Goal Setting

Key Points:

  • Good goals should meet your needs and should matter to you specifically
  • Organizing your goals can help you sort out your priorities
  • Evaluating your goals and changing them if they don’t fit you is a good thing

Meeting Your Needs with Your Goals

Setting good goals can be hard. We can simplify the process a lot if we try to make sure that our goals fulfill our needs.

To help with this, I like to refer to self-determination theory. This theory argues that humans need autonomy, competence, and relatedness to feel fulfilled. So we should probably pick goals that help us get these things.

What does that look like?

Goals that give us autonomy give us control over the process and outcomes of our actions. If you get to choose what goals you achieve and how you achieve them, that helps the goal “stick”.

Competence involves building and demonstrating skill. Choosing goals that challenge your skills and increase your knowledge can be super rewarding and help keep you motivated.

Since humans are social creatures, relatedness can be very important in choosing goals. Goals that are interactive create a network that helps us show up and keep moving forward.

Let’s play with an example:

Say I’ve been pretty inactive lately, maybe because of job or life stress. I’ve put on some weight, I’m out of shape, and I’m having trouble keeping up with my young family. What might be some good goals for me?

First, managing stress should probably be my biggest priority. Exercise has helped me with this in the past - I always feel better after a game of pickup basketball. 

It probably makes sense to set a goal of signing up for a rec league that fits my schedule, even if it’s just one day a week.

So we have a primary goal: Manage My Stress. 

To help do this, I’m going to: Exercise More.

To get there, I can: Sign Up For A Rec League. 

And now we have some goals!

This combination of goals helps get me what I need according to self-determination theory. I get autonomy from choosing what I want to achieve and how. Competence comes from challenging my skills (rec basketball). And since it's team-based, I get some relatedness in the mix!

Organize to Prioritize

Some goals need to take precedence over others. Maybe one goal is a stepping stone for another goal, you can only pursue one of your goals right now, or one goal is just more important to you.

Using a hierarchy lets us prioritize and reorient when we feel like we’re not getting where we want to go. Using our example, we have the following goal hierarchy:

  1. High-Level: Manage My Stress
  2. Subordinate: Exercise More
  3. Immediate: Sign Up For A Rec League

You can see how these flow from each other if we read down the list, and how they build on each other if we read up the list. The connection(s) between your goals should be immediately obvious to you if you’re going to stick to them. 

Each level should also be something that matters to you and meets one or more of your needs. If a high-level goal isn't valuable, you don’t have a good reason to pursue your subordinate goals. If your immediate or subordinate goals don’t matter to you, you probably won’t stick with them. 

Forcing ourselves to pursue a goal at any level just because we “should” is unlikely to lead to long-term behavior change.

High-level goals usually take time, and are often pretty broad (“Get Healthier”). If they’re very specific, we may get frustrated by lack of progress. But they need to be specific enough that they give you direction: What does it mean for you, specifically, to “Get Healthier”?

Subordinate and immediate goals should be pretty accessible. If you need to completely change your life to accomplish these, getting to your high-level goal(s) may get very difficult.

A quick note about SMART goals.

You may have heard about SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. This goal-setting approach was stolen from the corporate world and shoehorned into broader discussions of goal setting. 

Don’t get me wrong: SMART goals are great for dialing in on a step or series of steps to help you move ahead. But they make pretty terrible high-level and even subordinate goals. In our example, how would we make a good SMART goal out of “Manage My Stress”? 

High-level goals are often hard to quantify, and the time frame for achieving them can vary, so they’re not always Measurable or Timely. Setting Achievable, Realistic goals is good, but you also shouldn’t limit yourself to what’s realistic for you right now. You may need to (and probably should) shift your high-level goal(s).

In short, SMART goals are fine for immediate goals, but may not serve us well for setting subordinate and high-level goals.

Goal Flow

Change is a part of life, and although it’s often scary, it's important for us to stay healthy, adaptable, and fulfilled. The same is true for goals: If you’re not occasionally changing your goals (at any level), you’re probably going to run into issues at some point. 

Your values may change, so you need to change your high-level goals; your circumstances might change, so you have to change an immediate or subordinate goal to find a better path forward.

You are much better off accepting that a change needs to happen than you are pushing yourself to pursue goals that don’t matter to you or are incompatible with your life circumstances.

Be honest about your progress towards your goals (or lack thereof). If you haven’t made the progress you’d like to see, maybe use self-determination theory or the COM-B model to figure out where things might be getting off-track. 

If everything seems to be lining up the way it “should”, but you’re still dissatisfied, maybe you need to look a level or two above your immediate goal(s) to check in on the bigger picture.

As much as new year’s resolutions may get a not-so-great rap from people who talk about motivation and goal setting, the start of the year is a convenient time to do some goal assessment. So is the start of each month or week! 

Almost any time that's marked by a change in routine or a change on your calendar is a good time to step back and reassess. Put it on your calendar, make it a part of your routine, and you’ll find yourself more reliably achieving more meaningful goals.

Goal setting is a dynamic process that can be a lot more complicated than people make it out to be. At the same time, the basics of goal setting are fairly simple, but not necessarily easy. 

In short, your goals should be meaningful and meet your needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), they should be organized in a way that makes sense for you, and they should be reassessed and changed as needed.

If you need help with any or all of the above, we’re here to help. I’ve had plenty of practice over the years helping thousands of individuals set and achieve their movement and lifestyle goals, and I’d be happy to help you with yours. Reach out, and let’s get started!

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Jason is a former personal trainer, physical therapist, martial arts enthusiast, and father of one devoted to helping people from all walks of life move better and live fuller, more active lives.

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