I’ve rounded up six types of goals that research shows are most likely to lead to happiness and well-being: Compassionate, Harmonious, Focus, Mastery, Challenging, Autonomous. (CHAMCA). The often less desirable counterparts of these types of objectives are: Self-image, Obsessive, Avoidance, Performance, Easy, Controlled respectively (SOAPEC). Together these types of goals can be grouped into 6 dichotomies. Let’s take a look at each one.
Compassionate/Self Image
Compassionate goals include helping others. With compassionate goals, you are just as happy and satisfied to see someone else succeed as you are in her own success. Self-image goals have to do with caring about how others look. Having self-image goals is related to being stressed and anxious, as you are constantly worried about being evaluated by other people. Instead, having compassionate goals is related to happiness and well-being.
Harmonious/Obsessive
Harmonious goals are goals that blend very well with other aspects of your life. Obsessive goals are goals that you relentlessly pursue despite hurting yourself, those around you, or important relationships in your life. For example, moving to another city to get the job of your dreams, despite uprooting your children and threatening your marriage. You can achieve your goal but not be happy with it. Happiness and well-being come from having mostly harmonious goals.
Approach/Avoidance
Set your goals so that you are moving toward something (approach) rather than away from something (avoidance). It’s easier to put as a motto an action plan that moves you toward something you need or wants than to move you away from something. Avoidance goals can be reformulated into approach goals. For example, “I want to lose weight” can be rephrased as “I want to be able to run up the stairs without getting out of breath.” This goal will likely include more exercise and other health-promoting behaviors. Weight loss is also likely to result from your new lifestyle.
Mastery/Performance
People with mastery goals seek to learn and understand something new. People with performance goals seek to obtain a favorable judgment from others. Having mastery goals is more related to persistence in the face of adversity, which is normal because satisfaction comes less from the end result than from the learning that occurs during the process of striving towards a goal. People with mastery goals are also less concerned with their skill level. They see failure as an opportunity to grow as a person. People with performance goals are concerned with skill level and view effort as a sign of lack of ability. They are also more likely to choose easy targets with a higher chance of success, preventing them from reaching their full potential.
Difficult easy
To keep you motivated, goals need to be challenging enough not to get bored, but realistic enough not to discourage you. There has to be the right balance between your ability level and the goals you set. For example, lowering the bar for a high jumper is not likely to keep the jumper motivated. On the other hand, aiming to make the Olympic high jump team at age 52 may be unrealistic. This doesn’t mean you can’t set goals that are more challenging than your perceived skill level can handle. However, you must be able to imagine that you will be able to take the necessary steps to achieve it. That is, fill the gap between your current skill level and the skill level needed to achieve the goal. Reaching challenging goals gives you a higher level of satisfaction, personal growth, and self-esteem than easy goals. People often set easy goals when they are afraid they will fail if they set more challenging goals.
Autonomous/Controlled
Autonomous motivation means that you are driven towards a goal due to intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation means that you need external rewards such as money, praise, or status improvement to keep you interested in the activity. The activity itself is rewarding for you. For example, your goal to become healthier will bring its own reward in making you feel better about yourself. If he gets an external reward for the activity, he will continue to do it without it. This differs from controlled motivation. With controlled motivation, your goal stems from something you have to do, such as meeting quotas or work targets set by your employer. Also, if the only reason you have for achieving a goal is an external reward, then it is a control-motivated goal. Well-being and happiness are associated with autonomously motivated goals.
Not all your goals have to be CHAMCA Context is important. In some situations, we need to set goals that are easy, if we need to do something that we perceive as easy. Sometimes our goals are controlled by reward as well, like when we are at work and need to get work done. We may also be concerned about our own image so that we don’t show up to work looking like a mess. Sometimes it’s also okay to want to perform, for example, while playing a competitive sport. We may also want to avoid things like catching a cold or obsessing over doing homework. The important thing is to have a proper balance in the types of goals we have. Too much self-image, obsession, avoidance, performance, easy and controlled goals are not desirable.