How to Find the Best Goals in Life

What are your goals in life? Today is a great day to reflect on your goals and boldly decide who you would like to become going forward.

Melody Beattie put the magic of New Year's Eve this way: "The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.' Of course, this is true at any time of year! You can decide that right now is the beginning of a new chapter, of a new year for you.

But how can you decide which stories are worth telling in the year ahead? In other words, how do you decide which resolutions, intentions, or goals are worth pursuing?

This framework was developed by Executive Coach Brian Whetten and it's not only great for goal-setting but also for decision-making (yay!). It's based on the idea that there are three main perspectives that you need to consider:

• your intuition,
  
• your reason, and
  
• your fear.

However, these three perspectives can be in conflict and they might want to take you into different directions!

For instance, let’s assume you wanted to take up ballroom dancing in the next year. While you might feel excited about this (indicating that your intuition is on board with this idea), your fear may lead you to come up with a number of reasons why pursuing this goal would be a truly terrible idea (What if I don’t find a dance partner? What if I injure myself ? What if I have too much work to do?).

That's your different perspectives arguing with each other!

So, how do you handle your internal civil war and decide on what to do? Well, you can trust that you're moving into the right direction if your goal receives a “Yes, Yes, Hell No” response:

• Your intuition lights up around it (the first “yes”)
• Your reason thinks that pursuing this goal makes logical sense, which may include checking that it fulfills the SMART criteria for goals (the second “yes”)
• Your fear tells you to run the other way (the “hell no”)

“Yes, Yes, Hell No” goals in life are amazing because they are aligned with what you care most about. They also help you to grow by stretching you out of your comfort zone—all while making sense from a rational point of view.

I first heard about the “triple bottom line” concept from author and speaker Dawn Clark. It states that you need to check three levels when you're evaluating whether or not a goal is auspicious—the impact of the goal on you, those around you, and the world at large.

An outstanding goal is:

• Good for you (“I”),
  
• Good for those around you (“Us”), and
  
• Good for the world (“All of Us”).
  

Because this framework encourages you to look at all these levels, it can make your goals more balanced.

By keeping both interests of the individual and the (smaller and larger) whole in mind, you can ensure that you neither choose resolutions that are good for those around you but not good for you (I will always cook dinner for my partner, no matter how tired I feel), nor pursue goals for merely egotistical reasons (I will finally run a marathon just so that I can look down on everyone else who hasn’t).

To be precise, the triple bottom line is often more about your motivation for something than it is about the goal itself.

To give you an example, let’s assume someone’s goal was to read three books per month. While at first glance this might seem like a commendable intention, whether or not this is a worthy resolution would actually depend entirely on this person’s motivation for doing so.

If they wanted to read them to broaden their horizon, share the information with interested people around them, and use it to inform their actions in the world, pursuing this goal would be good for the person, those around them, and the world.

In contrast, if they wanted to read more to consistently escape reality, show off one’s newly acquired knowledge in a condescending way, or learn how to get away with doing unethical things, it would be a bad goal.

3. Does your goal pass the "willing to make it happen"-test?

Once you’ve found a goal that is both a “Yes, Yes, Hell No” and a “triple bottom line” goal, the remaining question is this: are you willing to do what it takes to make it happen?

You can even rank your commitment to that goal on a scale of 1 (not interested in pursuing this) to 10 (whatever it takes to make this happen).

If you come up with a low number (under 7), I would recommend either scrapping the goal altogether or find a way to increase your level of commitment to it.

A goal without sufficient commitment on your part is but a wish—and I personally think your energy is better spent elsewhere than on personal goals you don’t care enough about to make happen.

Realizing that something is just not important enough for you to pursue wholeheartedly often brings a clarity that can feel incredibly freeing. Scrapping a goal that doesn’t excite you can give you the space to find one that truly does feel worth your investment.

Sometimes, you can be committed to a goal, but it can feel challenging to accomplish it by yourselves. If this happens to you, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you or your goals. To the contrary, it often happens when you choose goals that are really a stretch for you—which is common for “Yes, Yes, Hell No” goals. In that case, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to do it by yourself and that it’s totally understandable to seek external support.

And if you realize that you have found a goal that you’re fully committed to making it happen—congratulations on a worthy intention, and best of luck writing the upcoming chapter of your life!

A version of this article was first published in Elephant Journal here.