How To Set Goals That Actually Stick (Part 1)

Since New Year’s, I’ve begun asking myself the following questions before ever committing to a goal.

And it’s made all the difference. I went from this push-and-pull dynamic with my goals where I’d do everything all at once in the first few weeks of a goal, only for that effort to slowly ebb out and die after that short period.

Alternatively, I would feel stuck. Like I was working hard but making little progress.

Or that the goals in and of themselves became harder and harder to stick with.

The solution? I threw the idea of discipline out the window.

This part 1 on how to set goals that actually stick.

This is For The People Who…

This is for the people who’ve tried to get their life together more times than they can count and are tired of feeling like they’re failing. Because you know that you have potential – and that there’s more to life. And as the world keeps spinning, and spinning, you desperately want to make your own space in the world. Somewhere you can have yourself – your happiness, passion, health, energy and friends – and to still achieve your goals.

Listen, I get it. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that exhaustion of trying, trying, trying – of yearning for a better life yet feeling like every single time you move, you end up entagling yourself further and get more stuck.

Do You Relate To This?

• You can’t stick to your goals — you start strong, then burn out.
• You feel like an impostor every time you set big goals.
• You jump from one productivity system to another, hoping one will finally work.
• You’re tired of relying on motivation that never lasts.
• You feel like life is slipping through your fingers.

Allow me to break this down for you.

You’re Stuck For A Reason

Because you’re stuck for a reason. Why? Because you have resistance.

And I know you might feel tired, or stuck right now – but we’re here to help you. Because you can achieve your goals in ways that don’t feel like absolute torture.

You can create healthy and sustainable habits that are also enjoyable, effortless and that fuels you.

You can create your dream life with ease, if you learn how to set goals in ways that actually stick.

How? By working through resistance.

What Is Resistance?

Some of you will remember that I’ve already written a super in-depth post about this here. But I’ll provide you with a small repeat to refresh your memory:

But for a quick repeat of that post:

Principle #1. Resistance are any thoughts, beliefs, habits or desires which contradict each other.

Resistance are any thoughts, beliefs, habits or desires which contradict each other.

You could use this example anywhere.

• Desiring success but fearing responsibility.
• Desiring security but also freedom.
• Fear of failure that keeps you from taking action, yet also desiring success.
• Wanting a body that you love – but you pursue it through exercise and diets that deprive you and feels like punishment; the opposite of self love

For Example:

Tomas wants an intimate, loving relationship. But he also believes no one will love him for who he really is, so he tries to ‘win’ partners by being deceptive and pleasing. The person rejects him when he reveals who he is a couple of weeks into the relationship because they feel fooled, Leading Tomas’ self-concept that no one will ever love him to deepen further, instead of pursuing partners in authentic ways, for a genuine relationship, which would break the cycle.

Tomas’ actions and his desires are in direct opposition to each other. He contradicts himself.

When you are unaware of the contradictory forces in you, you inevitably end up paddling in two different directions at once.

The solution is to become aware of inner contradictions so they can align, and work toward the same goal.

We will discuss precisely how to do this further down in this post.

If you struggle with people pleasing, then the video below might help you.

Principle #2: Every Human Has A Set, Non-Negotiable List Of Needs.

Every human has a set, non-negotiable list of needs.

When you pursue one need in a manner that is directly opposite to another, you will experience a push-and-pull effect (usually fallbacks that seem irrational, mindless or that indirectly and inefficiently meet those needs).

Here’s Mashlow’s Pyramid of Needs if you desire a baseline of different important human needs.

1. Safety
2. Food
3. Belonging/relatedness
4. Status
5. Mastery/self-actualization

For example:

Anya is studying to become a veterinarian. The more stressed she is at work, the more restricted she is in her social life and leisure time. The primary need that she pursues is achievement and perhaps mastery – two very important needs for any human. But in doing so, she’s bulldozing her need for freedom, leisure and connection.

Subconsciously, Anya’s mind is at war with itself. A part of her begins to resent her studies and would do anything to satisfy Anya’s need for leisure, a sense of freedom and connection. Since Anya isn’t consciously meeting the need, she begins to subconsciously meet it through doomscrolling.

Those hours before bed are the only time Anya feels free, at leisure. It’s rebellious, it’s peaceful, and her mind can finally relax. She feels like this is the only mental rest she gets. She also feels more connected – seeing her favourite creators online is a subconscious way for her to meet her need for relatedness and connection.

It also means she gets less and less sleep. This wrecks her study schedule and makes Anya even more restrictive. She cancels hangouts, starts eating by her desk, and stops being creative.

When she tries to change the doomscrolling behaviour through standard methods, it only worsens.

Why?

Because she is trying to restrict herself further. This makes the part of her that wants leisure and freedom rebel more subconsciously and irrationally.

The resistance is there for a reason. The part of Anya that maintains the habit of doomscrolling is trying to protect her.

In trying to bulldoze it, she is starting a war with herself.

You can’t sustain habits that actively deprive you of one of your needs. You will either end up falling off and becoming inconsistent, or you will meet the need in indirect, clumpsy and erratic ways. Such as Anya doomscrolling to subconsiously take her sense of freedom and control back.

The key to discipline is to not bulldoze your needs.

The key to discipline is cultivating habits that your whole self can commit to. That’s where the magic happens: when you work through your resistance, so your whole self can commit to a task, you remain consistent.

(see the youtube video titled How To Be Yourself (and still connect to others) if you struggle with the internal struggle of authenticity versus connection)

Principle #3. Energetic Contradictions: Manifesting Two Contradictory Things At The Same Time

• You can’t punish yourself into self love.
• You can’t trap yourself into financial freedom.
• You can’t deprive your body into a body that you love
• You can’t sacrifice your needs for a relationship that will prioritise them.

These are what I like to call energetic contradictions.

Every desire has an emotional signature (what you would feel if you already had your wish fulfilled). And to manifest your desired outcome, you must make decisions that energetically align you with the emotional signature.

• If you want to be productive, you must do things that help you feel productive and accomplished.
• If you want a relationship in which your needs are considered, you must consider your needs while pursuing said partner.
• If you want to love your body, you must care for it in ways that feel self-loving.

If you want to be productive, you must do things that help you feel productive and accomplished. If you want financial freedom, you must take actions that make you feel freer.

I go more in-depth on this in the blogpost Taking Action When Manifesting.

The following blog post is part 1 of a 3-part series. Because in order to release resistance against your goals, I’ve found three trends of where the painpoints lie:

1. Resistance against the goal itself
2. Resistance against the worst case scenario
3. And resistance against leaving your current life behind

The reason it’s divided is to make it more digestible, and it allows me more time and space to give you an in-depth rundown of what to do, instead of just giving surface-level advice that are too dense for anyone to sit through.

So if this post helps you, and you’d like to know the second two blockages that tend to stop most people from actually achieving their goals, then feel free to sign up for the email list below to get updates when new content is posted.

Now To The Meat Of This Post: How Do I Set Goals That Stick?

The simple answer is to work through your resistance first.

When setting a goal, I want you to really do the inner work necessary to ensure that:

• While you pursue the goal, you’re also meeting all your needs (this prevents subconsciously meeting them, like Anya did with doomscrolling in the example above) and endless fallbacks.
• That there aren’t contradictory desires that will inevitably lead to self-sabotage – Your whole self is on board
• That you actually want to achieve the goal that you set.
• And that you release resistance – because everything we resist persists.

The following section is an in-depth, step by step guide on how to work through resistance when setting goals.

Enjoy.

Part 1. Resistance Against The Goal You’re Pursuing

To some of us, this will seem ridiculous. Why would you have resistance against something that you desire? 

But there’s a lot of reasons why this may be the case. 

1.1 The Goal Fulfills A Need: But Isn’t What You Actually Want

Do you really want the lifestyle that comes with the goal, or just the need that the goal fulfils? 

Let us ground this in practical examples:

• You can want fame because they want to be significant and matter, not because they actually want the day-to-day buissness of fame
• Do you want to be spiritual and “live in the present” because you actually desire peace and self-awareness and a spiritual life – or because you want to escape negative feelings into the present by deciding that the ‘material world dosen’t matter anyway’?
• Do you want to wake up at 5 am because it’s your genuine desire, or are you trying to copy someone else’s lifestyle in the hopes of feeling more accomplished and successful?
• Do you want to help the homeless because you genuinely have compassion for the people you’re supporting, or because it makes you feel like a good person?

The needs above: to feel significant, to seek comfort, to feel accomplished and proud over your achievements, to feel like a good person – thease needs are not wrong. The problem arrives when you hang a current need on the pedestal of a milestone far away, and think that said milestone is the only way to achieve said goal.

Even more so when you’re unaware of what you actually want – because that could lead to some confusing, contradictory actions in which you indirectly meet your needs in ways that might actually be harmful and/or ineffective to yourself and other people.

But there are many ways to meet a core need.

Journal Prompts To Discover Your “Why”

1. Why do I want to achieve this goal? How would I feel if I achieved this goal? What results do I wish to gain from achieving this goal? 
2. Is this goal the only way for me to achieve my desire? Are there other ways to achieve this desire? 
3. Knowing that there are different ways for me to achieve the same emotional outcome, do I still desire to achieve this particular goal? 

NOTE: If your desire comes from a place of lack or trauma, and you believe that this goal is the only way to achieve it, then that is completely ok. Moving in the direction of your goal is still moving closer to your desired outcome. I simply wish to help you become aware of your why, and consider more aligned ways to achieve your goals, before you pursue a goal that you may not even feel passion for (you just think it’s the only option). 

To go in the direction of a desire in ways that emotionally disconnect you from the feeling of having achieved that desire is an energetic contradiction. Read the post called Taking action when Manifesting (how to take inspired action through the law of assumption) for more on this. 

1.2 You Desire To Achieve The Goal, But Not The Lifestyle That Comes with it

• You might fantasize about being a lawyer – but you don’t actually enjoy the nitty gritty eye for detail that is required for lawyers.
• You might enjoy the idea of being a famous singer, but you don’t actually like the tours, the late nights, the PR, the negative attention you might get, etc. You might really want to ‘be a parent’, but you don’t like the reality of having children. 

Notice the shift in language when we go from ‘identity’ to ‘lifestyle’. 

The idea of being someone who… And the idea of experiencing…

I’ve heard so many people talking about their dreams like they were a camera, looking at their lives from the outside and explaining their dreams from the perspective of an audience, not the performer. Let’s call this the floating head syndrome. 

This is when you are so focused on how you are experienced by others, that you forget to experience. You become a voyeurist – a floating head completely disconnected from your own body. 

And anyone you see on the television that has what you need becomes your new idol. You’re swooped into whatever’s trendy at the moment because you are so disconnected from your own internal guidance system that you don’t even know what your preferences are anymore. 

The ‘Floating Head’ is when you live a life from the perspective of an audience, and not the artist. 

How To Work Around The Floating Head Syndrome

1. Sit with your goal and imagine (or write down, watch a vlog about, pretend to live as, or record your voice as you pretend to already live this life) and truly immerse your senses into the fantasy. Not how others would react to you being this – but how YOU feel IN this experience. 
2. Think about the day to day, mundane moments of your desired lifestyle and try to identify if this is something that you actually want, or if it’s something that indirectly is what you want (Example; there’s a difference between desiring the lifestyle of fame, and desiring to feel important and to matter).
3. Try to identify the feeling or reaction you’re seeking from others. What is it about your desire that’s so appealing? What is your fantasy? Try to identify patterns in your fantasies.
4. Do not resist your desires. No matter what answer you come up with, pursuing them is valid and okay. But don’t do so mindlessly, and don’t do it in indirect ways (that could prove harmful to yourself or others).

For example, if you jump from trends on living in the wilderness, cowboy trend, motorcycle trend, gaming, skateboarding, fixing cars etc – perhaps you want to feel more connected to your masculinity and sense of competence.

It has nothing to do with the trends – and pursuing them won’t meet your needs, it will just end up feeling empty because you don’t know why you’re pursuing your goals. But if you know your why you can actually meet your desire head-on instead of beating around it and coping anyone that has what you desire. 

You can be yourself, and also have your desires. 

So how do you know if the consequences of the lifestyle are worth it? 

1. When you understand that there are other ways to meet your needs. But you still desire the lifestyle just for the pleasure of experiencing it. You desire the lifestyle because it fuels you, not because it’s the only way out of a state of desperation. 
2. When the negative of not having it is worse than the pain that comes with it. 

Other than realizing whether you want to experience the goal that you’re pursuing or just want others to percieve you as someone who has achieved that goal – having a clear, emotionally impactful and concise vision of what you desire is the number 1 way to get and stay motivated for your goals.

Read more about that here.

1.3 You do Desire The Goal And Lifestyle: But It Means Sacrificing Something Else. 

If the goal fulfills a need, such as belonging or status, but it overrides your need for self-actualization (authentically pursuing things which bring you genuine fulfillment and purpose) you will ultimately both want, and resist, the goal that you’re pursuing. 

This will lead to erratic behaviours such as vigorously pursuing the goal for a couple of days or weeks, only to later undo all your progress immediately after seeing results. 

Perhaps if you desire to move out of your parents house, there’s still a sliver of doubt because to move out means being alone, and you don’t trust yourself to make new friends in a new city. 

Perhaps you want to start your own business because you wish to establish status or self-actualization. But if this overrides your need for safety; then some part of you will always resist the very goal that you’re trying to achieve. 

Perhaps you’re trying to lose weight – but you also believe that actively trying to lose weight is shallow and this belief makes you resentful of the trends and society that encourages skinny bodies. Then you’ll try to lose weight, but be ashamed of wanting to lose weight at the same time. 

This creates the famous push-pull effect. 

This does not mean you have to sacrifice one for the other.

• There could be a limiting belief keeping you from believing that you could have both at the same time.
• There could be a false opposition: that at their core, the different parts of you want the same thing; it just looks like they’re oppositional (example: you want the freedom of being independent and trusting yourself and also the freedom to be completely yourself in close and intimate relationships, but you believe that to be in a relationship means to sacrifice yourself, so your desire for freedom appears contradictory).
• Upon further investigation and inner work, you may discover that you don’t want one of the paths for itself, just for the need it fulfills. And you believe the only way to achieve this need is through this one thing.

Journal Prompts to Figure Out If You’re Resisting The Goal You’re Pursuing:

• Is there a need that your desired lifestyle would deprive you of? If so, what? How can you adapt your habits and vision so you can have what you desire, and still have what you need?
• What need is your current life providing you? Would you loose this need if you were to succeed?
• Do you have shame around the goal you’re pursuing? This could be desiring to quit your job for your passions (feeling like a dropout), Cosmetic goals (shame over feeling vein). Or pursuing money while also believing that money is the root of all evil.
• Are there any fears connected with your success? (Like impostor syndrome, fucking up once you reach your goal; See my post on the Self-Concept for self-sabotage) 
• When your sense of self (your self concept) does not fit your desired lifestyle.

JOIN US NEXT WEEK FOR: Releasing resistance against the worst case scenario

How could working through the worst case scenario help you?

1. Many procrastinators are perfectionists who are so scared to fail that they avoid trying. You must become OK with the idea of failing to try it wholeheartedly.
2. As long as you fear failing, you won’t be entirely committed to the goal that you are pursuing. There will still be resistance at the back of your mind; coming up with plan A, B and C and causing anxiety that could become overwhelming in your weaker moments.
3. What we resist persists. If you are subconsiously always focused on not manifesting the worst case scenario, then you will have a hard time focusing (and manifesting) the thing you actually want.
4. When you fear the worst-case scenario, a self-preserving part of you always pulls back at the last moment when you need to stay committed.

Releasing resistance against the Worst Case Scenario feels like peace, freedom and empowerment. It’s essencially to look your fear right in the eye, and saying ‘so what?’

So if you’d like a compleate rundown on how to release resistance against the worst case scenario, how to create more security for yourself and create support system that soothes your fears – then join us in the email list below.

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