Part 1: The Foundation Crisis

The Problem with Goals That Feel Like Lies

Goals. Every productivity guru, every self-development course, every piece of advice about improving your life – they all start with one thing. The end goal. What you’re working toward. What all your actions should be directed at. Why you’re doing what you’re about to do to improve yourself.

And everywhere you look, the internet is packed with this stuff. Anyone even remotely interested in self-development knows the drill. Write down your goals. Make them SMART. Visualize your success. Track your progress.

But here’s my problem with all of it.

Whenever I set a goal following this standard advice, it always felt artificial. Unnatural. Like some synthetic concept I invented that never really worked because I didn’t feel any internal response to it. I was just checking a box. Okay, fine, I set a goal. I wrote it down like you taught me. Now what?

I’ve never liked standard approaches to anything, mostly because I’ve noticed they don’t work. My brain thinks rationally, constantly inventing excuses for why any particular method won’t work for me. So for every aspect of life, I need to create my own system – one backed by my own explanation, my own rationalization of why I’m doing things this way and not another.

Goal-setting is no exception.

And only now, as I started creating content and sharing it, did I begin to properly formulate these principles for myself. I’m sharing them with you because if they help me, maybe they’ll help you rationalize these concepts for yourself too.

Prerequisites

Acknowledge The Fact

To even begin changing anything in your life, you need to be motivated somehow. You need, first of all, to ask yourself a question: why is this happening this way and not differently? And the follow-up question: how can I do something differently, how can I fix this?

And if that question isn’t backed by a desire to change, it’s completely pointless. Without that desire, you can ask the question as much as you want, but it’ll be rhetorical.

Let me give you an example. Someone wants to lose weight. How does this happen? They see a picture in the mirror or a number on the scale they don’t like, they see they have excess weight, they realize it and ask themselves: why do I look like this and not like an athletic person, not like a Greek Apollo?

Many people stop right there. They do nothing about it and continue their life in the same way, changing nothing.

You know these people. The constant complainers. They’re always complaining about what’s happening to them but doing nothing about it. Their entire life happens in a mode of constant complaints about life, about this or that aspect of life that seems simple and obvious to someone with a different perspective. If you don’t want this in your life, okay, change it. Change something you have the leverage to control, and you can change that aspect that doesn’t suit you.

But the ability to ask those questions alone isn’t enough here.

Desire To Change

The second prerequisite you need is precisely the desire and readiness for change. Okay, I see my body and my weight on the scale, and I understand that I’m ready to change, I want to do this. What is this desire? It’s some internal reason – usually different for each person – but directed at one of the key needs.

According to research on behavioral change, this is what’s called psychological readiness. The Transtheoretical Model of Change, developed by Prochaska and DiClemente, identifies specific stages:

1. Pre-contemplation (not ready),
2. Contemplation (getting ready),
3. Preparation (ready),
4. Action, and Maintenance.

If someone is in the “not ready” stage – not truly dissatisfied or not believing change is needed – then forcing goal-setting is likely to fizzle out.

The statistics back this up. Approximately 91% of people don’t succeed with their New Year’s resolutions. According to a 2016 study, of the 41% of Americans who make resolutions, only 9% felt successful at year’s end. About 80% of resolutions fail by February.

Why? Because they skipped the prerequisites. They set goals without genuine desire to change and without questioning their current state.

Everyone Has A Different Reason Why

Everyone justifies the need for these changes differently. This is an individual case, but the point is that a person finds an explanation for themselves in one of these eternal aspects of human needs. Either health, or wealth, or relationships, or happiness, or spirituality.

For instance, someone can’t start a relationship because the opposite sex considers them unattractive. But honestly, that’s rarely the actual reason. Usually it’s an internal feeling of insecurity that arises because you know you have, say, an unattractive body, and therefore you’re not charismatic enough to approach a girl or guy, start a conversation with them, or attract their attention.

For some people this becomes important. For some it plays the role of actual trauma. Maybe it comes from childhood, maybe it’s something more current, but that’s not the point. Maybe someone was teased in school, and this grew into trauma that then pursues a person through life until they either change or work with their psyche somehow (which is also change, just from a mental rather than physical perspective).

Insecurity From Within

Or take another person who might think that if they don’t have a beautiful, attractive body, opportunities are closed to them. And in most cases this is actually true. Look at the circle of young millionaires, businesspeople, entrepreneurs today – healthy lifestyle, sports, taking care of yourself, all these things are valued. If you end up in such a crowd, in such society, you’ll feel uncomfortable if you have excess weight where everyone is slim, toned, beautiful, with healthy skin, looking good – and you’re there with your excess weight and unattractive appearance.

This will work against you just like psychological insecurity – or rather, it will become its cause. Because of this you’ll feel less charismatic and like someone who’ll ultimately get fewer opportunities, because few people will want to build dialogue with you or make a deal. These opportunities are precisely opportunities to, for example, get rich, make a profitable deal or partnership, and so on.

No Tech Will Work Without It

I think the picture is clear. You can continue like this for each of these aspects, and in most cases it’s not just one – it’s their combination. That reason or combination of reasons that exists and fills you from the inside. This question is key: why and what for do I need to change?

For some people this happens consciously – they really understand that this is one of the reasons, and if I change, something in my life will change, including in this direction. For this you probably need another aspect of awareness, which might also make sense to add to the decision-making system map. This is self-awareness. It’s probably even first, above questions and awareness.

As psychologist Edward Deci noted:

“There are no techniques that will motivate people. Motivation must come from within, not from techniques. It comes from people deciding they are ready to take responsibility for themselves”.

Without personally important reasons, no goal-setting technique will stick.

This is how this internal motivational package forms, which allows you to explain to yourself or rationalize for yourself the necessity of changes.

When Goals Aren’t Really Yours

Internal Mobile Motivator

When the necessity of changes is internally justified – let’s say it has a reason, this strict “why,” and then a clear explanation of why a person wants to change and why they can’t remain in the same place where they were before – everything becomes much simpler. And the goal starts to flow from this in a natural way.

That is, setting a goal in the case of having such an internal mobile motivator is already just a formality. Okay, if I can explain to myself and internally arrange it like this, for what I need to do this, then here you go, my goal – for instance, it consists of me losing weight. What happens next?

If a person has such a goal, then their further actions are very easily directed toward achieving this goal. How does this happen? You start, for example, going to the gym. And if you have this goal before your eyes, this healthy body without excess weight or the figure of Apollo, then it won’t even be a question for you whether you want to go to the gym today or maybe it’s better to sit on the couch and eat pizza. You won’t even have such a question.

Borrowed Goals Die

But here’s what I’ve noticed in my life – this generally only happens when the goal is authentic, internal, real. That is, one that comes directly from inside. One that’s called internal motivation.

Or it’s a goal that you, for example, spotted somewhere in someone else, but it’s not yours. Again, you might have exactly the same goal, but here’s my personal problem – if I see or read or hear about some other person’s goal, I often like it, I want to have such a goal myself. But since my brain is trained to constantly ask the question “why and what for and is this even necessary to do?” – it understands that this is someone else’s goal, and the natural question that arises in the brain is: do you need this goal, because it’s not yours. And that’s it, basically. No other justifications, even if I try to invent them and layer them on top, won’t work anyway.

This is where the science becomes fascinating. Research on what’s called “self-concordant goals” – goals that are consistent with your genuine interests and values – shows they’re dramatically more likely to be achieved than goals adopted from external pressure or imitation.

The West Point Study: When External Motivation Backfires

One of the most compelling studies on this comes from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Researchers conducted a longitudinal study examining why cadets joined West Point and how that related to their success. Cadets join for different reasons – some feel a calling to lead and serve (intrinsic motivation), others are drawn by a free education or prestige (extrinsic motivation), and some have both motives.

The findings were remarkable.

Cadets with strong internal motives were more likely to graduate, become officers, and receive early promotions than those motivated primarily by external factors. They were about 20% more likely to succeed in their careers.

But cadets who had both internal and external motivations actually fared worse in their career outcomes than those with pure internal motivation. External rewards seemed to undermine the effect of internal drive.

This aligns perfectly with Self-Determination Theory, developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. They’ve found that when people focus on extrinsic goals like money or fame, it correlates with lower well-being – higher anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, prioritizing intrinsic goals like personal growth, relationships, and contribution predicts greater vitality and mental health.

In other words, pursuing self-chosen goals that resonate with your core values tends to yield more success and satisfaction than chasing goals imposed by others or by societal pressure. Even business authors warn about this. As one put it:

“Life is short. Don’t make the mistake of chasing someone else’s dreams”.

The framework’s emphasis on authentic internal goals is well-founded in research. Your brain literally won’t let you pursue a goal that isn’t genuinely yours – at least not with any sustained motivation.

Making Goals Your Own

So it’s important to understand before this moment that in this case you need to act differently. For example, for me this approach works, which I’m now describing – to rationalize for myself precisely the identification of this reason somehow. I need to articulate it for myself, I need to build some chain of logical reasoning that ultimately leads to me needing this goal, in such a way that it turns out to be at minimum my own, not someone else’s.

And this already leads to me being able to use this goal without qualms, and my brain stops, for example, telling me that this isn’t your goal and you don’t need it. No, this all goes into the background, and I start perceiving this goal as my own.

Here, naturally, you need to understand quite deeply how your psyche works, how your thinking operates. Because mine, for example, is always geared toward rationalization – I need a logical explanation for why it’s this way and not otherwise, every time. And emotional switches, for example, work poorly for me. If it’s backed by emotions for me, then usually when that emotional moment passes, I immediately forget that it happened.

Find Your Own Reasoning

Well, unless it’s some strongly traumatic event that’s then also reinforced by rationalization from this logical thinking side. In that case, it works in two directions, and here two flows – rational and emotional – reinforce each other. And for me this is the strongest rationalization. And, for example, setting goals for things that live in me, I don’t know, as some kind of trauma that’s connected to the emotional side of the question, and it’s also reinforced by the rational – I managed to explain to myself why it needs to be exactly this way and not otherwise. This is the strongest, absolutely strongest of possible motivators for me.

Different brains work differently.

• For highly analytical people like me, a multi-layered logical chain is essential.
• For others, a vision board or a sticky note on the fridge might work.
• For some, an emotional anchor from a powerful experience provides the foundation.

You must find the method that makes the goal authentically yours. Not because someone told you to want it, or because it sounds good. But because you’ve internalized it through your unique cognitive process.

And this takes time. It can take weeks or months of reflection, writing, questioning, and refining. There’s no shortcut here. The goal must survive your brain’s attempts to reject it as foreign.

This is only the beginning of our journey into the fog of elusive goals and how to navigate through it. Stick with me, we’ll continue the discussion in new articles.