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Avoid negation in the formulation of your goals
GerryGelassen has had another interesting experience on the subject of defining goals:
“At first I thought: "Hey, it's easy to define goals! My problem is that I get extremely nervous in oral exams and often can't fully recall what I've learned because I'm so nervous. Then my goal is the following: I don’t want to be nervous in exams any more! But then I realised that “not being nervous any more” is not that easy. How can I achieve this goal in practice? After all, I’ve tried that umpteen times.
It helped me to ask how I would like to feel in exams instead. I want to be calm and composed and be able to recall the knowledge I have learned.
That made my goal clearer.”
Gerry's experience shows the following: In the formulation of your goals, you should avoid negation. So, it is not enough to simply say what you no longer want to do.
“I don’t want to be stressed out any more” or “I want to have less time pressure” are thus not a good way of formulating your goals.
As an aid, you can remember that you should not use NO or NOT as part of a good goal formulation.