The Simple Mind is a newsletter to help you reduce overthinking and boost self-confidence.

Why do we need clear goals?

When it comes to running a business, the answer’s obvious: clear goals align the team to work in a clear direction. (Obvious, not always applied, but that’s another topic).

When it comes to goals you set for yourself, it’s easy to dismiss their clarity. After all, these are your goals. You don’t need alignment in your head. It’s obvious you understand what the goal is.

But do you?

How many goals have you set, then forgot about, or unintentionally tweaked?

I was recently interviewed in Life Intended podcast (link below), where Kelly and I discussed self-confidence and the importance of clear goals.

This week, I want to talk about how self-confidence and clear goals interwind.

As always, thank you for reading.

Let’s dive in!

Orianne

Reading time: 3min.

Blurry Goals Create Blurry Confidence

You need a point of reference

Your self-confidence is rooted in your trust in your ability to overcome challenges (self-efficacy). So you need to register your wins.

If goals are blurry, you forget about them, it’s unclear when you reached them, and it’s unclear if you didn’t. It’s actually the reason why most people set blurry goals.

To some level it removes pressure. You can’t quite fail.

You can’t quite succeed either.

Being clear on what you are trying to achieve gives you a point of reference. Made it, or didn’t, you can acknowledge and celebrate a success, or acknowledge and learn from a failure.

Failure is necessary to build self-confidence

Ignoring failure, keeping things murky to avoid it, not only prevents you from building self-efficacy, it creates more, unecessary pressure.

Failure becomes this big scary monster you must avoid at all cost. It makes it hard to keep a quiet mind when the stakes are so high. It makes it much harder to recover when you do fail.

Acknowledge when you succeed as much as when you miss the mark. It will increase your confidence in both your ability to reach your goals, and your capacity to bounce back when you don’t.

For that you need a crystal clear goal.

Going above and beyond SMART: clear intention

Everyone loves SMART Goals. It’s a great way to make sure you clarify every aspect of your objectives, with a clear measure for success (wait what’s SMART goals?).

SMART Goals are great, especially for business. But here’s an element you want to focus on when it comes to mindset: what’s the intention behind your goals, how do you want to feel?

This will help you know when to pivot and avoid pursuing unfulfilling goals (which would impact your self-esteem and self-confidence).

You can set clear goals and later change your mind

I get it, clear goals feel like commitments you may not want to make.

You can decide you no longer want to pursue something, without impacting your self-confidence.

But it has to be a conscious choice, else you’ll feel like you failed. You’ll associate moving on from the goal as not being resilient enough, not being good enough or whatever else you use to self-critic.

Focusing on your intention will allow you to pivot easily. Whether it’s because your intentions change, or the plan (your SMART goals) are no longer fulfilling the intention.

A client once wanted to scale their business and reach a certain team size. As they grew, they realized managing was actually not something they enjoyed, and chose to adapt their goals accordingly.

Their intention was still to run a successful business, but having a day-to-day they enjoyed was a non-negotiable for them. They pivoted.

Registering a pivot as a choice to move closer to your broader goals (or intention) removes shame and builds confidence in your ability to honor your needs.

Wrapping up

Clear and intentional, no matter the outcome, build your self-confidence.

It’s rarely ever about positive outcomes (though these are nice). It’s about knowing you have what it takes to overcome any challenge, and knowing you show up for yourself by honoring your vision.

One resource for you

Want more on self-confidence? Listen to my conversation with Kelly for Life Intended Podcast.

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Orianne, I share weekly tools to help you reduce overthinking and boost your self-confidence.

A bit more about me: I coach brilliant humans who perform very well but want to improve their relationship with themselves (their minds). I am a chocolate addict, live by the beach, and always read several books at the same time (currently a french novel, and Sell like crazy from Sabri Suby).

If you enjoyed this newsletter, you can read the previous editions and subscribe here. If you want to improve your mindset, I am launching a 1:1 coaching program for Founder’s mindset. Check it out here.