Do Your Goals Conflict With Your Personality

7/28/2019 Do Your Goals Conflict With Your Personality

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Do Your Goals Conflict with Your Personality?July 1st, 2013 by Steve Pavlina

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Since today is the start of the second half of the year, it’s a good time to update your goals. How are you doing so far with the

goals you set (or refreshed) at the beginning of the year? Are you making good progress? Are you drifting or stuck? Did you

fail to set intelligent goals to begin with?

In my experience, choosing the right goals to begin with is incredibly important if you want to make real progress and enjoy

that wonderful feeling of flow. So let me share some of my recent discoveries on how to set goals more consciously.

The Classical Approach

In the past I used to set goals with a focus on covering the different areas of my life. I’d set goals for my health,

work/business, contribution, finances, social life, relationships, personal growth, spiritual path, etc. This worked okay for the

most part, and I maintained this approach for many years. I even wrote some articles recommending this approach.

This wasn’t an approach I devised. It was basically something I inherited from various personal development books I read.

The approach seemed sound, so I used it by default. Initially I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

However, as I continued using this approach I often felt myself getting stuck or sidetracked. Sometimes I’d look at my goals,

and while they seemed pretty intelligent on the surface, I felt like something was missing. I didn’t feel as motivated as I

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I began thinking of simple labels I could use for these different aspects of my personality where I seem to have a strong need

for self-expression. Eventually I came up with the following list:

The Explorer – The part of me that loves to learn, grow, and explore. This part loves traveling, making new friends,

and new experiences.

1.

The Guide – The part of me that loves to teach and help people grow. This part especially loves to express himself

through writing and speaking.

2.

The A-Player – The part of me that enjoys being effective, efficient, and successful. He’s competent and confident. He

doesn’t need praise or acknowledgement to function well, and negative criticism just bounces off of him. He trusts

himself. And he especially likes to connect and work with other A-players.

3.

The Member – The part of me that loves to connect with interesting people, to volunteer, to be social, and to belong.

This part of me served as President of a non-profit association, was active in Toastmasters, was a member of the

Transformational Leadership Council, administered multiple successful discussion forums, and hosted public meet-ups

in different cities.

4.

The Champion – The part of me that loves to eat healthy, exercise regularly, and pop out of bed well before dawn.

This part loves to keep training to become stronger, faster, smarter. He ensures that I have abundant physical and

mental energy.

5.

The Master – The part of me that loves to be in control. He has a strong need for order, structure, and neatness. He

stays calm under pressure and is very good at managing his emotions. This part especially loves D/s play. He welcomes

responsibility and likes to be in charge.

6.

This is a work in progress, so the list isn’t complete, but I like what I have so far. For the sake of simplicity, I think I’ll limit

this list to a maximum of seven items.


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Now instead of setting goals with the classical approach, I use this identity-based approach. I begin by deepening my

understanding of the parts of me that crave expression. Then I set goals to give a voice to those desires.

For example, The Explorer will be going to New York City this month. The Guide will be speaking at a number of events this

year (and he’s writing this blog post). The Champion is currently starting on Week 5 of the Insanity workout program (which

is insanely challenging) — he’s been pretty happy lately since I’m bouncing around with extra energy and a higher than usual

metabolism.

The Member has been feeling dissatisfied lately. I had a very social time traveling through Europe for a month, but afterreturning home to Vegas, I slacked off and let my social life become a bit dry. This feeling of dissatisfaction tells me it’s time

for some fresh goals and pursuits to express this aspect of my personality. It would also be nice to express this aspect more

evenly instead of yo-yo’ing so much between super social times and slower times.

Some goals are inspired by just one aspect of my personality, while other goals are suggested by multiple aspects. They key

here is that every aspect needs at least one current goal to express itself.

Sometimes these personality aspects align somewhat with the categories from the classical coverage approach, but they aren’t

so limited. For instance, The Champion often aligns with health goals, but that same personality aspect can push me to raise

my standards in my social life as well. And The Explorer can also get involved in setting health goals, such as by suggesting

new 30-day trials.

I think the main thing missing from my list above would be the part of me that loves caring, intimacy, cuddling, not harming

animals, etc. I haven’t come up with a good label for that part yet, but when I do, I’ll include it as well, and I’ll make sure I

have some goals to express that part of my personality more fully. What I have above is just a first draft, so I’ll probably

refactor it significantly in the weeks ahead. But even though it’s a bit rough, I wanted to share it now instead of waiting till it’s


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played extremely well and got significantly better than usual scores too. Between the three of us, we scored five 2s (getting

the disc in the basket in only 2 throws), which is pretty amazing for our group. Normally we can go a whole game without

anyone scoring a 2. The best part is that we all seemed to have a really good time. To me the experience felt richer and more

exciting than usual.

In the past I told myself that disc golf was just a recreational activity, something I do on the side for fun. I wasn’t interested in

pushing myself to play my best. A sloppy throw here and there wasn’t a big deal to me. But my personality apparently enjoys

it when I try to do my best anyway. Even a strictly recreational/fun activity can be made richer and more satisfying by

inviting more of myself into the experience.

Consider how you can apply this idea to some activity in your own life. How can you inject more of your personality into

your work, play, relationships, etc?

Losing the Cage

One advantage to this approach is that you won’t ignore significant aspects of your personality, which is easy to do with the

classical coverage-based approach.

A problem I had in the past was not paying enough attention to my need for exploration and fresh experiences. This part was

especially squashed when I was broke, and it also felt caged when I was married. Four years ago I had never been outside the

USA. Now my passport is halfway filled up with stamps. This type of change is very fulfilling.

In the past I would still set some travel goals, but they were usually my lowest priority goals. Career and contribution and

relationships were always more important, and travel was just an optional tack-on entertainment category, often listed as

“Travel/Fun.”


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the ones that keep trying to express themselves again and again — and when they aren’t being expressed, you feel trapped,

stuck, or depressed.

Do your best to generalize these aspects as much as possible. For instance, if you like coffee and you need to drink it every

day, is it because you like to indulge in the sensual experience of it? Do you do it for social reasons? Do you crave the

stimulation of the caffeine? Any or all of these could be aspects of your personality looking for expression.

Notice what you catch yourself doing in your spare moments. What aspects of your personality might you be trying to

express?

When you really take ownership of your personality… when you can look at your list and say, “Yup, that’s me!” then I think

you’ll find it much easier to claim full ownership of the goals that arise from this approach. You’ll finally be setting goals that

are truly you — not your parents’ goals for you, not society’s goals for you, and not merely some marketing-implanted desire

for the latest iStuff.

Integration

A major benefit to this approach is that it will help you set more holistic, intelligently integrated goals. You’ll develop a better

understanding of which goals are wise choices for you, and which aren’t.

I can see that public speaking is a great fit for my personality. That’s probably why I love it so much. I currently have

engagements booked through March of next year, and I’m always looking for more. Speaking-related goals are very

congruent, and so I find them fairly easy to achieve. Working on these goals is a labor of love.

On the other hand, developing new products is much more challenging for me. I can eventually accomplish such goals, butthey take a lot longer, and my progress is slower. Such goals satisfy some aspects of my personality like The A-Player and The

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Guide, but they don’t do much to satisfy other aspects like The Explorer and The Member. This awareness suggests that I

could develop products faster if I could align the process with more aspects of my personality. For instance, one thing that

helps is working with other people on a product instead of working solo. I’m currently working with an audio engineer on the

new Subjective Reality audio program, and this is indeed helping to move things along since we can collaborate on some

aspects of the project.

I’ll cover this personality-based approach to goal setting in more detail in the upcoming Subjective Reality program since this

ties in with your avatar’s identity and the story you create with your avatar, but I wanted to share the rough version of this

now in the hopes that you’ll find it worthy of some experimentation.

If you try this approach, please let me know what you come up with for the list of your personality aspects. And especially let

me know if you find this approach helpful in setting new goals that you otherwise might not have considered.

The Guide is now satisfied.

Uncopyrighted by Pavlina LLC, www.StevePavlina.com. Feel free to share.

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Do Your Goals Conflict With Your Personality

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