Achieving Our Goals: Are External Factors Effective?

Achieving Our Goals: Are External Factors Effective?

The end of the year often brings complicated emotions. Maybe we set big goals for ourselves last year and didn’t accomplish them, or maybe we haven’t made the progress we planned. 

If we’re setting similar goals over and over and failing to accomplish them, it might have less to do with poor self control and “not wanting it badly enough,” and more to do with where our motivation is coming from. 

When our goals are driven by external factors such as rewards, society’s expectations, or pressure from friends and family, it can cause problems. 

Rewards are great, but they’re unlikely to be motivating enough to inspire real long-term change. For example, there are countless examples of people losing weight and getting fit in order to win big prizes, but if we follow the participants afterwards, few of them are able to keep the weight off once the external reward period has ended. 

If our goals are motivated by approval or acceptance from others, we might feel inadequate if we don’t get the feedback we’re seeking, and we can lose momentum or motivation. Achieving externally motivated goals might not bring the fulfillment we expect because the motivation behind them isn’t personal. Even when we do achieve these goals, satisfaction tends to be short-lived. 

External goals may not align with our personal values or passions, leading to a lack of genuine interest. Pursuing goals solely for external reasons can cause stress and exhaustion, especially if they conflict with our inner desires or if there is a lot of pressure to meet these goals. Also, focusing solely on externally motivated goals might limit exploration and personal growth. It can keep us from discovering new passions or developing skills that could bring us deeper satisfaction. If we’re constantly pursuing what other people find value in, but deep down, we don’t really buy into it, we might get stuck in a vicious cycle of failure, self-doubt, and burnout.

Let’s say Audrey has set a goal to run a 10k in three months. All of her friends are setting the same goal, and she wants to be part of what they’re doing. She doesn’t really know enough about it to prepare properly, but just starts trying to run farther and faster every week. She doesn’t enjoy it, but she doesn’t want to look bad in front of her friends on race day. She isn’t seeing the progress some of them are reporting, so she gets frustrated and pushes harder, but keeps injuring herself and having to rest for a while and try to start over. As the race date approaches, she feels panicky about not being able to achieve the goal she’s set, and tries to train harder. The stress gets to her, and she ends up getting sick instead of going to the race with her friends. She is relieved that she got to save face, but her self-doubt is equal to her relief. “I can never do stuff like this. I don’t know why I keep trying,” she tells herself. We can see all the different external motivators in Audrey’s story, and how they added pressure, and made her feel bad when she failed. 

The goal wasn’t one she set because she valued being able to run a 10k. Is there anything wrong with wanting to spend time with her friends and want to do well at a group activity? Is all external motivation bad? Not at all. 

External motivation can provide direction and structure, and sometimes help us kickstart actual progress. But when we find our own internal motivation in externally driven goals, we can make them more meaningful and sustainable. Finding the balance between the two can help us be much more successful. 

In the next blog, we’ll discuss internal motivation and how it can help us choose better goals so we can see real positive change.
Are you ready to fine-tune your motivation? Come chat during my open office hours (every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month at 11 AM MST), and maybe we can figure out if external motivators are sabotaging your success!