Written by CLUTCH Vol. 7 Participant: Tiffany Trinidad
Feeling more open and comfortable with each other as the weeks pass by, the day started with welcoming smiles, including one from this week’s workshop facilitator, Jen Gonzales, who is the Director of Student Life at Ryerson University. The week’s topic was goal setting. Goal setting quite often translates into career planning, which garners memories of the classes we’re subjected to throughout our education. Starting from elementary school (What high school do you want to go to? What courses are you going to take?), and continuing well into university (Where are you going to intern? Where are you going to work? What now?), we’re trained to plan for the future. So understandably, the topic can be anxiety inducing.
“What are some of some recent goals you’ve accomplished?” Jen asks. Immediately I go to my list of recently check-off items. I just finished the winter semester of school, which in the last two weeks included: three final projects, one test, three presentations, and three exams. If nothing else, I was rather relieved to be done, but I quickly learned that feeling of relief isn’t the point of goal setting. When asked to think about your goals in life, compiling a check-list comes all too naturally: finish your degree, get a master’s degree, get married, and have kids. But what comes next after you’ve checked everything off your list?
Jen’s approach to goal setting is much more holistic. Inspired heavily by the book The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals with Soul by Danielle LaPorte, she helped us work out our own desire maps. The concept of the first activity was simple, complete the sentences:
I crave…
Other than time or money, I want more of…
My joy comes from…
I’m proud of…
The best advice I’ve ever given…
The best advice I’ve ever received…
We then explored the five different domains of life: livelihood and lifestyle, body and wellness, creativity and learning, relationship and society, and essence and spirituality. As always we shared our answers with each other. We talked about what was going well in each category of life, and what wasn’t going so well for us. I always find this part of our workshops therapeutic. It’s hard opening up, but with these girls I feel safe and supported.
Looking back at our answers, the conversation then switched to focus on one specific question, how do you want to feel? We focus so much energy on checking things off our lists that when everything is over and done with there isn’t much to reflect on. When we’re older and looking back on our lives, we remember what we felt along the journey. That’s what goal setting should focus on, what we feel during the journey. Feeling relieved is admittedly a poor goal at best. Jen shared with us a list describing positive feelings and we chose what we wanted to feel. My words were: supported, accepted, loved, free, comfortable, and peaceful. Feeling relieved was notably omitted. Maybe my words don’t seem like a complete goal, but it’s a good start.
It’s important to plan where you want to go and acknowledge what you really want. Checklists are easy, but more important than this checklist of goals is the feeling you want to have on your journey. So create a mantra, take time out of your day to reflect, and make feeling good more important than checking off items on your to-do list.