Focusing on the Relationship to Succeed With the Goal
Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash
Have you ever set up action steps to change something, and then found a lot of excuses about why those action steps didn’t (or won’t) work? You decide to start that exercise routine, commit to just putting on your shoes in the morning...and a week later it still hasn’t started. You want to declutter your house and think you’ll just do a little bit every day...but just can’t seem to find the time. What’s really going on here?
The tendency when thinking about making a change is to focus on the actions or steps needed to reach the goal. I had a session with a client recently, I’ll call her Sally, who wanted to work on drinking more water. She had already tried getting a water bottle and taking it with her, or getting an app on her phone that would ping and remind her to sip. These strategies didn’t work.
There’s nothing wrong with going straight to action steps, and sometimes they work! Yay! We can celebrate moving towards our goal. If, however, we notice that we’re finding lots of “reasons” why the action steps don’t work—the app was annoying, the water bottle kept being forgotten—this is often a sign that there is something deeper to look at in the relationship to what it is we’d like to change.
For Sally, the deeper issue was that she didn’t like water. Her relationship to drinking water was not conducive to any strategic attempts that she made to drink more of it, getting in the way of reaching her goal to improve her health through better hydration.
Looking into our relationship to what we’d like to change is sometimes more difficult than thinking of a few action steps. Most of us know what we could try. Our relationship to what we’d like to change is a little trickier to uncover, leading sometimes into our limiting beliefs or the internal conversations, or even conflicts, we’re having.
Let’s walk through a short process that can help identify a shift in your relationship to what you’d like to change. I’ll use an example of my own and Sally working on hydration to illustrate.
What is it you’d like to change?
I’d like to straighten and clean in my home more regularly so I don’t feel like I have to spend a lot of time on it when my home gets more out of hand than I’d like.
Sally would like to drink more water to improve her health.
What is your relationship to it? What are you saying to yourself about this?
Me: There’s always something more important to do! Even though I like things to be straightened up, I often end up in decision fatigue about where things should go, or feel overwhelmed about the number of things I could do to get my space in better order.
Sally didn’t like the taste of water, and because she didn’t enjoy drinking it, she felt an internal conflict between “I should be drinking this, it’s good for me” and “I don’t like this and don’t want to drink it.”
What would you like your relationship to be?
Me: I’d like to have joy in my space, ease in the decision-making, and flow in taking action and getting things done.
Sally identified that she’d like to befriend water, to have her relationship be “You taste good and you are my friend; I enjoy drinking you and feel good about it.”
What one small thing could you implement to move towards the relationship you’d like?
I will spend some time visioning what I’d like my space to be, both how I’d like it to look and also the feel of it (which I realize I’ve never really done intentionally), and see if that opens up a new way forward.
Sally decided to start with infused water to try to enjoy the taste more, and also tie drinking water to something else she really enjoys, which is dancing. Her step is to take 3 short (5 minutes or less) dance breaks during the day and drink some water before and after, to help her link enjoyment to drinking it.
The first action steps may or may not work—relationships are complex, after all! If we can learn from these initial steps, we can continue tweaking until we shift the relationship to be what we’d like, making success with the outcome we’re striving for more likely than ever.
What’s a goal you’ve been struggling with, and how might shifting your relationship to what you’d like to change open up a new possibility to achieving it?