I love vision boards. I'm an artist, so of course I'm a really visual person.

But so often the way we do vision boards is bullshit. We make it about this car or that house at the beach. What happens if we don't get that particular thing? Or what if things change and that thing won't bring us happiness anymore? Did we fail?

It's the concreteness of the pictures on vision boards that I have a problem with. Often it's about assets or material things. We cut pictures out of magazines of things that we want and then it's like, we have to get that thing in order to be happy. To achieve our “vision.”

I know somebody who has on their vision board a baby boy. What the fuck? Does that mean if you have a girl you'll be disappointed? Visual images like that are so definite.

I'm not saying don't have a vision board (like I said, I love them); I'm just saying make your vision board based on your values, not just ideas of things you want to have or achieve. Make your board a mix of words as well as pictures. Include reminders of things that are important to you—photos of people who inspire you, or quotes, or books. A blend of values, assets, and things you want to share with other people as well as things you want to have for yourself. A list of the things that fill your soul. Not a particular address or an exact model of car.

Then anything that comes along—like a new car or whatever—if it excites you, get it. If it ticks the boxes for things that fill your soul—for me that's “fast-paced,” “winning,” “having nice things”—go for it!

The process of setting the visions and working towards them is more important than whether you actually get all the things or not. You don't know what you don't know—12 months from now your priorities might change and old goals might not seem as important. Put things on Post-it Notes, so you can create a hierarchy and move them around on your board, or even take them off if you change your mind. And make it about your underlying values more than concrete objects or experiences you “have” to have.

Because otherwise you're just going to look up at your vision board and think, “I've failed at half those things. I just gave birth to a girl.”

SETTING EFFECTIVE GOALS

As we work through the areas of your life, first you'll identify your values and assess your level of satisfaction in each area. Then in order to increase your satisfaction, you need tools for increasing your effectiveness and the probability of getting what you want out of life. Part of that is knowing how to set effective goals.

Some people think they're not goal-setters. You might be one of them.

Some people just aren't naturally motivated by mapping out goals and working toward them. Other people have tried lots of goal setting in the past and it hasn't worked, so they feel cynical about it.

I'm not interested in putting you through a rigid goal-setting exercise resulting in a plan you'll never stick to, with a vision board made of things that won't really fill up your soul, ultimately leading to insecurity and shame when your plans don't work out. Goal setting should be a source of freedom, not a trap you set for yourself that ends in failure.

MOTIVATION

When you ask people what their goals are they'll often talk in terms of what they don't want. Have you heard yourself doing that? “I don't want to be stressed about money any more,” or “I don't want to miss out on time with the kids.”

Everybody does it, but there are two major problems with talking about your goals in terms of what you're trying to get away from.

First, if you're always thinking about what you don't want instead of what you do want, you've got this negative focus. It fills up your thoughts. “I don't want to be fat any more.” “I don't want to be in debt and stressed about money.” “I want to stop feeling so lonely.” “Fat.” “Debt.” “Lonely.” How are you ever going to achieve anything good if you've got that shit playing in your head all day?

Secondly, if you're motivated to get away from something, once you actually get away from it your motivation disappears. Your brain relaxes and tells you you're fine, so it's really hard to keep going with the behavior you need to maintain your results.

This is how women end up yo-yo dieting. At first you work really hard, go to the gym every day, whatever. Then you start looking different. Your old jeans fit and people are giving you heaps of compliments and you feel really good. That's when you think “yeah, I could eat that whole pizza. I can drink that beer. It's fine, I'm not fat any more!”

So you're wearing your skinny jeans and eating pizza and really enjoying it. Then before you know it, one day your jeans won't zip up and you panic and think “shit, how did I get fat again?” and you get back on the diet. Repeat that for your whole adult life and you've got the experience of a huge majority of women. It's not just dieting; we all have the same experience in all different areas of life. Most of us can think of one goal or one area where we feel like we've tried everything. It's like beating your head against a brick wall and you end up thinking that this thing, whatever it is, is just never going to happen for you.

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GOAL

Before we go any further, I have to tell you something that might piss you off. But stay with me. Here it is:

The main purpose of setting a goal is not to achieve the goal.

If you're a perfectionist who loves writing goals and ticking them off, you're probably feeling really uncomfortable right now. What's the point of setting a goal if you're not going to achieve it, right?

If you're somebody who hates working on goals and feels cynical about the whole process, you're probably feeling like this whole chapter has been a waste of time. Why did I spend all that time trying to trick you into setting goals if I was just going to turn around and say it's not about achieving them?

I'm not saying that you'll never achieve the goals you set out to, or that it's a bad thing if you do. Obviously it's great to achieve something you wanted.

What I am saying is that it's okay, even healthy, to move the goalposts. You don't have to lock yourself into achieving a goal in exactly the same way, on exactly the particular timeframe, that you intended when you first set it. A good goal will help you improve the consistency and quality of your actions and set you on a great trajectory. That might include achieving the goal exactly the way you planned. But if the goal changes along the way, it's still done its job as long as it's helped you to progress in the direction you want to keep going for the rest of your life.

That's what a really great goal will do. It'll change your behavior so that you're always moving closer to the goals you want to achieve and the kind of person you want to be. If you're anything like me, as you get closer to achieving a goal you'll want to move the goalposts a little further away. So your goals end up evolving as you do, because they're always helping you to perform better and better.

Your goals are your servants, not your master. They're allowed to change as often as you need to adjust them in order to keep moving forward, in alignment with your values.

A LOCKED-IN GOAL IS A DANGEROUS GOAL

Remember how I said I live my life according to my values, not my plans? Goal setting should operate on the same principle. Because a goal that's not allowed to change assumes that you're not allowed to change either. It's a great way to slow down your personal growth and narrow your opportunities.

If you set all your goals in stone and don't give them any flexibility, you lock yourself into a path that might not actually be right for you by the time you get there. Life changes all the time. Your goals should change too. If you tell yourself you “have” to achieve this or that on a certain timeline, you set yourself up for stress and failure.

It's not just life that changes; you change too. I look back at myself in my twenties, or even myself one year ago, and that person doesn't know what I know now. If I were still determined to achieve all the goals I set for myself 10 years ago, I'd be working off a plan that was right for 10-years-ago me, not the me of today. And I know enough to know that in a year or a decade from now, I'll know a lot more than I do now. The goals I have today might seem silly or limited by then, but if that's the case I will have made some new ones to replace them.

If you're intent on achieving every goal the way you set it, you're not opening yourself up to all the learning and growing and changing you're going to do. You're not allowing for all the possibilities you might see on the way to achieving that goal.

And you're not letting other people in to help or influence or expand the horizons for your goal. You miss all the new connections you could make and all the people you could work with, who will mess your goal around and change it and grow it into something you could never have imagined. That's the magic.

FREE YOURSELF FROM GOALS

Just like your plans, your goals might change. And once you get close to achieving a goal that you'll probably lose interest in, move the goalposts a little further away and set a better one (at least that's what I do).

Goal setting is not about ticking off a list of achievements—it's about honing your skills, achieving more stuff with less effort, increasing your options, and growing all the time in the direction you want to go. It's not about the goal. So you can let it go. Freedom!