6 Tips for Setting Intentional Goals as a (Recovering) Perfectionist

Jan 4

For me, the new year always feels like an opportunity to reset. I get super excited to think about what I want to do throughout the year. Unfortunately, that usually also means putting a ton of pressure on myself to change.

(Insert tangent here about how the calendar year is arbitrary and there’s no actual reason to torture myself with these kinds of expectations.)

Either way, this is the time of year when everyone starts asking about my new year’s resolutions and goals for the year. This usually looks like me saying that I’m going to start managing my time better (whatever that means), or drastically change my eating habits overnight to fulfill some expectation of what my health should look like.

Having vague AF resolutions coupled with my perfectionistic tendencies, it’s no wonder I haven’t actually achieved any of those things yet. In fact, for 2023, I’m taking an entirely new approach to new year’s resolutions. I’m using intentions to guide my goal-setting. But first, what’s the difference?

A goal is inherently external and future-focused, involving some tangible accomplishment that you can check off a list. For many perfectionists, it comes from thinking about what we “should” do or from comparing ourselves to others.

An intention, on the other hand, is more internally focused, describing how you want to feel or who you want to be. It’s an internal compass that helps to keep you in alignment with the things that matter most to you.

So, if we were to take the spirit of both practices and create intentional goals, what would that look like?

It can be easy to work toward resolutions or check off completed goals and immediately move to the next thing without pausing to acknowledge the journey. For this reason and others, setting intentional goals can be a useful practice for perfectionists.

Here’s a refresher on some of the unhelpful traits of perfectionism:

Holding yourself to impossibly high standards or expectations
An intense fear of failure or making mistakes
Tendency to think in absolutes (all or nothing; good or bad; perfect or worthless)
Comparing yourself to others
Procrastination, especially when it comes to important tasks
Extremely harsh or critical self-talk, especially when you feel like you’ve messed up

Speaking from my own experience here: the cycle of a perfectionist’s normal goal-setting or new year’s resolution strategy often looks like this:

You chase goals in hopes of getting a hit of dopamine when you achieve them. You set goals with impossibly high expectations to maximize the impact of achieving them. You harshly criticize yourself when you don’t achieve them. This then reinforces both the impossible standards and the idea that you’re a failure.

Yikes.

For me, setting intentional goals is an opportunity to break the cycle and practice being more mindful about what matters to me in life.

So, without further ado…

6 Tips for Setting Intentional Goals as a (Recovering) Perfectionist

1. Base your intentions on your values.

If there was only going to be one bullet point in this entire post, it would be this one.

Say it with me: Goals that are created based on comparisons to others or feelings of what you “should” accomplish are destined to fail. This is because they’re not actually important to you.

It’s normal to want things that others have, but that’s usually not enough to actually motivate folks toward creating change. Instead, try setting intentions based on your values. What is deeply important to you? What do you want to incorporate more of into your life? What matters most to you and why? Intentions that align with your values can guide you toward living a life that feels meaningful, which positively reinforces your efforts toward change. It’s okay if your values shift over time — the important thing is that you continue to reflect on what they are and how to move in alignment with them.

2. State your intentions.

Sounds basic, but it’s crucial. Spend some time reflecting on your values (see, aren’t you glad we did this in #1?), and then examine how you might live your life in greater alignment with them. Once you have an idea of what that looks like, write your intentions down! That could be on your phone, in a journal, on a vision board, or even in a text to a friend… whatever the medium, make sure you put them out there. These intentions will be what helps formulate actionable goals, so putting them out there encourages accountability and keeps you anchored to your purpose.

3. Understand what “success” will look like.

Whether you’re setting a goal, an intention, or an intentional goal, it’s important to understand how you will define “success” — and “failure.” (Lookin’ at you, fellow perfectionists!)

Firstly, focus on what you can control. “I want to be in a relationship” is not a goal that you have control over. “I want to be an emotionally healthy partner for any future relationships” is an intentional goal that is within your control, as long as you take the necessary steps to nurture it (going to therapy is a great step, for example). Then, ask yourself how you’d know you reached your goal. This step is so important because many folks set high (and often unrealistic) expectations for themselves without actually knowing what they’re reaching for. Taking our same example, what does “I want to be an emotionally healthy partner” mean? How will you know when you’ve reached it? What might make you feel like you’ve succeeded? Failed? We often judge ourselves for failing when we’re actually doing quite a lot — just not as much as we feel we “should.”

4. Create space for flexibility.

Setting “perfect” and “forever” type goals is a huge trap that perfectionists can easily fall into. Perfectionists might set goals that are too big, too vague, or too challenging, and then expect themselves to achieve them perfectly. This also involves being honest about your time, abilities, commitments, and resources. If you have obligations that take up most of your time, it’s probably not realistic to expect success as magically creating an extra 2 hours per day to work on your goal. As we know, life throws curveballs all the time, and we have bad days, make mistakes, get distracted, shift our priorities, or otherwise have to change course. This is a form of all-or-nothing thinking, where we move from one extreme to the other without allowing for space in between to exist. This makes it easier to feel like we’ve failed at reaching our goal, and can make us lose motivation to continue. So, to set intentional goals that are meaningful and have a higher chance of success, we need to allow for realism and flexibility.

5. Break down your intentions into smaller steps.

Intentional goals require intentional steps. In order to avoid all-or-nothing thinking, too-high expectations, and other perfectionism traps, we need to set the groundwork for gradual and habitual change. When setting your goals, think about how you might break it down into 5 smaller steps. From here, I recommend habit-stacking, which means choosing one habit or step to work on for a period of time and then adding another habit or step once the first one is more ingrained. Keeping track of your progress in those small steps can be a helpful motivator to keep you going. Rather than expecting instant results and feeling like you’ve failed, you’ll start to notice yourself gaining traction toward your overall goal.

6. Focus on what TO do, rather than what NOT to do.

Goals that come from a place of negativity are inherently less motivating and lack clarity. “I want to argue with my spouse less” is well-intentioned but a lot less powerful or actionable than, “I want to learn effective ways to communicate my feelings.” This reframe also helps you focus on what you have control over, like we talked about in #3. Goals that focus on eliminating things or stopping behaviors don’t actually tell you what to do or how to move forward, and potentially just lead to further guilt or shame when they inevitably don’t happen. To avoid getting stuck in this trap, focus on what steps to take rather than what to avoid. “I want to set boundaries at work” paves a path forward better than, “I don’t want to work so much.” Being clear about the intention behind these goals, and how to break them into achievable steps, helps set you up for success.

While setting goals can keep us focused and motivated, it’s all too easy to fall into the default trap of setting vague, unrealistic goals, especially around the new year. By focusing on your values, intentions, and setting reasonable expectations, you’re more likely to have a positive result.

What’s one intentional goal you’ll be setting for this year?