“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it,” Goethe said. This chapter is all about setting a course for change—dreaming and then doing.
There are few greater sources of human pain than the feeling of stagnation or immobility. And there are few greater blows to self-esteem than really wanting something without ever achieving it. A strong self-concept depends as much on what you do and make as on your “idea” of yourself. You can silence the pathological critic, you can rewrite self-denigrating thoughts in gentler, more supportive tones, but if you feel helpless in the face of your dreams and needs for change, then you may never fully accept yourself.
Strong self-esteem depends on two things. The first is what most of this book has been about: learning to think in healthy ways about yourself. The second key to self-esteem is the ability to make things happen, to see what you want and go for it: literally to create your own life.
Feeling paralyzed and helpless makes you hungry and dissatisfied with life. Action and goal-oriented change make you feel strong and in control.
The process of finding out what you want is the first step in goal setting. There are eight main categories you need to investigate to get a clear picture of your wants and needs.
With these categories in mind, now is the time to answer four key questions.
Think about each of the above categories as they apply to your life. Ask yourself if there are any painful feelings or difficult situations associated with them that you would like to change. A young grocery store clerk made the following list in response to this question:
Go ahead and make your own list in the space provided. Write down everything you can think of in the left-hand column, labeled “What Feels Bad.” (A form for the whole “What Do You Want?” exercise is available at the website for this book if you need more space.)
| What Feels Bad | Corresponding Goal |
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You’ve finished half the task. Now it’s time to translate negative feelings into positive goals. Think of at least one concrete thing you could do to change each item in the left-hand column. Make sure it’s possible and that it involves a specific strategy or action on your part. Here’s how the grocery checker completed the exercise:
| What Feels Bad | Corresponding Goal |
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1. Fighting with Brian |
1. Use time-out strategy |
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2. My dingy apartment |
2. Buy curtains and posters |
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3. Spending weekend with Mother |
3. Keep visits to one hour |
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4. Tendonitis |
4. Get brace from MD |
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5. Long commute |
5. Use tax refund to move |
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6. Loneliness in evening |
6. Phone friends after Brian is in bed |
This is a chance to once again look back over the eight categories and think about what you yearn for. What would make a difference in the quality of your life, your overall well-being? A hotel manager developed the following list in response to this question:
List the things you hunger for in the space below.
Again, review the eight categories and use them to create a list of things you’ve always wanted to do, or change, or become. Don’t worry if some of the dreams seem impractical or beyond your reach right now. Just put down whatever comes to mind. A thirty-year-old massage therapist made the following list:
List your dreams—the things you’ve long wished for—in the space below:
For the last time, review the eight categories to find small things that would make your life more comfortable, pleasurable, or easier. This should be a big list. Do a lot of brainstorming to think of as many items as possible—at least thirty. Some may be expensive, but most should be inexpensive or cost nothing at all. Here are some of the items from a math professor’s list:
Make your own list below. Thirty items seems like a lot of work, but it will pay off later to have a lot of helpful ideas for adding little comforts to your life.
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It’s time to make a preliminary selection of goals you would like to work on. At any given time you should be working on at least one long-range, one medium-range, and one immediate goal (something you can accomplish in a few hours or less). Go through the lists you made under each of the four questions. Choose four long-range goals—something that might take months or years to accomplish. Then choose four medium-range goals—something you could do in weeks or a few months. And finally, select four immediate goals. Write them in the space below:
Now you should evaluate the twelve goals you selected to see which ones would be best to pursue right now. You can evaluate your goals using three tools. First, rate the intensity of desire for each goal on a 1-to-10 scale. A rating of 1 would mean that you had hardly any desire to pursue the goal, while a rating of 10 would indicate a passionate commitment. Write the numerical rating next to each goal.
Now it’s time to evaluate the costs inherent in the pursuit of each goal. How much time, effort, stress, or money would be involved in trying to reach a given goal? Rate the costs associated with each goal on a 1-to-5 scale. A 1 rating would be minimal cost, while 5 would indicate a great expenditure of time, effort, money, or the like to reach the goal. Write the cost rating in a different color ink next to each goal.
Now it’s time to look at blocking factors. These are significant obstacles that stand in the way of the goal—for example, the need for more education or special training; fear, disapproval, people, or institutions that are impediments; and so on. Rate the blocking factors for each goal on a 1-to-5 scale. Once again, a rating of 1 indicates minimal blocking factors, while a rating of 5 suggests some major obstacle.
Looking back on your twelve goals, you should now have three ratings for each: intensity of desire, costs, and blocking factors. A good way to evaluate your goals is to subtract the sum of the costs and blocking factors from your intensity of desire rating. For example, suppose you would like to construct a Japanese garden. Your intensity of desire is a 6, but the costs are a 4, and blocking factors are also a 4. With an overall rating of -2, it’s quite likely the garden will never be built: not as long as costs and blocking factors outweigh your desire. Try to analyze each of your goals using this formula. Any goal that has a positive number probably has a chance. Obviously, the higher the number, the better the chance. The math professor, for example, who wanted a streaming movie service did the following analysis: intensity of desire = 7, costs = 2, blocking factors = 1. Costs and blocking factors added up to only 3. So the goal ended up with an overall rating of plus 4.
When the evaluation process is complete, circle one goal each from the long-range, medium-range, and immediate list. This is where you’ll invest your greatest efforts toward making changes in your life.
It’s time to identify the what, when, where, and with whom of the goals you’ve selected. Some of this will be easy. On immediate goals, for example, all you have to do is write a specific date and time in your calendar when you’ll undertake the task. For example, “Tuesday, August 23, 9:00 a.m. Sign up for streaming movie service” or “Thursday, June 10, 6:00 p.m. Bookstore to get novel.” You should try to accomplish at least one immediate goal per week. These easy, short-term goals give you an emotional boost and can mobilize you to do bigger things.
The medium and long-range goals need a bit more planning. One of the best ways to develop such plans is the following exercise.
This technique allows you to visualize yourself having achieved a goal, and then review the concrete steps you took to reach it.
Now that you’ve used visualization to see yourself accomplishing the goal, it’s time to write the steps down in black and white. First, write down the specific elements of your goal. Then list the steps with a time frame for accomplishing each one. Let’s use the goal, “Spend more time with the kids,” as an example. Here’s how the steps were developed.
I want to spend most of the day on Saturdays, plus Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings after homework, 7:30–9:00 p.m., with my kids. Also, special outings (museums, and so forth) two Saturdays a month.
Some goals require many more steps just to get them off the ground. Here are the first month’s steps for “becoming a physical therapist.”
Notice that the steps are specific, concrete, and behavioral. They map out exactly what the individual needs to do to start the ball rolling. On a separate piece of paper, write out the steps for your medium and long-range goals.
Make a commitment to a friend or family member about your medium- and long-range goals. Tell the person the steps you plan to take to reach them. Explain the time frame for each step. Then report each week’s progress toward your goals. If you want to, you can also include your immediate goals in the progress report. Ask your friend or family member to initiate a check-in at least once a week if you haven’t done so.
Sometimes people with low self-esteem can set goals but fall short of achieving them. You have a vision of a better future, but something stands in your way, keeping you from grasping the prize.
Here is a list of the six most common blocks to achieving goals. Read them carefully and check off the blocks most applicable to you. Then skip ahead to the sections that explain how to overcome your most troublesome blocks.
Giselle was a forty-five-year-old part-time interior decorator and antiques dealer. She wanted to break into the lucrative field of corporate décor—designing hotel lobbies, executive office suites, and high-class reception areas. She knew that she needed new skills, equipment, and experience, which she outlined in a series of steps:
But Giselle couldn’t seem to get started. She browsed around the computer store, getting more and more confused. She looked at her bank balance and despaired of ever affording a trip to Europe.
The steps were too big. She hadn’t done a complete planning job. Each of her goals was reasonable in the long term, but they didn’t tell her what to do today.
This exercise will help you break down your larger goals into smaller steps by asking a series of questions designed to “deconstruct” goals into their component parts.
Overall goal:
In order to accomplish this goal…
(first step toward achieving your goal)
(middle steps toward achieving your goal)
(completion of the final step toward achieving your goal)
Note that all eight questions may not apply to each of your big goals.
A downloadable version of this worksheet is available online at http://www.newharbinger.com/33933.
When Giselle applied these questions to her goal of a newer, faster computer, these were her pertinent answers:
Note that Giselle intuitively asked the “Information” question again when her first step started becoming obvious. She reached this point in her goal setting on a Tuesday night, made the call Wednesday, and was in a graphics class by the next quarter.
Jake was a twenty-four-year-old art school graduate who wanted to make his living as a painter. His schooling had taught him a lot about the history and technique of oil and watercolor painting, but he lacked knowledge of the real world of the professional artist. He had a vague notion of shipping off canvasses to prestigious galleries in New York and Chicago, and getting huge checks back in the mail. His lack of information kept him from setting clear, realistic goals and making a step-by-step plan to reach them.
To gain the knowledge you need, you can try these resources:
Rosalia was a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two children. Five evenings a week she taught classes in English as a second language. Her husband worked days at a restaurant supply house. Their seven-year-old girl was having trouble keeping up in second grade, and their five-year-old boy was due to start kindergarten. Rosalia really wanted to homeschool her children. She had a low opinion of the local public schools, plus strong theories about early education, family values, and her Hispanic cultural traditions.
Rosalia took her daughter out of school and tried to homeschool both kids. But she had a hard time getting everything done—her regular teaching work, her kids’ curriculum materials, tests and reports to the school district, the housework, keeping the cars running, keeping the dog cared for, snatching a few moments with her husband, and squeezing in a movie or a weekend trip. She got run-down and discouraged.
Rosalia needed to learn the three rules of good time management:
Write down all the roles you play in your life, including the new roles implied by your goals for the future. Then rank these roles, starting with 1 for the most important, followed by 2 for the second most important, and so on. Here is Rosalia’s list:
And now the hard part—cross out the roles that you are going to have to eliminate or downplay in order to fulfill the higher priority roles. Rosalia realized that she would be doing a lot less church work, Red Cross work, tennis playing, traveling, and piano playing. Also, she would have to lower her standards for household cleanliness and repair, or get someone else (like her husband) to take up the slack. As for time-wasting habits like daydreaming, chatting on the phone with her sister for hours, or watching TV talk shows—forget it.
The “to do” list is an essential template for the effective time manager. Your daily list should be prioritized into top-, middle-, and bottom-drawer items. Top-drawer items are the things you absolutely have to do that day, like keeping doctor’s appointments or mailing your tax return on April 15. Middle-drawer items are slightly less important, but they really should be done today, or tomorrow at the latest, like finishing your résumé or working on your novel. Bottom-drawer items are the least important items, the ones like defrosting the refrigerator or giving the dog a bath. They should get done sooner or later, but later is okay.
Rosalia made sure that she had at least one or two top-drawer items each day. For instance, she planned an educational game or outing for her kids on each home instruction day. In addition, she made sure that her schedule left her time for dinner with her husband and an occasional visit to her mother. Middle-drawer items like teeth cleaning and fixing the roof over the back porch got put off for a couple of months. The bottom-drawer items like planting bulbs in the fall and getting the piano tuned never happened. She felt mild regret about the little stuff but higher self-esteem overall because she was keeping up with her big goals of home schooling and a close family life.
Most time management plans are eventually undermined by the demands that others place on your time. You have to stifle your tendency to automatically agree to do things just because other people want you to drop everything and do their bidding. This doesn’t mean you have to turn nasty and uncooperative and make everyone hate you. It just means that you have to ask yourself:
Rosalia found that she had to say no to her sister’s invitation to go to a dog show, no to the Red Cross volunteer coordinator’s plea for more hours, and no to her book club when they wanted her to host more than her share of meetings.
Herb was a fifty-eight-year-old nursery owner who had been divorced for eighteen years, had no current girlfriend, and was feeling lonely. He set a goal for himself of finding a woman with whom he could settle down. His ideal woman was thirty-five to forty-five, slim, petite, dark-haired, graceful, artistic, into plants and nature, a music lover, good cook, and tolerant of his crusty bachelor lifestyle. Herb liked to get up around three or four in the morning, brew up a strong pot of coffee, read the paper, and work on landscape designs on his computer until the sun came up. Then he got to work in the nursery and the greenhouse until about 10:30 a.m., when he’d have a big lunch and take a two-hour nap. Around one or two he’d go back to work for another few hours, knock off for a quick dinner, and fall asleep in front of the TV around 8:00 p.m.
Herb was an organized guy, so he broke his goal down into manageable steps and got into action. He asked all his friends and acquaintances to set him up with single women. He joined an online dating service and made a few dates for coffee with the women who responded. He accepted invitations to parties, which he didn’t really want to attend, hoping to meet somebody. But his dates never worked out. The women were too old, too heavy, too intolerant. Or if they appealed to him, he didn’t appeal to them.
Herb’s problem was unrealistic goals. Although he was a pleasant, creative, interesting fellow, he was too short, too fat, too weather-beaten, and too slovenly to attract women younger and fitter than himself. His lifestyle and schedule were too odd and inflexible for the average woman to accept or accommodate.
Herb got nowhere until he ran through this checklist of criteria for reasonable goals:
Knowing what you do of human nature, your own personality, the way the world works, and probability, what are the odds against you achieving your goal?
You need a better than even chance of achieving your goal or it is not realistic. If your chances are fifty-fifty or worse, you are setting yourself up for failure. Herb finally realized that without changing his requirements in a woman, he would probably have to run through over 200 “applicants” before he’d realistically find a match. That’s a lot of online dating and coffee. He had to do something to better the odds or he’d ruin his kidneys.
Herb realized that he could acquire some but not all of the prerequisites to attract the kind of woman who met his criteria. He could lose weight, get a haircut, buy nicer clothes, and keep more normal hours. But he couldn’t make himself younger or taller.
The second prong of this question concerns who is going to accomplish the goal. If your goal is for your husband to stop drinking, that’s his goal, not yours. If your goal is for your son to finish high school and get into college, that’s his goal, not yours. You need to formulate your goals in terms of what you can reasonably do yourself, as your own agent. Don’t put goals in terms of other people’s behavior. You can plan to attend Al-Anon meetings and to move out of the house if your husband continues to come home drunk. Those logical steps are within your power. You can plan to hire a tutor for your son, provide a quiet room to do homework, and not plan family trips that will cause him to miss school. That’s within your power. But you can’t graduate high school for your son.
Herb realized that part of his frustration and resentment was that he expected that some wonderful woman “ought to” fall in love with him, that he was somehow entitled to a mate, and that she was being derelict in her duty by not showing up in his life. He was setting his goal in terms of another’s behavior—in this case, another person he didn’t even know yet!
Herb finally revised his “ideal woman” to include someone his own age, of equal crustiness and imperfection, whom he would have to accept and adapt to. He and Darla have been married for a couple of years now.
Jerri was a thirty-nine-year-old medical technician who had worked in the blood and urine test lab of a large HMO for twelve years. She wanted to advance in the organization and get a better job, perhaps in radiology or the ultrasound clinic. However, whenever a better job was posted, she ultimately decided not to apply. “I’m not really qualified,” she would tell herself, or “too much responsibility,” or “I couldn’t work for that woman.”
Jerri was plenty qualified for a number of good positions over the years, but fear of failure held her back. She was afraid that she couldn’t handle new tasks and new people and would be a horrible flop.
The way to overcome fear of failure is to systematically assess the actual risk of failure. The following form will help you determine the worst that could happen, assess the possible damage and coping strategies, and reduce your fear of failure to a reasonable level.
Risk Assessment
Describe the failure you fear:
What do you tell yourself about this event that increases your fear?
Rate the strength of your fear on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the most fear:
Rate the probability of failure from 0 to 100 percent:
Assuming the worst happens,
Predict the worst possible consequences:
Possible coping thoughts:
Possible coping actions:
Revised prediction of consequences:
Re-rate your fear from 1 to 10:
What is the evidence against the worst possible outcome?
What are some alternative outcomes?
Re-rate your fear from 1 to 10:
Re-rate the probability of the feared failure:
A downloadable version of this worksheet is available online at http://www.newharbinger.com/33933.
Here is how Jerri filled out her risk assessment form:
Risk Assessment
Describe the failure you fear: Failing in a new job
What do you tell yourself about this event that increases your fear? It’s too hard. I’ll screw up. Better not take the chance.
Rate the strength of your fear on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the most fear: 9
Rate the probability of failure from 0 to 100 percent: 75%
Assuming the worst happens,
Predict the worst possible consequences: I apply for a new job, get it, then do so badly that I kill somebody and they fire me, and I never work again and die broke.
Possible coping thoughts: I haven’t killed anybody yet. They always have training periods, mentors, and probationary reviews so you won’t get too far off track.
Possible coping actions: Ask my old supervisor for my old job back. Tell the new supervisor I’m nervous and need all the extra training I can get.
Revised prediction of consequences: I might do okay and not lose the new job. Even if I did, I might get my old job back.
Re-rate your fear from 1 to 10: 5
What is the evidence against the worst possible outcome? People change departments all the time without screwing up or getting fired.
What are some alternative outcomes? I might not get the first job I try for, and I’d be no worse off. I might do well and have a better job. I might do poorly and have to go back to what I already know how to do. I might have to find a job in another hospital.
Re-rate your fear from 1 to 10: 3
Re-rate the probability of the feared failure: 10%
Jerri went on to apply for and land a job in the radiology department, in which she excelled, was rapidly promoted, and came to feel at home.
Margot was a sixty-three-year-old retired postal worker. Her husband had died five years before, her kids were grown, and she wanted to see the world and meet some interesting people before she died. She had the time, enough money, and pretty good health, but three years after retirement she was still at home, seeing unfamiliar cities and countries only in travel magazines. Some other women her age were flying to Las Vegas with the church group, bussing to Yellowstone National Park on geology tours, and even taking walking tours of the English Lake District. Margot almost went on that Lake District tour. She could see herself walking from inn to pub to churchyard, peering at nightingales through binoculars, eating shepherd’s pie, and making brass rubbings in the company of some spry gentleman from Indiana. But she knew it wouldn’t work out in the long run. She would get homesick, or sprain her ankle, or violate some old-world English custom and look like a complete Yankee rube. The spry Midwestern gent would make advances, and she’d fall apart in a panic. Or they’d start a romance, and he’d find out what an ordinary nobody she really was and dump her in some British backwater. She’d better not try to pull off something so ambitious. That was for other people, not her.
Why would anyone be afraid of success? Everybody wants to succeed. It may seem paradoxical, but many people with low self-esteem feel a sense of shame deep down that leads them to avoid success at the same time they are seeking it. They want the good things of life but don’t feel that they deserve them. If they do achieve some success, they fear that it will just set them up for a bigger fall later. They will become prominent targets for other people’s envy. Or others will come to depend on them, and they’ll crumble under the responsibility.
If you have set reasonable goals, broken them into simple steps, aren’t afraid of failure, have the knowledge and time management skills you need—in short, have done this goal setting thing perfectly—and yet you are stuck, then consider that you may be afraid of success.
What’s happening is that your pathological critic is still down there in the dark whispering the debilitating litany of shame: “You can’t do it. You don’t deserve it. Who do you think you are? It’s not worth the risk. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.”
You need to return to the early chapters on the nature of the pathological critic, the methods of quieting him or her, and talking back. Margot was not able to sign up for next year’s Lake District tour until she had composed and rehearsed several mantras to bring her pathological critic back in line: