The psychology of goal setting

“Setting goals is the first step from turning the invisible to visible.” Tony Robbins. 

Goals play a major role in shaping the way we see the world; ourselves and others. 

One really simple reason for this is because our brains are visually orientated. In life, except the blind, we use our eyes to focus on specific points in front of us and seek to move towards or away them.

Neurologically speaking, this equates to over 150 million light-sensitive cells in the eye, whilst 30% of the cortex (several hundred million neurons) are dedictated to processing the visual stimuli the eyes. This compares with 8% of the cortex that covers touch and just 3% associated with hearing. For example each optic nerves, consists of over a million nerve fibres where as the equivalent auditory nerve carries a mere 30,000. 

Accordingly the way we process visual concepts, is the same way we process other ‘cerebral’ concepts - like planning for goals and setting about tasks.  That is to say, our vision focuses on a narrow point in front of us whilst everything in our peripheral vision is blurred. The same is the case with the way we think about goals - when we turn our attention to them, we can bring them into brilliant focus whilst blurring out all the other distractions that might lead us there.

Now, I make an important caveat to my earlier use of the word ‘process’. You say processing our goals is one thing, which we’re focusing on in this post. But evaluating, and motivating ourselves towards a goal is different and also incorporates important parts of our emotional memory and we’ll talk about that seperately. 

So, back to thinking + the power of sight.

Numerous scientific studies show that when we become goal oriented we choose to train our mind to think about what we want in life and work towards achieving it. Rather than just coasting, doing the 9-5, or the same thing we’ve always done (which we might be very successful at I might add!), the brain automatically rewires itself. And the most effective way that it starts to do this - is through sight. 

Your brain starts to orientate towards what goals will look like - or to put it another way -, if you can tap into that visual processing power, by using a method the brains visual processing can understand - vision then you are going to utilize / orientate more of your brain towards that objective. 

So, when we visualise a goal and us core to it,  and make it a critical part of our identity and mission, we are more likely to achieve it because we’ll have orientated more of our brain towards that end. 

But, there is a core difference here between setting a goal, and making progress in achieving it. Vision boards, to-do lists etc are very effective for crystalising what goals you want…but we need to do more if we are going to be effective in achieving that goal.

The act of creation is powerful and rewarding in itself, so we may very well sit back and rest on our laurels if this is as far as we go.

On its own, thinking about or dreaming about what you want is not enough – people tend to rest on their laurels and feel accomplished in the creation. Plus, when we just think about the end goal, we don’t actually stimulate all those part of the brains that we need to co-opt. For example, the cortex, is involved in planning and meshing together emotions with progress - so if we don’t co-opt this part of the brain into the process, then we’re leaving a huge tool on the shelf.

So, we need to devise a solid and achievable plan to bring that goal into existence to stimulate all those parts of the brain that we need to be successful, but also because if our goals are too loosely defined, or far away, then our natural reward pathways aren’t activated.

But if we devise a plan, and we make progress / and feel fulfilled by that progress, then we are able to stimulate those reward pathways and motivate ourselves towards goal completion.

So, to summaries, to put visualization into action: 

1. Visualise the end goal - crucially the ‘what’ but also ‘how you feel’
2. Plan the journey – break into down into practical steps and stages; 
3. think about obstacles standing in the way so they don’t surprise you

Now, this is very much the ‘carrot’ of the goal setting neurobiology.

But there is also a very powerful stick. You see humans are governed by healthy shame and fear. A fear that if we don’t achieve something we’ll be embarrassed or left behind. That’s because whilst we can be motivated to move towards what we do want, the brain can be super motivated to moving away from what it doesn’t want.

So, if we think of two things; what will happen if we don’t achieve this goal, and what could go wrong in the pursuit of this goal, then we’ll have put strong mental guard rails around us to elp us should be stumble.

If we succeed, then we’ll tap into all the other powerful reward pathways the brain has at its disposal, and feel emotionally fulfilled and we trigger alignment with our values and sense of purpose…

…and if we don’t, well, our brain will be wired up towards helping us try again.

The most telling findings in relation to this come from the fields of sports science, where goals are clearly a major factor; winning a game, running a race, last a distance, beating a time.

A 2002 study by Evans + Hardy revealed on the effects of goal-setting on athletic training and revealed that groups who followed a goal-orientated action plan were; more prepared, more motivated, were more organized and had higher levels of performance compared to groups who has less clear, or no, training or performance goals.. 

Dr Emiliy Belcetis of NYU has done several studies in this field and there are three major findings from the studies which are worth sharing;

1. Those who have clear goals find the tasks required to achieve their goals as less arduous than those who have no clear focus. 
2. Those who have clear and specific goals are more successful in achieving them. And a sub-point to this, is that if these are long term goals, setting intermediate goals is crucial to helping along the way. This is because our reward pathways stimulate us as we get closer to the achievement of our goals - think of that final ‘kick’ long distance runners do as they come around the final bend into the home straight. As we get closer to ‘seeing’ our finish line we subconsciously increase our exertion.
3. Visualising your goals has a major impact on your ability to achieve them - because we are so visually orientated, by visualising our goals we are able to align a much larger part of our brain towards achieving it - consciously and subconsciously.

And psychologists have other reasons behind why they see goals as being so important to us;

1. Achieving goals aligns us with our values: - What we want to achieve is typically based upon our values. This becomes self-reinforcing because, studies have then shown the more aligned we are with our values, the more benfit we will feel from achieving them (Erez, 1986).
2. Goals hold us accountable to reality: At some point, the rubber hits the road - no matter how grand our goals are, they need to become more than an empty statement of intent - and so as soon as we start off in pursuit of them, they are reconciled with reality. And in the process - help us to understand our strengths and weaknesses in achieving these goals. With these realisations we can course correct and give ourselves feedback.  
3. Goals hold us accountable to ourselves: when we set our goals, we make of a statement, a commitment, to ourselves to achieve them. We devote ourselves towards that - and we can hold ourselves to account if we fail to that end. We can undertake self inquiry & reflection to understand what went wrong and what we need to do differently next time.

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