A New Year’s Story
It was the morning of New Year’s Day, and my girlfriend was wondering why I was getting up so early.
“I have to finish Mindful Mondays,” I explained, “and then I have clients starting at 11.”
“You’re working today?” She pouted. “I have the day off—I thought we could go for a hike.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing my mistake. Of course she had the day off! I should have thought of that. And naturally, she’d assumed I would take New Year’s off, too. But I had just taken a full week off for Christmas, and as a self-employed therapist & coach, I’d wanted to get back to seeing clients and earning a living. So, although I felt sad that I was missing the chance to spend a leisurely day together, I packed up my laptop bag and headed off to work.
My 11 AM client, who I was seeing online, didn’t show up. (I later realized we’d actually cancelled our session for that day, but I’d forgotten to delete it from my calendar.)
After lunch, I drove to my office to see two clients in person, but when I got there, I found that the parking lot was empty and the entire building was locked. I had to call one client from the parking lot to reschedule, and arranged to meet the third client online that afternoon.
Later, I stopped by Trader Joe’s to pick up something for dinner. You guessed it—the store was closed, too.
By the end of the day, I realized my girlfriend had been right: no one works on New Year’s Day. I’d tried to, but apart from seeing one client, it had been a wasted effort.
Lesson learned—I’ll be sure to take New Year’s off next year.
But my New Year’s experience also reminded me of another truth: our goals and intentions don’t always work out the way we want them to. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men / Gang aft agley” (translation: often go astray).
The Difference Between Goals and Intentions
In my last post, I wrote about how I failed to achieve most of my specific outcome-oriented goals for 2023, and why I’m setting intentions this year instead.
So what’s the difference between goals and intentions?
Goals, at least the way we’re traditionally taught to set them, have specific outcomes in mind.
The problem with setting outcome-oriented goals is that we can very easily become fixated on that outcome. And until we achieve that outcome—or if we fail to achieve it—we’re not satisfied. To paraphrase Naval Ravikant, a goal is “a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”
And therein lies the rub. Setting a goal creates a kind of contraction of consciousness, a tiny anxiety in which we become attached to an outcome, which is often actually outside our control.
Intentions, like goals, are things we want to do or to have happen. But unlike goals, intentions don’t necessarily have specific outcomes that we can succeed or fail at.
For example, you could intend to be kind to others. There’s no real way to measure how successful you are at it, and you’ll never actually be finished achieving it, so it’s definitely not a SMART goal. And yet, if that intention is heartfelt, it could make a powerful difference in your life, and the lives of others.
Can you hold an intention without being attached to the outcome? If so, you may be able to avoid the psychological suffering of goal-setting. It’s a principle taught in the ancient spiritual traditions, and this year, I’m testing it out.
A Few of My Intentions For The Year
I thought I’d share a few of my intentions with you, so you can see how I’m applying this principle and how it looks different from traditional goal-setting.
Take a break from alcohol and caffeine. I already didn’t drink much alcohol, but as a daily coffee & tea drinker, I couldn’t get through the day without these plants—at least not without a terrible headache. And although coffee and tea are basically good for you, I want to experience what my baseline consciousness is like without chemical alteration. I also want to see if I can reset my nervous system toward more parasympathetic vs. sympathetic balance—in other words, to be more relaxed and not in the fight-or-flight mode that caffeine tends to induce. As of today, I’m one week alcohol and caffeine-free. How long will I go like this? I haven’t decided yet. (In case you’re wondering, the headaches only lasted two days, but boy do I feel spacy…)
Learn a little Spanish. Even though I was born and raised in San Diego, I’ve somehow managed to avoid learning Spanish for most of my life (I took French in school). But in the coming years, I want to travel more in Mexico and Latin America, as well as being able to chat with my Spanish-speaking neighbors. The key here is that I’m leaving “a little” intentionally vague. In the past, I might have set a goal like “listen to Pimsleur Spanish lessons every day for 90 days” or “pass the CEFR level A2 exam by June.” But at this point in my life, I just don’t have the energy for that kind of thing. In the last week, though, I’ve already learned about 100 Spanish words, which definitely counts as un poquito.
Go deeper with hypnosis. I’ve already taken beginning and intermediate level trainings in hypnosis and started using this tool in my practice, but I wanted to go deeper. So I’m taking an intensive training through the Milton Erickson Foundation that meets for two hours every Friday morning, with plenty of practice built in. This isn’t something I set a goal to do—I just signed up for the class sometime last fall and added it to my calendar for January.
As I noted in my previous post, these intentions are more like directions I want to move in, aligned with my values rather than specific outcomes I want to achieve.
My hope is that by setting these kind of intentions, rather than goals, I can still do the things I want to do and become the kind of person I want to be, without locking myself into the mental trap of outcome-focused goal setting. I’ll let you know how it goes!
What do you think? Are you setting specific goals, or more open-ended intentions for this year? Either way, I’d love to hear what you’re working on. Feel free to reply to this email or drop me a comment, below.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Cordry, LMFT
PS: Would you like individualized support in setting and realizing your intentions this year? I have a couple of spots open for 1:1 coaching. Just reply to this email to let me know if you’re interested.
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Yes to resetting the nervous system! I play with my caffeine intake, especially when I notice I’m increasing my coffee consumption — sometimes, I’m drinking an entire pot a day, and I’m like whoa — that’s when I pull it back.
Last Spring, I ditched coffee for similar reasons as you shared here; my nervous system needed some calm down time and after going through my own burn out, I wanted to start getting a better sense of its baseline. Wow, my brain missed that caffeine kick, especially during WOP.
Buena suerte con tu Español! Consider throwing on some tunes in Spanish or reading something you’re already familiar with, but translated in Spanish — maybe un poco poetry! Those are fun little ways to learn a little.
Really enjoy your thinking on the perspective shift from goals to intentions. In some ways it yields a deeper effect on our behavior. And perhaps it affects our surroundings differently too, it sure hits different when people come to a shared moment with good, clean, clear intent