Are you moving towards something you want or away from something you don’t want?

Are you moving towards something you want or away from something you don’t want?

This is important to clarify because the type of motivation there is behind your goal can lead to very different outcomes.

Towards involves moving towards something you want, whereas away involves moving away from something you don’t want – both have their uses but they are very different.

One reason it’s believed that those who set a goal to lose weight motivated by the fact they don’t like what they see in the mirror, struggle to lose the last bit of weight, is because as they approach their target weight, what they see in the mirror doesn’t look as bad as it did previously, so their motivation runs out before they reach their target.

This is just one of the problems with an away-from motivation, it’s inconsistent and will run out once you get far enough away from what you don’t want, but this doesn’t mean you’ll reach your desired target.

And there’s another problem with the away-from motivation.

Imagine you’re sitting somewhere and you realise there’s a really bad smell, you’ll likely want to get away from it, so which way are you going to go? It doesn’t matter, as long as you get away, but away is not necessarily a direction.

So an away-from motivation is often undirected – it’s not taking you anywhere specific, just away from what you don’t want, but that could be anywhere.

Even if you do have a goal, if your away-from motivation is stronger than your towards motivation, it will likely take you further away from where you want to end up.

If you’re an exclusively away-from motivated person, you’ll look back and see that you have a pattern of moving away from situations and circumstances you dislike, only to stay there until the next thing you dislike comes up and has made you want to move again. This pattern keeps many people STUCK.

This is a self-sabotaging pattern in perfectionists, because it doesn’t matter that they have a goal, since their main motivation is fear – fear of failure, fear of not living up to expectations or fear of not being liked for example – this away-from motivation is stronger, and keeps moving them further away from their desired target. What’s more, this kind of motivation is inherently stressful.

This is why setting goals with a towards motivation is so important, because it’s consistent and directional – you know what you’re aiming for and if you get knocked off course, you correct yourself so you’re once again moving in the right direction. Plus the closer you get to your target, the stronger this motivation becomes. In this way it’s not just more consistent and directional but far less stressful and you display more grit.

So my suggestion is to always get clear on what you want rather than what you don’t want – when you’re feeling STUCK this is critical – and if this doesn’t come easy to you, think about your values and what’s important to you in your work and life in general as this should help you gain more clarity.

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