Why You Need To Set Avoidance-Goals?
Setting avoidance-goals is as important as setting positive goals, but you are probably not doing it yet. Therefore, we will show you:
What avoidance goals are
The advantages of setting avoidance goals and
How you can set avoidance goals.
1. What are Avoidance-Goals?
While positive goals are the things that you want, avoidance goals are the thing you want to avoid. The table below contrast positive goals and avoidance goals:
So while positive goals are about the things we want, avoidance goals are about the things we do not want to happen, and thus want to avoid.
1.1. Difference Between Anti-Goals And Avoidance Goals
Some authors call avoidance goals “anti-goals”. But anti-goals are a different kind. Anti-goals are the things you desire but you decide not to focus on. Avoidance goals on the other hand, are the things you want to avoid and you decide to focus on avoiding them. For example, maybe you want to study 5 different languages but in the end decide to only focus on improving English and learn Spanish and not study the three other languages you wanted to study. In that case those three languages become the anti-goals.
The difference between positive goals, anti-goals and avoidance goals is illustrated in the diagram below:
● We see that “normal” goals lead us to a good outcome and an outcome we want to focus on.
● With avoidance goals we also focus, but not on achieving a good outcome but on avoiding a bad outcome.
● With anti-goals we would also like to achieve a good outcome but we decide to defocus on it, so as to be able to focus on more important goals.
While setting anti-goals is very important to gain more focus, here we will talk only about avoidance goals.
2. Why Do We Need Avoidance Goals?
Avoidance goals are important for two reasons:
● They provide motivation
● They give us direction
2.1. Avoidance goals provide motivation
Some time ago I thought that goals should be positive to give the right motivation. So I would rather say “I want to be fit” rather than “I want to not be fat”. This is also what most success gurus will tell you: You need to set goals that focus on the positive.
However, they are wrong! We need to focus on both the positive and the negative.
When I first heard about the negative goal setting in a Tony Robbins seminar, I was very sceptical. Tony was saying that you not only had to think about what you want but also what you want to avoid.
Tony had developed a method to motivate people that he called the Dickens process after the novel “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In the novel the main character is able to see his future and see that he will die with a fortune but die alone as nobody likes him. This experience makes the main character make changes in the way he acts and as a result he becomes a lot happier.
The motivation method Tony Robbins developed with the inspiration of this novel, the Dickens process, is as follows:
● Think about some bad behavior that you want to change.
● Imagine what you could achieve if you change that behavior (this is your positive goal)
● Imagine what would happen if you do not change behavior (this is your avoidance goal)
● Image yourself at different points in the future, 5 years from now, 20 years from now and at the end of your life, having made a major change on the one hand and achieved your goal (positive goal)
● Image yourself at different points in the future, 5 years from now, 20 years from now and at the end of your life, not having made any change and not achieve the goal, and thus being in a negative state (avoidance goal)
For example, let us say you have problems with eating too much and thus are overweight. In that case you might set the goal of being slim and fit. To motivate yourself, you should see yourself at different points in the future being slim and imagine how this makes you feel.
However, not only should you see yourself having achieved your goal but you also should see yourself not having achieved the goal. So you should imagine how you feel at different points in the future where you have not been able to accomplish your goal of eating less and are fat and with bad health.
This exercise helps you to see the difference between the two different outcomes, the positive ones and the negative ones. Because having both kinds of motivators (both positive and negative) is a much more powerful motivator.
2.2. Avoidance goals give direction
Besides giving you additional motivations avoidance goals are also very important in guiding you in the decision on what to focus on in life.
Again, the common advice is to focus on the positives, what do you want your future to look like and thus to make decisions based on that. However, you should also consider what you want to avoid.
For example, you might want to decide on your career path and consider between an investment banker and a psychotherapist. The investment banking career is likely to give you considerably more financial success, but also considerably more stress and long working hours. If you focus on only the positive, you might decide to go after more money. If you also consider the negative (avoidance goals) you might decide that the money of a psychotherapist career is enough and that you do not want to be overworked and stressed and therefore focus on the avoidance goal and choose against the investment banking career.
Avoidance goals are particularly important in case you have a range of outcomes, meaning that the outcome you get does not only depend on your input but also on factors beyond your control. For example, you might have a great voice and train extremely hard but in order to become a famous singer you still need a lot of luck. The same holds true for many professions like actors, athletes and entrepreneurs.
If the outcome can not be determined by yourself it is especially important to focus on avoidance goals. Do not only think about what is going to happen in the best case scenario but also think what is going to happen in the worst case scenario.
The importance of luck is often underestimated. For example, we all know that Bill Gates is a successful entrepreneur. However, he would not have created Microsoft unless he would have been able to sell the first version of his operating system to IBM. In fact, the Microsoft operating system was far inferior to another operating system that Bill Gates had basically copied, the operating system of Digital Research Inc.. His luck was that the founder of DRI, Gary Kildall, was not at home when IBM executives came to visit him. So it was only fortunate circumstances for Bill Gates that made Microsoft happen.
The founder of the superior operating system DRI did not get the contract with IBM due to bad fortune. He never recovered, became an alcoholic and soon passed away, while Bill Gates became the richest man on the planet.
Because of the importance of luck you could be an entrepreneur and be working extremely hard and still end up with nothing. So a high risk career like entrepreneurship offers the potential of making a fortune but also has a high chance of making little or actually losing money. So if you only think about positive goals, financial success, then a life as an entrepreneur has more potential than the life of an employee. But if you think about avoidance, for example avoiding poverty, then a life with a stable job is to be preferred.
But we can also take examples from other areas of your life. For example, imagine you are considering marrying a guy and you know it is not the ideal guy. So you think if I marry this guy I will not be marrying that ideal guy that I always was looking for. On the other hand, if you don’t marry this guy because you are holding out for the ideal guy, you might never get married and you might not have children.
In the above situation focusing on the positive goals, being married and having a family with the ideal partner, means you should wait. However, focusing on the avoidance goal, not being left alone and without children, you should get married now, to a partner, even if it is not the ideal partner.
We can symbolize the range of outcomes under different types of luck for different career choices. Let’s compare accounting and acting.
Below we show the range of financial outcomes for the career choice of accountant.
The X axis represents the continuum of luck, the more to the left the more lucky the person is. So as the person is getting luckier his financial rewards increase.
We can see that although there is a big difference in the financial rewards between a lot of luck (on the left) and little luck (on the right) the risk of having a terrible outcome is low.
On the other hand we can show the range of financial outcomes for the career choice of actor.
We see that for an actor in case he is very lucky the financial rewards are astronomical. However, unless he is very lucky the rewards are not very good and in fact if he is unlucky he would end up broke and actually lose money.
So in case you focus on the positive goals, in this case financial rewards, you might think that actor is the best career choice for you as it has the potential for much bigger rewards than the career choice of accountant. However, if you focus on what you want to avoid and you want to avoid being broke then you need to choose the career as an accountant!
Avoidance goals are especially important, because most people in today’s society only focus on what they want , and therefore often forget about what they want to avoid. This leads many young people to dream of becoming a professional athlete, singer, actor or influencer, not thinking about the fact that the most likely outcome will be a career full of frustration and potential bankruptcy. Many of these young people would be better off to just think about what they want to avoid; things like poverty, being alone, being stressed. If they were to focus on these avoidance goals they would be more likely to take the path of their parents and get a “normal” job, and find a “normal” partner, get a “normal” family and be happy.
3. How To Set An Avoidance Goals
Avoidance goal setting is very similar to normal goal setting, just that instead of focusing on what you want, you focus on the things that you want to avoid.
Just as for normal goal setting it makes sense to focus on different life categories as we illustrated above. These life categories could be:
● Friends
● Family
● Money
● Career
● Relationship
● Health
● Spirituality
Setting avoidance goals can be psychologically more difficult than setting positive goals, and this is one of the reasons why people do not set avoidance goals. This is because when you are setting goals you are imagining yourself in the future with that negative goal. So if it is a positive goals setting you will see a great future where you have accomplished your goals. But if it is avoidance goals setting you will see a terrible future and you will feel the pain and you will become worried about your future.
For example, if I have started an acting career and my career is not going well, I could be setting positive goals as well as avoidance goals. In the positive goals setting I would see myself being a star. This feels great. In the avoidance goal setting I see myself as a bankrupt loser that is working hard but is not able to get any job. Just thinking about this feels bad. Therefore, people do not like setting avoidance goals.
In conclusion, setting avoidance goals has two main benefits: giving you additional motivation and guiding you in what to focus on in life. For these reasons, even though currently not many people are familiar with avoidance goals, it is very important to integrate them into your goal setting.
