Goal neglect

Clients sometimes come to me and say that they’re terrific at goal setting and striving and they’re great at achieving but for some reason, life still feels out of whack.

It’s often because there’s some serious goal neglect going on.

Goal neglect is not spoken about much, but it’s a thing! Here’s how it looks –

So say your value or higher-order goal is having a happy family. The goals and actions that stem from that might be:

• Goal: Lots of time together + Actions: family dinner 5 x week, reading at night, family movie nights
• Goal: Staying fit and healthy + Actions: walks after dinner, riding bikes on weekends, cooking together, veggie garden
• Goal: Making a steady income + Actions: parent/carer does paid work, family budget

But then one of those goals becomes Functionally Superordinate in guiding behaviour and actions. And this leads to neglect of the higher-order goal.

So maybe the parent/carer’s goal is to make enough money to allow for family experiences, a home, transport, good food, healthcare. But they start feeling like more would be better, so they take on more projects and begin working longer hours. As a result, they are less able to go for walks after dinner, they miss family movie nights, they drop those weekend bike rides, and the family’s collective wellbeing dips.

So while the income goal flourishes, the higher-order goal [a happy family!] ends up neglected.

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If you feel like your achievement isn’t happening the way you’d like it to, it can be worthwhile considering how your actions, goals and values align and making sure that all are getting the love and attention they need.

Tags: career-coaching, life-coaching, Melbourne