You’ve taken stock of where you are right now. Great. The next step is to determine your “why” or your motivation. This is something preached over and over again in the field of change management. If you don’t give people a compelling reason to change, they just won’t. It is true for enterprise changes and it’s true for personal change.

When I’ve walked through this framework with people before, I like to use the Enneagram as a basis for this step. If you aren’t familiar, the Enneagram is a personality typing system based on your core desires and fears. As an Enneagram 1, I desire to be good and right and correct. I fear doing evil or wrong. So my motivations are always based in what I think is “right”. My husband, an Enneagram 7, desires being happy and avoiding pain. So his motivations are usually based on what seems like the most fun or least painful thing to do.

If you are familiar with the Enneagram and know your type, feel free to leverage that. If not, just think about why you want to achieve the goal. You might have to dig deep because sometimes our first answer is “because it’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Maybe think about the things that always make you feel good. Then ask yourself what it is about those things that you find appealing. Maybe you are always looking for the lesson in everything…you might be motivated by learning. Or maybe you will only get up off your ass if there’s competition involved. None of these are right or wrong or better, they are just plain helpful when it comes to figuring out how to think through your goal setting.

Here’s a great example. I have a friend who is 100% motivated by helping other people (she’s a type 2). She really really wants to get her finances in order, pay off debt and build up her savings. But the problem is deep in her mind she feels like saving that money for her future is selfish while there are so many things she could do in the present to help other people with her dollars. But – what if she thinks about building her savings as a way to support her family after retirement? Or as a way to help make sure her kids get the education they want? It might seem like a silly exercise to some people, but as I’ve said before, simple reframing of our mindsets can be the thing that helps us be successful.

If our primary motivations are in conflict with how we think about our goals, our accomplishments will be derailed. And even worse, they will be derailed by things we think are SO IMPORTANT that we won’t always be able to right the ship. But if we build our motivations into the goal itself, we are more likely to keep perspective on what is actually important to use and from there it’s smooth(er) sailing.

I’ll give another example to close out this section. As I said above, I am an Enneagram type 1, motivated by doing the right thing OR by doing things the right way. This can create a huge obstacle when I start setting goals. I can get so wrapped up in trying to figure out the exact right way to do something that I end up never starting. It’s a common problem for people who identify as perfectionists. I had a goal to get this blog started at the beginning of October. And the way I framed my goal, I was bogged down in doing it the right way…building an editorial calendar, trying to figure out a social media strategy, writing posts ahead of time, etc… If you go back to my first post, you’ll see it wasn’t until October 14th that I actually started. It took me two full weeks to stop getting twisted around how it “should” be and to just focus on the next right step. Because of this tendency in me, it’s important that I think about my goals as small steps towards the end state, rather than trying to go too big too soon.

At the end of the day, there are a lot of ways to think through what motivates you. But I really believe that unless you identify your motivation up front and build it into your goal setting…you will have a really tough time working through an obstacles that come up.

Stay tuned for next Wednesday when we dive into Step 3 – Writing Your Goal.