Goals are Great – Until Life Takes a Detour

Life doesn’t always go as planned. Goals can crumble when unexpected challenges arise, leaving us feeling lost. But what keeps us grounded during these detours? Our values. Unlike goals, values remain constant and give us purpose, even in tough times.

This piece explores how aligning your goals with your core values helps you stay resilient when life takes an unexpected turn. By reframing setbacks as "Pivot Sparks," you can see challenges as opportunities for growth. When your goals are driven by what truly matters, every step—planned or not—adds meaning to your journey.

Imagine your eight-year-old self looking at you now. Would they beam with pride at the realization of long-held dreams? Or would they wonder where the adventurous spirit and wild imagination had gone? Would they recognize the core of who they are in the adult you've become?

This article offers some tips to finding your way back to what you really love.

In our hyper-competitive world, career advice often champions the relentless pursuit of personal advancement. We’re urged to chase our ambitions, sometimes at the expense of those around us, under the banner of progress. This narrative elevates personal success above all, nudging many towards self-centered decisions. Self-help literature and the archetypal hero's journey further reinforce this individualistic approach, framing personal triumph as the ultimate goal. But what if I told you that science offers a different perspective?

What if the best career advice you've ever received came from someone you initially ignored?

From reluctant to now passionate podcaster, a persistent suggestion from my husband Chris Smith led to 100 episodes, 52 countries, and countless inspiring stories on 'Dot to Dot.' Read more about it in my article.

As a psychologist working with leaders, I have a love for the word wisdom and all that it conjures up. To me it's about continually evolving, growing and sharing unbiased knowledge and insight for the benefit of others. Throughout history, wisdom has been revered as a precious commodity, sought after by kings and commoners alike. It’s undeniably a topic well covered and well discussed. Yet, as I have delved deeper into wisdom as a concept, an intriguing pattern has emerged - the scarcity of female sages in our collective narrative. This peculiar absence begs the question: where have all the wise women gone?

Mixed emotions are a common occurrence. One piece of research suggests that we experience them up to 36% of the time in our daily lives. Moments of delight are often intertwined with disappointment. We might feel deep love for our partner while also grappling with all-consuming frustration. The excitement of a new adventure comes hand in hand with fear. Pride and joy in a child’s accomplishments are coupled with the sad realization that they are growing up. But in spite of how common these emotions are, they often create a sense of unease, disorientation, or resistance that typically comes from unfamiliarity. The long and the short of it - we struggle with allowing opposing emotions to co-exist.

‘How well do you really know yourself?’ A hugely significant 95% of us think that we’re self-aware, but the reality bears a stark contrast with 10% to 15% actually knowing who we really are (Eurich 2017). Although we believe that we know the image we see starting back at us from the mirror, the way we position our story on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, what our co-workers and friends think of us, in reality we spend very little time actually reflecting on who we are or asking people for honest opinions about the impact we’re having on them.

I believe in you. I believe that you can do whatever it is you set out to. I believe that you are better than you realise.

We may feel like we don’t or shouldn’t need others to believe in us, but in reality, we do. It matters to feel like we matter, that we have worth and that others believe we can do the things we set out to. Even if momentarily it can unblock those concrete barriers we often put up in our own mind – sometimes just long to make a breakthrough or take action before they close back in again.

You can’t fail to miss the approaches that currently espouse habits as being the core to self-improvement. And because we humans like things to be simple it’s appealing to consider habits or other ‘life hacks’ as a straightforward way of making our life better. But while habits are definitely a part of who we are, they are only a very tiny part in a complex jigsaw puzzle.

If you’ve tried working on your habits you’ve most likely realized that, despite delivering some results – you may for example manage to cut back on your junk food intake, or get up earlier in the morning and get more done – these things alone don’t get at the core of what makes you happy.

Did you know that 80-92% of our efforts to change behaviour fail? That means that when you say you’re going to eat more heathy food, cut out alcohol, exercise more, be less grumpy with your partner, most of the time most you won’t actually do it. Us psychologists call it the ‘intention-behaviour’ gap.

At the heart of role modelling is mirroring. We mirror the people around us all the time, even though most of the time we are completely unaware that we are. It is a fundamental aspect to how we learn. You could even say that it’s the most effortless way of learning because it’s what our brain does unconsciously.

As an organisational psychologist, I hope the answer to this is ‘Of course, we all want to grow and develop, tell me how?’ But is my viewpoint biased? The answer is yes. Personal development falls under the heading of lifelong learning which “should take place at all stages of the life cycle (from the cradle to the grave)…embedded in all life contexts ….learning for every person wherever they are and however old they should be.” The reality is however that only 10% of the EU population aged 25-64 participate in life-long learning.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you knew what you needed to do, but just couldn’t seem to bring yourself to do it? Maybe it was starting a new exercise routine, preparing for a meeting, or having a difficult conversation with a friend. We’ve all been there at one time or another. This is the difference between knowing something and doing something.

As humans, we seek patterns and consistency in our interactions. As a result, we all naturally operate from some sort of system for understanding people. We generalize, explain, and predict our own and others’ behaviour based on our perceptions, experiences, and beliefs. When things don’t fit with those systems or expected patterns, we become unsettled.

Moving to a different location, let alone a different time zone, has brought into sharp focus the daily interactions with friends and family, or lack there of. I often reach for my phone to share only to realise that ‘they’, my closest connections, are asleep on another continent. The people who would get my crappy joke (or at least pretend to find it vaguely amusing) or silly concerns are simply not available. It stirs up a sense of emptiness, reminiscent of when my Dad died. For months after I was struck by a daily reminder that he’d gone every time I went to call.

As a psychologist, these experiences underscore the profound human need to be seen, heard, and believed in by the people who know us. Often it isn’t the big gestures of support that are foundational so much as the tiny everyday occurrences. When this connection is lacking, it becomes glaringly apparent.

Despite knowing so much more about how the brain works today, society is slow to drop the messages of what’s become known as toxic positivity. Notebook covers tell us to “stay positive”, social media posts urge us to “look on the bright side” even well meaning friends will tell us “It will all be fine. Everything happens for a reason.”But while cultivating a positive outlook can be beneficial for our mental well-being, there’s a fine line between applying this in a healthy way versus one that is as the term suggests is ‘toxic’ to our brain.

When working with leaders it often takes a surprising level of cajoling to get them to think about how their strengths can be the key to taking their leadership to another level. We’re conditioned to think about what we can fix or what gaps we have rather than learning how to use our gifts to propel us forward. And do so in a way that’s far more enjoyable.

Women’s and men’s brains are actually more similar than they are different. However, any woman and any man who has lived with a woman knows that our level of happiness, clarity of thinking and self-esteem are just a few things that can dramatically fluctuate. And this, surprise surprise is because hormones impact brain function and our hormone levels are not consistent. We don’t enjoy this monthly ride, but it comes part and parcel with being female.