Goals are vital to our wellbeing. And taking care of yourself is critical as we all navigate through the changes due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
The founders of Goal-Setting Theory (yes, that’s a thing)—Edwin Locke and Gary Latham— say that making progress toward our goals significantly contributes to our wellbeing. Goals are good—when we set them right.
But how do you know you’re setting them the best way, and what is the advice for setting goals when there’s, you know, a global pandemic that makes it almost impossible to think too far in the future?!
We spoke with a positive psychologist, Dr. Sasha Heinz on how you can still set goals during the Coronavirus, and also have amazing results. We learned how to set goals (even with uncertainty), how to pivot goals you already had, and how setting goals can not only bring you comfort right now, but can also bring you a sense of accomplishment and set the tone for future rewards.
Pardon our interruption—this is Career Contessa. Join us for this episode of The Femails where we share how to set big goals during uncertainty with specific steps from Dr. Sasha Heinz.
Listen to the full episode over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts. A full transcription of the episode can be found here. Now, back to the article.
Missed the event? Watch our live conversation online, learn from some of our biggest questions below, and remember—all of our handy webinars are free during all things COVID-19.
What Happens to Us When We’re Anxious About the Future?
First of all, it’s important to remember that anxiety is just a feeling (and that feelings are valid!). As an entire society, we are in the process of experiencing a shared trauma from COVID-19 that is affecting our thoughts, and these thoughts may be affecting our patterns, actions or hopefulness about the future and the plans you have or have not made. Some people experience anxiety by reacting to a loss of opportunity: money, jobs, family, health, etc. Other people process anxiety by feeling stressed to “accomplish” things during this unique period of time: start a business, launch a new product, repaint their home, etc.
What is important to remember is that whatever you are feeling is a thought. Your thoughts are ideas you can learn to manage and control. Anxiety is a thought about your loss of control—and right now, it is probably something you worried about before, but is amplified to the extreme circumstances we find ourselves in. Setting goals that are achievable can help you create that control, which can be managed!
How Can We Set Goals When the Future is Changing Day-to-day?
The best way to set goals when our futures are changing day-to-day is to separate your goals into little, medium, and big-sized goals. It’s important for little goals or “little G’s” to bring you a sense of accomplishment and achievement. Pick activities that have an end result that you can measure and define as success, and hopefully, you also enjoy. Avoid open-ended activities that may keep you stuck in a place of rumination about your feelings and circumstances. Select achievable goals based on where you’re at each day, and get in a flow-state.
If you’re feeling stuck, you can always set micro-goals, such as the #15minutewin by Shira Gill, to make incremental changes, one thing at a time. Remember, circumstances during COVID are changing every day, so it’s okay to tone-down your big-picture visions for the moment. It’s a crazy time right now—you don’t need to be the next Einstein!
When it comes to setting those bigger goals—the "medium and big G's" make sure you have optimistic expectations but pessimistic fantasies about them. This means you consider the amazing results or feelings you get from reaching your goals, but you also imagine all the negative emotions, obstacles, or setbacks that you might experience while trying to reach them as well. That is where most people "give up" on accomplishing a big goal. It will be hard. You probably will want to quit more than once during the process. Plan ahead on what you will do when that happens. How will you cope? How will you problem-solve for that distraction, obstacle, etc.?
What if You Had Goals Already but Now They Are No Longer Valid?
First of all, it’s great that you were already working on some SMART goals of your own! Secondly, it’s important to consider what it means for these ambitions to no longer be valid. Life is always uncertain and unpredictable, and the current circumstances of the Coronavirus are creating the illusion that you previously had a certainty and direction that no longer exists. While super-specific details of your goals may now be pivoting, there is no going “back” to normal.
Life and work are the same as they always were, but you are now having to approach things with different information than previously planned. It’s important to manage your mind and expectations around the validity of your goals and ideas for the future, and look this period of time squarely in the face and ask yourself, “what will I do now, instead?”
What About Advice for Overachievers + Perfectionists?
There’s no need to limit your goal-setting ever, but especially as an over-achiever or perfectionist. Again, the most important thing to remember is to manage your expectations and mind! We spend all of our days managing our psychic entropy and evaluating ways to create authentic happiness and engagement in our personal and professional work. Why not create goals to look forward to, that blow your expectations out of the water?
While SMART goals are great tools for taking actionable steps toward “little G’s” and even medium-sized goals, overachievers, or those that want to see action right now need something that will challenge and motivate. You can set a lot of little goals, or you can create a BBG— a Big Bodacious Goal. Think outside of the box and create goals that blow your mind! Set goals where you have to become the person you can’t even imagine to move forward. If you’re feeling a little bit intimidated and nauseous —this is a good BBG. You’re headed in the right direction.
How Can You Create Control During Uncertainty?
As a reminder, control is an illusion. When you move into goal-setting with the idea of changing your life for the positive, the important elements needed to achieve results fall into place and create a sense of control when in reality you are simply managing your brain-space and expectations. Building check-ins with your goals to get feedback, being mindful of task complexity, and creating realistic plans to help you pivot and maneuver through unexpected events will create a feeling of safety and satisfaction of your work during uncertainty.
How Can We Create Amazing Results With Goals?
Those Big Bodacious Goals you have been thinking about setting? We’ve got a BBG Workbook to help you create amazing results of your own. With the techniques discussed above, you can learn to function in the reality of now, as well as visualize the potential good and bad that comes with your goal setting. You will build a realistic, yet optimistic, set of ideas around your future that will help you take massive action and work until you get the results you want, period.
One last tip when you’re feeling overwhelmed—remember, it’s totally normal. People don’t have a behavior problem, they have an emotional processing problem. Your future, and the ideas and beliefs you had around it, will continually change with each circumstance that comes your way. You can manage these thoughts, and get past the gut emotional reaction. According to Dr. Heinz, emotional urges last for 90 seconds. Instead of answering the urge, remember to SURF past the urge you have to panic or react—and keep on setting big, exciting goals.
How to SURF
SURF is an acronym that stands for:
- Surrender: acknowledge your reaction and feeling/thoughts
- Unfold: turn those thoughts off and focus on your physical sensation
- Recede: watch the wave recede away as it gets less intense
- Find the name: label the emotion. What was the feeling?
After you've named the emotion and let your 90 seconds pass, create an urge jar to put the emotion into. An urge jar can be anything—plastic cup, vase, mason jar—and then you'll put your urges in there. Pick something physical to represent a jar—a penny, a glass bead, or even a piece of paper where you write the urge down and put the crinkled up paper into the jar.
Setting and working toward goals—especially during a global pandemic—can help increase your happiness and well-being so push them off right now just because you're not 100% sure what next month will look like. Use this time to set those big bodacious goals, learn how to better manage and process your emotions, and these skills will serve you for the rest of your life!
