What is a goal?
If we think about sports, a goal is an accomplishment that’s achieved through effort, skill, and a little bit of luck. We don’t say that athletes have scored a goal when the crowd cheers as they step upon the field, we cry “GOAL!!!” when they’ve reached the net or the finish line and bested their competition. Why, then, do we creative people set “goals” that have almost nothing to do with our own efforts, and instead place an importance upon what the world thinks about us, which is largely beyond our control?
We see it all the time. A writer will say, “I want to write a bestselling novel,” or an actor will make a “goal” out of winning an Academy Award. On YouTube forums, I see creators setting “goals” of 10,000 subscribers within a year, somehow forgetting that every subscriber is based on an individual decision by an individual viewer at a specific moment in time.
Certainly, these are outcomes we can work towards, but goals, to me, are things that we can accomplish ourselves. If a painter never gets her work hung in a museum, does that mean that all her effort is for naught? If a playwright is produced solely at local festivals, has he not accomplished something? How do we set goals that allow us to feel good about ourselves as artists and creators without falling into the trap of giving ourselves participation trophies just for doing something, anything?
To set goals that we can accomplish, we have to understand what’s in our sphere of influence and what isn’t. “I want to write a bestselling novel” isn’t something we can determine, but, “I want to complete a novel that I’m happy with and submit it to 50 agents within a year” is something we can control. “I want to be famous,” is almost meaningless in its unspecific nature, but, “I will upload videos 5 times a week based on trending topics, study my analytics to assure I know what’s resonating with my audience and I will reach out to 20 other creators every month” is something we can do.
Some may think this reduces our goals lists into a checklist of tasks, but there’s nothing wrong with having aspirations or dreams. Dreaming about fame and success, while creating goals that move us along the path towards those dreams allows us to understand what the next step in our process needs to be. Waking up and saying, “I haven’t achieved my goal of fame and fortune” can be devastating. Looking at our accomplishments and saying, “I’m doing everything within my power to be the best artist I can be and open the door to more opportunity” gives the power of our goals back to us, where it belongs.
