The focus on goals or targets can however leave something out. We are all human beings with NEEDS – emotional, psychological, spiritual, artistic and other. Indeed, the psychologist Abraham Maslow suggested that there may be 8 different types of need:

* Physiological needs – such as basic needs for oxygen, water, food, sleep
* Safety and security needs – such as for stability
* Love and belonging needs – such as for relationships
* Esteem needs – e.g. for respect, self confidence, independence, freedom
* The need to know and understand – to learn and gain knowledge
* Aesthetic needs – the need for harmony, balance, beauty
* Self-actualization needs – for achieving one’s potential and finding fulfilment
* Transcendence – the need to connect to something larger than yourself or to help others reach their potential

Useful as focusing on goals is, it is important to recognise that we aim for goals in order to satisfy needs. For instance, in the example given above you might want to reduce your time spent working in order to give you more time to focus on improving important relationships (in Maslow's terminology that would be about satisfying love and belonging needs) or in order to give you time to pursue your own interests (in Maslow's terminology that might be about satisfying self-actualization needs). It can be helpful to consider what needs achieving your goals is intended to meet.

Another way of exploring this is to try to answer the following question:

What are the outcomes that you would like to achieve from your goals?

Try to clarify what the end result is that you are hoping achieving your particular goals will bring? What is the purpose of achieving those goals? Those outcomes will usually be something relating to satisfaction or fulfilment of a personal need or needs.

Outcomes you might be hoping for could, for example, include one or more of the following:

* Greater job satisfaction
* A more harmonious relationship with less conflict in it
* Feeling better about themself and more confident
* A more healthy and balanced lifestyle

For example, if you were thinking of setting a goal for yourself of running your own business within 2 years, outcomes you might be hoping this will bring could include:

* Greater independence
* More satisfaction with their work and
* A sense of personal fulfilment.

It will also be important to consider whether there may be potential negative outcomes from achieving your goal which you will need to weigh up against the positive outcomes. In this instance, you might reflect that achieving the goal of running your own business could produce some negative outcomes, such as:

- Less security and stability

- Pressure on important relationships.

Understanding the outcomes that ultimately you want helps you to set appropriate goals in a number of ways:

1. By clarifying what benefits you hope achieving their goals will bring
2. By clarifying potential downsides from achieving the goals
3. By exploring whether the goals you initially propose to set are in fact the best way of creating the outcome(s) that you want.

If you can establish a better understanding of these things then you are a significant part of the way towards creating goals which are meaningful for you and which you can be motivated towards achieving.

 

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