A crucial part of changing habits or behaviours is to have a plan with a direction. This usually means that you have to decide what the purpose, aim, or goal is first. The ONI Goal Setting Process takes a client through a step by step mapping process that considers their past, present, and future in order to chart a course of action or plan that is optimal for their buy-in and goal oriented success.

Goals

When setting a goal, it helps to choose a direction you want to head in (positive emotion system) and a direction you want to move away from (negative emotion system). Having both points identified helps you establish a clear direction for your goal.

Having this clear direction maximally motivates you because you aren’t just hopeful towards achieving your goal, but you are also afraid of not doing it. This is a fuller picture of your map when also combined with external and internal factors.

Note: Fear mongering tends to only use the anxiety that is placed in front of a person to motivate them. For example only looking at risks and threats when trying to make a decision and not considering the benefits. You need both a positively charged goal and a negatively charged place to move away from (see positive and negative emotion systems in ‘5 Factor Personality Model’).

Motivation

Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviours. It is what causes you to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading a book to gain knowledge. Motivation can be internal and external. They involve the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behaviour.

There are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ motivations for your goals:

• Internal motivations are things like your values and your own feelings.

• External motivations are things like expectations, praise, and other people's feelings.

You live a life of your own (internal) amongst a community of others (external) and so it is unrealistic to completely separate these two aspects of your life. When creating change, it is important to have a balance of these two areas of motivation to increase the likelihood of success.

History

It’s important to know where you’ve been and where you’ve come from. What has worked well in the past? What hasn’t worked well in the past and why? Those are all lessons that you can take into the future with you. Looking back in hindsight can also be helpful as you can view your past perspectives with a new lens. 

Measures of success

In order to maintain motivation towards a goal and know when progress is being made, it is important to identify what is going well on the journey. Defining these measures of success helps to positively reinforce the pattern (see ‘Behaviours and Habits’). There are ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ measures of success. It is important to have a balance of the two measures.

Subjective (qualitative):
These tend to be things that are self reported, for example:

• Symptoms, feelings, confidence

Objective (quantitative):
These tend to be things you can measure and observe with some accuracy, for example:

• Bodyweight

• Body dimensions/measurements

• Food/activity logs eg (how many times you worked out that week or how many portions of vegetables have changed week to week for example).

Components

A crucial part of success in achieving goals is understanding what parts make up the whole. What actions, behaviours, or habit changes need to occur in order to achieve that goal and those measures of success? What obstacles are there? Changing a habit isn’t easy and so knowing what steps are involved and then breaking them down into bite sized chunks is extremely helpful for most clients (and most people) so that each small step is moving you into the right direction, but is not so overwhelming (see ‘Behaviours and Habits’).

Action plan

The focus of this section is to put all of the components and the actions that are necessary to achieve the goal into a clear plan. What are the priorities? What are the first steps? Usually the actions that have the most carry over or influence the most momentum take priority, but it can also be what is easiest to accomplish. An action priority matrix (pictured below) may be helpful here to compare what is a high priority and what is most easiest.

Make sure to book in time to check in with progress. How is the action plan going? What progress can you see with the measures of success you’ve defined? Are you closer to where you want to go? Make adjustments if you need to.

All of the steps in the ONI Goal Setting Process collectively help you orient yourself in a clear direction and chart a course for success.