If you've ever had that moment where you shake your head or you put your head in your hands and say, "Oh my goodness, how did I get here? This isn't the life that I planned. This is isn't what I ordered, I want my money back!" - then today's video is for you. I'm going to tell you about how I teach people to set the right goals to create the life that they want and what one of the biggest mistakes to avoid is so that you don’t end up off track again.
Life Dissatisfaction: This isn’t the life I wanted!
Have you have ever found yourself in one of those moments like I described earlier where you just put your head in your hands and you're like, "Oh my goodness, how did I get here?" Maybe it is a job that just feels like you're drudging to work every day or maybe it is a relationship that you have finally realized isn't working for you the way that you wanted it to. Or maybe you spend all of your time doing things for other people or volunteer organizations or these activities that you find that you're just having to force yourself through and you don't even know why you're doing them anymore. If that sounds like you, then what might be happening is that you have lost track of how to read your internal compass.
How Our Lives Get Off Track
One of the biggest ways we get off track is if we spend a lot of time trying to force ourselves to want what we think we should want rather than what we actually want. So, imagine that you get this amazing job opportunity and you think that you should be super excited about it, except your internal response is kind of like, "Meh, this isn't for me." But you force yourself to take the job anyway. Maybe because your parents thought it was a good idea or because it's good money or it's respectable or some other sort of socially acceptable reason like that. And you force yourself to take this job and then you find that you're miserable in it. That's an instance where we override our internal compass and what it's telling us.
When You Don’t Know What You Want
Now, if we do that enough times, then what happens is it becomes like the little boy who cried wolf. If we ask our internal compass, "Well, what do you think? Is this a yes or is this a no?" And then we ignore what the compass says enough times, our compass is going to be like, "Well, I give up! Because every time I tell you something, you ignore it anyway." And that's how we end up with that “I don't know” response.
When we turn inward and we ask our internal compass, "Does this feel like a yes or does this feel like a no?" And we get an, "I don't know." Then often times it's because we've lost touch with what yes and no actually feels like.
The Biggest Mistake People Make:
Setting & Achieving the Wrong Goals Won’t Make You Happy
If you try and set goals for your life when your compass isn't calibrated properly, then you're going to end up off track. If you try and get from point A to point B with a compass that's broken, you're always going to end up in the wrong place. And so, trying to set goals and drive towards them when the calibration of your compass is off, is the single biggest mistake that most people make.
That's how we end up in this ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses’ place. Any of you who've ever seen Fight Club might recognize this quote. The main character, Tyler Durden, says,
"We spend money we don't have,
to buy things we don't need,
to impress people we don't like."
Those are the kinds of things that happen when our compass isn't calibrated properly. That’s how we end up chasing things we don’t need, spending money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t care about.
We set the wrong goals and chase after them like our lives depend on it. But when we achieve those goals, we are still miserable. Accomplishing them doesn’t make us happy…because they were the wrong goals to begin with - set by a compass that was out of whack. That's how we get off track.
Getting Your Life Back On Track
How do you get back on track, you ask? You get back on track by getting back in touch with what yes feels like and what no feels like, by recalibrating your compass. And that's something that I teach people to do in my psychotherapy and coaching practice: how to recalibrate your compass so you can get accurate readings again. I can teach you how to tap into your true desires, so that you are setting goals tailored for your own life, rather than what you think you should do based on societal rules or stereotypes.
Once your compass is recalibrated, then, and ONLY THEN do we start setting goals. Because goals set with a properly calibrated compass will actually get you to a life you look forward to living. Trying to do it before then would be folly.
If you want help getting your life back on track…
Psychotherapy or Coaching Can Help
If you feel like your life has gotten off track and you’re struggling to get it back on the rails, individual therapy or coaching can help. I have guided many clients through the process of reconnecting with themselves and calibrating their internal compass so that they can reach the right goals for them and create a life they look forward to again.
I would love to chat with you about the challenges you are facing and help you come up with a plan to find more joy in your life again. Click the button below to set up a free consult call.
For more information on how psychotherapy or coaching can help you achieve your goals, check out the Individual Therapy & Coaching page.
