You Asked, We Answered: Effective Goal Setting  

General Questions About How to Set Effective Goals

Every month, Kii Health offers monthly Ask an Expert webinars to its clients. At a recent session Dr. Khush Amaria, Clinical Psychologist and Vice President of Clinical Services – Mental Health at Kii Health, focused on goal setting, sharing her expertise on how to set effective goals and form healthy habits. There were a lot of great questions – so many great questions, in fact, that we’ve enlisted the help of Dr. Kayleigh-Ann Clegg, Clinical Psychologist to follow up on a few that we weren’t able to address during the live session.

And now over to Dr. Clegg.

Being able to set and make progress on the things that are important to us is essential for growth and well-being. It’s something that comes up frequently in therapy with my clients, as well as something that I personally have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about in scientific literature to enrich my own life.

As always, please note that this is general information based on my clinical experience and my reading of current research and does not substitute more personalized information specific to your situation.

What’s the cure for biting off more than you can chew (i.e., taking on too many goals or goals that are too big)?

This is one of the biggest roadblocks that people tend to face when it comes to making progress on their goals – that “change my whole life now” mindset. The cure is simple: take smaller bites! Recognize that you’ve taken on too much, reprioritize, and start with bite-sized chunks that are at least slightly smaller than the aspirations that you initially had.

Side Note: How can you reprioritize? Three things to consider:

• Your values: What really matters to you in life? What’s most important to you? What do you want your life to be about? Do the goals you want to pursue reflect that? Research suggests that we tend to make more progress on goals that are more in line with our values.
• Your lynchpins: Lynchpin habits or goals are those that tend to lead naturally to other positive behaviours or changes. I think of these as the “first domino”; they help you achieve more with less effort. For example, if you’ve noticed that you’re more likely to exercise in the morning if you get to bed at a reasonable hour the night before, sleep time might be your lynchpin behaviour, and you might want to focus on correcting that first.
• Your well-being: Well-being is foundational. When you have a lot of competing responsibilities and obligations in your life – work, family, children – it can be hard to prioritize your personal health and goals. However, when your well-being is compromised, it can be virtually impossible to meet those responsibilities. As a client of mine once noted, if you don’t choose to prioritize your well-being, eventually your body will force you to. Remember that prioritizing your health and well-being isn’t selfish; caring for yourself is an investment in your long-term ability to care for those in your life.

Finally, remind yourself that: (1) The key to sustainable, long-term progress is small, consistent steps toward your goals; and (2) Chances are, you are not suddenly going to wake up with a new level of motivation, willpower, and energy you’ve never had before, so make those steps things that you could realistically start incorporating into your life with your current level of motivation, willpower, and energy. More motivation will follow when you take action.

Do you have ideas of rewards that are not costly or include unhealthy food?

Yes! Rewards don’t have to be expensive or sugary to help reinforce and support motivation. They do need to be personalized (tailored to your specific likes and enjoyments), immediate (during or as soon as possible after you do a planned behaviour towards a goal or achieve a milestone), and not things you already do all the time (make them special and specifically linked with your goal). Here are a few examples to start you off:

• Listening to a podcast you love
• Listening to a musician you love
• Watching a show you love
• Taking an extra-long bath
• Mentally noting, savouring, and praising your efforts
• Telling someone warm and supportive in your life

Something I personally have found effective, despite being perhaps a little shameless, is that I half-jokingly, half-seriously demand praise from my partner when I do something toward achieving a goal, like, “I just went for a run! Tell me I’m awesome and an athlete!” When that’s parroted back at me, it somehow still makes me feel proud of my effort. Get creative with it!

What are your thoughts on punishing yourself for falling behind and stopping following through on goals?

My main thought is that it’s probably best not to do that. Punishing yourself may sometimes be motivating in the short term but it doesn’t tend to lead to sustainable, long-term progress, and it can be damaging to your well-being to boot. Instead, I would try to step back, be curious, and treat it like a puzzle. What do you think got in the way? Is there anything going on in your life right now that’s competing for priority? Is the goal feasible? Does it reflect your values? Sometimes, we simply need to tweak the goal, break it down into more manageable steps, or change something in our environments. And sometimes, when a goal no longer reflects what really matters to us or what we really want, it’s actually healthier to disengage from it.

How do can you set effective goals with neurodivergence, where attention and motivation might operate differently?

This is a really great question! Full disclosure that this is not a full area of expertise for me, but when I think about my work with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), what comes to mind first and foremost is the importance of tailoring the process. Rather than trying to adapt yourself to fit a specific goal setting and progress framework, adapt how you pursue your goals to reflect your strengths and needs. Identify how your attention and motivation tend to operate, and then actively build that into how you plan and pursue your goals. For example, if task initiation and delayed gratification tend to be most challenging for you, make a point of devising shorter-term rewards and reward the act of starting rather than completing. If you tend to work well under pressure or when things are novel or challenging, find creative ways to increase how stimulating and challenging a goal is (e.g., gamifying your goal).

I hope that this will be helpful to you in making the changes you want to make to your life – bon courage! If you need any support along the journey, don’t hesitate to to a licensed professional (e.g., a therapist or a coach) through your healthcare provider or your EFAP.