BE DO HAVE Goalsetting: The 3 Types of Goals You Need to Know About
In this post, I'll introduce you to BE DO HAVE goalsetting and the different types of goals you can have.
In general, goals are important. They help provide direction. However, not all goals are created equally. This post is all about helping you discover these different categories so that you can more easily set powerful intentions for the year ahead.
Speaking of goals, have
you ever noticed how hard it can be to enact the goals you want? That’s
because it’s not enough to have goals, you generally also need a
system, a strategy, and support for achieving them. Categorizing your goals can be the first step to getting there.
A few years ago, two friends of me and I decided to pool our experience and knowledge together to see if we could help people shift from a sense of powerlessness into agency in the new year. 🌟
You know, moving from “I can’t do this” (felt powerlessness) to “I think I can achieve this” (agency).
As
part of this experiment, we conducted an interactive webinar. While we
got the sense that this was impactful for the participants, it was also
clear to us that follow-up was needed.
After all, change is a marathon, not a sprint. 🏃
That’s
why we started to explore which weekly prompts we could share with
people in January, to help them create the best
version of themselves in the year ahead. I first published this on December 29, 2018 and recently updated it.
(Of course, you can use this any other time as well. After all, given that we have Lunar New Year, Jewish New Year, Persian Near and a number of other celebrations, it's almost always new year for someone in the world...)
The idea here is to help you complete the marathon of becoming a different self by providing guidance on key steps along the way.
If you’d like to join us, here’s the prompt for the first week:
Prompt # 1: BE DO HAVE Goalsetting
This week, I'd like to encourage you to systematize your desires
for the year ahead and explore how they can fall into 3 different categories: Be goals, Do Goals, and Have goals.
Step 1: Brainstorm & categorize your desires into BE DO HAVE goals.
Can you name at least three things in every category? For instance, here’s what I came up with when I first did this exercise in preparation for 2019 (remember 2019? It was that ancient time in the past when we got to hang out with people in person...):
- Have goals: boxing gloves and pads, Tom Kuegler’s Medium course, a larger following on Medium
- Do goals:
visit Malaysia and Cambodia in 2019, see my friend Julius again, continue attending martial arts classes
- Be goals: grateful, impactful, happy
→ Write down yours:
- Have goals:
- Do goals:
- Be goals:
Step 2: Explore how your goals in these categories differ from each other
For instance, here are my insights:
- With
the exception of a larger following on Medium, the first category
(“Have goals”) consists of items I can buy. Things in this category are very
concrete and generally entail a one-time purchase or action.
- The
second category consists of activities and is more time-intensive. The
activities are either one-off (a vacation) or continuous (such as
regular exercise).
- The third category is the most elusive. The desires in this category are emotional states that can be hard to measure. This category could also be used to describe roles, for instance: “I want to be a teacher. I want to be a mother. I want to be a husband.”
→ Is it the same for you? What other observations do you have?
- Category one, Have goals:
- Category two, Do goals:
- Category three, Be goals:
Step 3: Explore if you want to rephrase a desire
Sometimes, it can be helpful to move a desire (particularly a “have” desire) into a different category.
The “have” category sometimes contains things that could be better expressed as a “be” desire, such as “I want to have a partner.” Can you see how “I want to be in a loving relationship” is a more meaningful goal?
→ Are there any desires that you would like to rephrase? For instance, in my case, it might be better to change the desire to “have a large following on Medium” into “be a successful writer on Medium.”
Step 4: Mark the BE DO HAVE goals that are currently the most important to you
Congratulations! You have a list of desires, neatly organized into BE DO HAVE goals.
→ Now, mark the desires that are currently the most important to you.
The Power of BE DO HAVE goalsetting
Here’s the main lesson behind this prompt:
→ Pursuing Have goals often only requires having enough money (and a bit of time) to get them. 💰
While it’s fine to include a few “have” desires on your list for the year ahead, these types of desires are typically not meaningful enough to turn them your main goal for a year. Achieving them likely won’t make you that happy.
→ Pursuing Do goals requires time and activity. 🕒
While these are often more meaningful than “have” desires, it’s best to not exclusively pick “do” goals for the year ahead. As the saying goes, we’re human beings, not human doings.
→ Pursuing Be goals required much, much more.
😮
Accomplishing Be goals often yields the highest reward.
That is because they require us to change who we are. For instance, you can’t have a child without becoming a parent, and becoming a parent will change the core of who you are. Similarly, I can’t have a larger following on Medium without becoming impactful (one of my “be” desires for 2019).
And something about changing the core of one’s being in a direction of one’s own choosing is deeply meaningful.
By getting clarity on the right goals for you, you already create the chapter titles in the book of your life in for the year ahead.
What does that feel like? Do you get excited about the “book” that you’re endeavoring to write in the new year? I hope that having these chapter titles helps you find an initial structure that supports you in the year and beyond!
Want more support to achieve your BE DO HAVE goals?
If so, I invite you to check out my 1-on-1 coaching.
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