“New year, new life”. The cliché saying represents well the expectations created with the arrival of January. It is common during this period to create goals for the year, with changes in lifestyle or plans to make personal or professional dreams come true. But getting them off paper can often be a challenge, generating pressure and even frustration.
According to psychologist Nataly Martinelli, goals tend to get stuck and generate anguish due to a mechanism in the brain itself: it tends to avoid central elements of progress, such as repetition, discomfort and uncertainty.
“When execution requires constancy, exposure to errors and tolerance to frustration, it is common for the mind to try to ‘protect’ through postponements, excessive planning or “, explains Martinelli to CNN Brazil.
That’s why staying motivated to achieve your goals isn’t about “willpower”, necessarily, but rather about how we understand the journey.
“When the goal is evaluated only by the final result, any friction — delay, error, drop in rhythm — seems like evidence that ‘it’s not working'”, analyzes the psychologist.
This is even the “trap” that makes us feel pressured to get these goals off the ground and achieve them. Pressure occurs when goals stop being “a path” and become judgments.
“When a person starts to measure themselves by delivery, ‘if I achieve it, I have value’, the goal loses its guiding function and starts to function as a threat. And the brain, when faced with a threat, usually reacts in two very human ways: it accelerates with anxiety or avoids it with procrastination”, explains Martinelli.
To avoid this, the key is to change the relationship with the goal: it needs to be a commitment to growth, not a test of identity. The goal is not to push yourself until you succeed; It’s about building constancy without violating yourself, according to the expert.
“And that’s where instilling pleasure in the process comes in. Pleasure is regulation. It’s what signals to the nervous system that the task is not punishment. A ritual at the beginning, a pleasant environment, a small reward at the end, a lighter way to enter; these details take the goal out of the field of pressure and place it in the field of practice”, he states. “When pleasure and method meet, the goal ceases to be a burden.”
10 practical tips to get goals off paper with ease
According to Martinelli, getting goals off paper is, above all, a question of architecture: creating an execution system with small, repeated and monitorable decisions.
To this end, the psychologist lists practical tips for transforming intention into action:
- Think less about the “perfect plan” and more about the next step: large goals often fail due to lack of definition;
- Establish the “least that counts”: start with a dose so small that it is difficult to miss; the goal is to create traction before seeking volume;
- Use the “If… Then…” rule: Swap the daily decision (“as much as I feel like”) for an objective trigger. Example: ““If I finish the coffee, then I do the first item on the list”;
- Treat discomfort as part of the journey: taking goals off paper usually involves some level of discomfort, especially exposure. In many cases, this friction is just the normal cost of learning and sustaining a process;
- Build immediate reinforcement: if you only “reward” yourself by finishing everything, the brain does not receive enough feedback to sustain repetition. The solution is to create a small and immediate reinforcement after executing the agreement;
- Reduce friction in the environment: leave the path easy, with an open document, training clothes already separated and a cell phone away, with notifications turned off;
- Identify your “resistance”: When putting off a plan, ask honestly, “What am I trying to avoid feeling?” and “If I move forward, what changes in my life?” Sometimes the fear is not of failure, it is of success and consequences;
- Evaluate execution: How many days this week did I meet the agreed minimum? Consistency produces accumulated progress;
- Use social media with defined intent: Before opening the app, name the reason in one sentence. “I’m going to look for a reference”, “I’m going to publish X”, “I’m going to respond to messages”. Without intention, the network leads and your goal is at the mercy of the impulse;
- Replace the network metric with your own: likes and views fluctuate and, when they become a ruler, they increase anxiety and reduce consistency. The antidote is an internal, objective scoreboard: “Did I meet the minimum today?” “Have I advanced a concrete step?” This returns the goal to its rightful place: construction, not performance.
