How Interested Are You in Accessing Your Highest Potential and Enhancing Your Fulfillment?
Perhaps at a particular point of the year, you may set goals. Goals such as to find a new job, buy a new home, find your soulmate, create a new film, work of art, music or writing, prepare your teenager to attend the best college… you get the idea! These are all performance goals. In this post I talk about transforming performance goals to mastery goals, which begins with understanding your innermost goal. This way, perhaps there is a better chance of accessing your highest potential and enhancing your fulfillment. The concepts shared in this post were learnt during my iPEC coach training program – I hope you find them useful.
Understanding Your Innermost Goals
Before you jump in and set up a bunch of actions to fulfill any goal, you may wish to do the following exercise to identify your innermost goal.
Write down your specific goal
Write down what feelings you will gain from attaining this goal
Now consider what you REALLY want – is it 1. or 2.?
If your answer is 1, you seem to be more in touch with your extrinsic motivators than intrinsic motivators. To get to your intrinsic motivators, perhaps you need to dig deeper into why 1. is so important to you. If your answer is 2, you are ready to set goals based on your innermost desires. Either way, I invite you to learn about a mastery orientation.
Accessing Your Highest Potential Through a Mastery Mindset
A mastery orientation or mindset refers to the desire to continually develop into the best you can be – your highest potential. With a mastery orientation you are internally focused and tend to have high intrinsic motivation. You are not attached to the outcome of a particular strategy you follow because you know, no matter what has occurred, that you can learn from what happened and shift as needed. You do not judge your outcome or situation and compare it to others in order to feel satisfied about it. You are fulfilled because you have tapped into your unique skill set and values. In a nutshell, the mastery mindset - in energetic terms - sets you up to thrive as it focuses on your unique efforts, journey, learning, and growth.
Transforming a Performance Goal to a Mastery Goal
Let’s take an example to help expand on this. Say you want to find a new career role this year that better aligns with your purpose and values. What do you set as your goal – is it to get a new role? If so, is your determinant of success whether you get the particular role you apply for?
We all know there are many factors that go into an individual being selected for a particular role - some that are in your control, some that are not. To set your goal simply to get this new role seems bilateral: yes or no – you either win or lose. This is an example of a performance goal. It is focused on winning, focused on comparison with others, and tied to some external reward – essentially it is based on outer factors. Many of us have grown up with a performance orientation so it might be hard to consider any other option.
Now you have a choice. How do you set yourself up for a goal that truly serves you?
Perhaps you transform your performance goal to a mastery goal. This could include learning more about how your individual purpose aligns with the different roles you encounter, exploring networks you have not yet tapped to discover more about opportunities you may not be aware of, and experiencing different roles, so you know what really works for you.
Here is the shift: getting that particular role is not the determinant of success. It is not based on the outcome; it is based on learning more about what truly is the right fit for you. It is about acknowledging the journey – including the roles you may not have gotten or wanted – through the process that contributes to eventually getting the right role for you at the right time. You can apply this to anything you want – finding your soulmate, buying the house of your dreams, creating that impactful piece of art or writing and more.
Now that you have switched your performance goal to a mastery goal, how likely are you to achieve your innermost goal (answer 2. from the exercise at the beginning)?
3 Questions to Ask Yourself to Know if You Have Mastery Mindset:
- Are you in touch with your core values and inner motivators?
- Are you connected to your own efforts and your unique skills?
- Are you learning and growing no matter what the outcome?
If you answered “yes” to all three you are imbibing a mastery mindset. If you answered “no” to even one of them, you still have the potential to adopt a mastery mindset if you choose to.
The concept of mastery is linked to the growth mindset written about in Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset”. The growth mindset is flexible, not fixed. There is no failure when you adopt a growth mindset, only learning. There is an opportunity to find a way to surf through all life’s situations, as you are focusing on your effort, your ability to be your best self, not comparing yourself to others and the outcomes they may have. You are focused on your own progress and potential.
I saw this quote which brought to my mind the mastery mindset:
“A bird gets up every morning and sings its song. It does not wait to hear what other birds are singing, nor does it look to see if another bird is getting more notice. It knows its song innately and sings. This is nature: knowing your song.”
I invite you to set yourself up with mastery goals and experience the difference firsthand. I also invite you to consider how the concept of mastery relates to the concept of integration, which I discussed in my last post. The concept of mastery is a sister concept to integration. Not always easy to express in words, but I do know you can recognize the feelings associated with mastery. Mastery feels more joyful, fluid, easeful, abundant, and has more potential to sustain fulfillment. How true is this for you?
I would love to hear your insights on the themes that resonate with you or any other feedback. Feel free to send an email to lalita@invitingintegration.com if you would like to share with me.