmills, canals, tulips and pancakes! Actually the Netherlands is a pretty cool place to be if you can accept you're just not going to Italy.

Perhaps you can see the parallels to our hopes and dreams for parenthood. But perhaps you can also see the parallels to other areas of life? Ageing, health or careers for example?

We can’t live in the future

Goals give us a sense of control. Of direction. That feels good. But when we cling tightly to outcomes and goals we are not allowing for the inevitable uncertainty of Life. We also close ourselves off to all the available possibilities. They also usually involve setting arbitrary target numbers: income, clients, subscribers, weight, dates. The numbers in and of themselves are meaningless. It's actually about how we hope we're going to feel when we get there.

But we can't live in the future. It is only ever now. We have to work out how we want to feel now. And that's what intention does.

Without plans we don't know what to do or how and where to direct our efforts.

Without intention, we lose sight of why we're efforting in the first place. That can take us to destinations we didn't actually want to go to.

Goals are only interested in the results and outcomes. The What and the When

Intentions however, focus on the purpose. The Why. They keep us going.

Plans take care of the process. The How. They find a way.

The why and how over the what

To expand the travel analogy we could say...

Goals says: "By the end of 2028 I will have travelled to eight new countries, specifically Italy, Hungary, Canada, India, Vietnam, Norway, Sweden and Kenya."

Intention says: "I want to explore and discover new places. I'd like to understand other cultures and try new experiences. I'm open to discovering uncharted territory and being surprised. I know it might be challenging sometimes and the path won't always be easy, but I am flexible and adaptable and someone who doesn't quit when the going gets tough. I want to soak up every moment and every experience along the way. Who knows what I will discover?"

Plans says: I'm going begin my travel and cultural adventures by booking two trips this year within my budget.

What about Point C?

To use a different travel analogy, if we're not careful, setting goals can be like fixing your gaze on a point on the horizon - Point B - so firmly that as you march towards it you don't notice all the ditches and rocks in your way (which you fall into or over) AND you miss the other places on your journey that might be even better. You don't even enjoy the view because you're just hell-bent on getting to point B by time X. If you don't make it to Point B (because you broke your leg trying to get there) you feel like a failure.

Making plans mean you decide tomorrow to set out for Point B over there in the distance because you've heard good things about it. You're not sure when you will arrive as you've never travelled there before but you set off anyway on the designated day. You might discover that the path to point B isn't quite as straight or easy as you anticipated, so you have to take a detour, but you eventually arrive at point B glad to have got there and find it's everything you hoped. On the other hand on the way to Point B, you might pass Point C and decide, you know what, that looks much better than Point B after all but were glad that you set out for Point B otherwise you'd never had discovered Point C.

This is why a creative practice can be such a powerful teacher. When I hold sketchbook workshops, we let go of goals and outcomes - wanting the art to look a certain way. Because guess what - we're rarely satisfied with the results taking that approach. But when we focus on the process, and being curious and open minded, unexpectedly pleasing results can occur. It's a kind of magic. Like Life.

What goals have you set yourself? No doubt you will have visualised what it feel like when you've achieved them. But are you clear on how you want to feel today?

Because today is the only day we ever have.