Goals Are Overrated: The Value of Processes

Welcome to Therapist Confidential, a psychotherapy.net podcast. And now here’s your host, Travis Heath. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Therapist Confidential podcast. I’m your host, Travis Heath. And today I’m here with another solo episode. And I’m going to start this with something that may sound a bit weird. Well, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll agree with it. But I think goals are overrated. Okay, there. I said it aloud. I think goals are overrated.

Feels like a risky thing to say in therapy because we’re always supposed to have treatment goals or whatever. And just in life, we’re supposed to have goals for all of these things. But I think goals are overrated. And I’ll try to explain to you why and give you some observations that I’ve made about the world, conversations with people, myself, etc. So I’ve worked with clients for maybe a little over 20 years.

I’m 46 years old, so I’ve lived for a minute. I mean, age is always relative, isn’t it? But over that time, I’ve become less and less convinced that goals deserve the emphasis that we give them. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m completely anti-goal. I do think they can be useful, and I’ll say more about that. I just wonder if they’re not nearly as useful as we made them out to be.

And it’s fair of you to ask me then, okay, if you’re not for goals, what are you for? And in short, I’ve become more interested in habits, practices, processes than I am goals. I’ve spent less time asking questions like, where am I trying to get? And I’ve spent more time maybe asking questions like, how do I want to live? And the thing about it is, is like most of my life isn’t going to happen when I finally reach some goal.

Like most of my life is happening in all the space in between that, all the quote unquote smaller ordinary moments. I think a lot of times the questions we’re taught to ask are, hey, what do I want to accomplish this year? Or where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years or whatever it is? You know, what’s my next professional goal? And I found I’m more interested in a question that would be like, what am I doing regularly?

That makes my life feel like a life. It makes it feel like a life I actually want to live. So I think I’m coming to a realization. The problem that a problem I’m seeing with goals isn’t only failing to reach them because here’s the thing. There’s this strange occurrence, which is often when I’m engaged in habits or processes, I actually do reach the goal.

You know, whatever the goal would have been that I set. I’m interested, too. I wonder sometimes when we do that, if we’re more likely to reach the goal when we’re not focused on the goal. We’re focused on the processes, the practices, the habits. You know, whatever it is, I got the degree or I get the job or, you know, make more money, publish something, which in academic world you have to do.

or reaching some sort of fitness goal, whatever it is. So something that once seemed enormous eventually starts to feel more attainable or normal. And not because I’m focused on the goal, but because I’m engaged in a consistent practice. The thing is though, with a goal, once you achieve it, most of you have probably experienced this. There’s this question that creeps in almost immediately. And that question is what’s next?

I’ll talk to students who have completed, you know, their master’s degree, their PhD, whatever it is. And if you talk to them within a week or two, I’m usually not within 48 hours of graduation. Usually it takes a week or two, maybe a little longer. And they’ll often tell you that they feel a bit depressed. And if you dig a little deeper, there’s this question of what’s next. And what they talk about missing is,

is the process they were engaged in to get the degree, right? That’s what they’re missing. Or for example, I’ve worked with professional athletes over the years and they retire. And what they talk about missing is not winning championships or MVPs or all-star teams or whatever, making the next contract for this much money. They talk about missing the day-to-day. Right.

Right. The relationships, the process of being involved, whether it’s practice, preparation, et cetera. This is often what they miss. And this is this is one of the risks of if I can call it achievement culture, like this thing that was once a huge dream for us now starts to become like a minimum expectation. And boy, that’s rough, especially if you’re working with folks who have achieved a lot and

This this what was once this huge dream is now just the bare minimum expectation. And I think what this can create, it it sort of takes people who are doing, let’s say, objectively very well. However, we might define that or however the culture defines it.

And they can still experience themselves as behind. And yet, if you trace backwards with people, and I often ask questions like this in therapy, you know, hey, what would your, let’s say that it’s someone who’s 45 years old, what would your 35-year-old self think about where you’re at? Or your 25-year-old self, or your 15-year-old self, whatever it is. And almost always when you ask that question, they go, oh, wow, they’d be amazed. They could have never have imagined such success or whatever it is, right?

And yet that person still experiences themselves as behind. And I think this achievement culture we live in has created this set of dynamics where

All of us are supposed to feel behind. Why? Well, if we feel behind, we’re going to keep grinding. We’re going to keep working. We’re going to keep that economic engine churning, aren’t we? If I right now think about something I desperately wanted five or 10 years ago, and now maybe I don’t think about it at all. Why? Because I achieved it. And maybe at one point I thought if I could just get to this place and or blank, if I could just get to blank.

But the tricky part of that is then we get there and we adjust to it. And what happens to the finish line? It gets moved further. And if we’re just focused on the goal, then it becomes over time, almost this heartless or soulless pursuit of the next goal.

as opposed to appreciating the process that we’re actually in. Now, as I’ve been thinking about this, because the way these episodes come to be for me, to be honest with you, is, I don’t know, I’m going for a walk or I wake up, I’m in the shower and some idea hits me, right? And I just start putting down my ideas on my little notepad in my phone and then I just build them out from there. And this idea is one I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now.

I think going back into like mid-July or something. And so then as I was building these ideas out, I said, okay, I want to start paying more attention to where my goals come from. Like I don’t create my definition of success from scratch. It comes from someplace. I mean, I’ve been taught

Things about what a successful life is supposed to look like, right? More money, more status, more titles, more recognition, more productivity, a bigger or nicer house, a physical body that looks a particular way. You know, take it and apply it to this show, a bigger audience, more people listening, more likes, more comments, all the things, right? Now, none of these in isolation do I think are necessarily bad, right?

I mean, I’m not again, I’m not anti accomplishment. I’m not saying accomplishing things are bad. Accomplishing things can be helpful, right? Helpful to get our feet up underneath us and feel like we’re doing something meaningful in the world. But I do think I want to distinguish between something I actually care about and something that I’ve learned a successful person is supposed to want. Do you see what I’m saying?

What do I actually care about versus what have I learned about what a successful person is supposed to care about or want? And so if I’m not careful, and I think this is true of any of us, goal setting can easily become a way of like turning those cultural expectations into our own personal obligations.

And as I’ve been thinking about this, I’m especially suspicious of more as a life philosophy, right? Just the idea of achieve more, grind more, this more and that more. Like, I don’t know that more is really a goal that I’ve wanted in my life. I think I’ve metabolized that from the culture as something I’m supposed to want. But when I actually stop and think about this, do you know what I’m wanting more of? Yeah.

Isn’t that interesting? More of, which is actually less. I’m wanting like more quality time with the people that I love. I’m wanting more time to think. I’m wanting more time to slow down. So I guess that’s more. But if when I thought about these goals, it’s actually less of something, right? Because it’s more time. It’s more time to spend in particular ways. So less on my plate.

So not grinding for more of an outcome. So I can reach income, a certain income level or a professional title or position that an earlier version, a younger version of me would have considered extraordinary. But then my reference group changes, doesn’t it? My expectations change. And suddenly what used to represent success for me doesn’t feel like enough. So in that way, I think more is a particularly dangerous goal.

Because, think about this, there’s no point at which I’ve actually achieved more. Because as soon as I achieve it, if the goal is more, then there’s more to achieve. I hope that makes sense what I’m saying. It’s a little bit of a wild idea, isn’t it? But more is dangerous because we never actually reach it. Then we just keep going and going and going. So this is why I think

I’m finding process, habits, practices more useful. Why? Because I think they start asking us different questions. So if I try to simplify this down, really distill it down, I think a goal is asking me, what do I need to get or where do I need to get? And maybe even, you know, how do I get to that? Whereas the process asks a different question, which is how do I want to live?

So if a goal asks, where do I need to get? A process asks, how do I want to live? And I think that that distinction has become increasingly more important for me, but also important in the work I’m doing as a therapist. That often people are coming to me and talking to me about where they think they need to get. Here’s where I was supposed to be and I’m not there. But implicit in that is where they think they need to get.

And then I find myself asking versions of questions to them of, well, how is it that you want to live? And it’s interesting because there’s often a mismatch. So they’re telling me where they need to get, but that’s not actually where they need to get. It’s where the culture is telling them they need to get.

And when I start asking them how they want to live, it often deviates from where they think they need to get, which is an interesting observation I found. So for me anyways, process brings something I value into my actual life and

Instead of postponing it until, you know, some future version of myself arrives. And the tricky thing with that is then the future version of myself arrives. And now I’m just going to create more. I’m going to create a better version of myself at all times. Process then gives me a way to feel, I don’t know if it’s to succeed so much as it is. It gives me a way to feel like I’m more fully living my life today.

And I think this is what most people are after. I won’t say all people, people are different, but I think most people are wanting to feel alive today as opposed to continually evaluating themselves against something that hasn’t happened yet. Some goal they’re supposed to get to. I think most people are wanting to feel more fully alive today.

And I have observed that practices, processes, habits tend to be useful for that. Let me give you some examples that I’ve thought about here. So something that’s going on in my life is I’m currently writing a book or trying to anyways, right? And

Instead of so the goal would be I want to write a book or I’m going to write a book. But that’s the where do I need to get? I need to get this book done. Why? Well, so that I can get promoted in my academic job or so I can give more credibility to my name as a psychologist. I don’t know what are the reasons I I need to or want to write a book. Right. Those are the cultural reasons that I’m fed.

Okay, that’s where I need to get. That’s what the goal asks me. The process asks me, how do I want to live? And so I’ve been thinking about it this way more recently. I want writing to be a part of my week. And you know what? When I’ve started doing that, I’ve enjoyed the writing because…

It, the goal then isn’t to finish the book. And yes, if you ask me, is there a piece of you that wants to finish? Well, yes. But the weird thing is when I’ve written books in the past articles, whatever, but books, especially because they’re really long projects, the book never feels done. It’s like the, the deadline happens and the publisher’s like, yo, we need the book, you know? And so I’m like, okay, I guess it’s done. I’ll write a conclusion, but it doesn’t feel done.

But what feels meaningful to me is the act of writing. And so I’ve tried to take up this process idea, this habit of wanting writing to be a part of my week every week. Okay, how about this one? I hear this a lot from people, especially around New Year’s. I want to lose whatever, 20 pounds, whatever the number is. Well, what’s interesting about that, I’ve seen this happen. Even when people are successful, they lose 20 pounds. Then they’re like, okay, well, now what?