You might be a goal setter. Just not the kind anyone taught you about.

I was sitting outside at a picnic table with a friend, lunch in front of us, a breeze moving through the air. Somewhere between bites, she brought up something that had been sitting with her.

She is working with a coach. And her coach had asked her to come up with some goals.

She froze.

Not because she lacks direction or ambition. But because the traditional idea of goal-setting — name what you want to achieve, make it specific, make it measurable, attach a timeline — felt completely foreign to where she actually is right now. You know the examples…losing a certain amount of weight, hitting a financial target, earning a new title. 

None of it was on her mind. None of it felt true.

And so she sat with the assignment, feeling a quiet pressure that maybe something was wrong with her.

I want to name something I believe strongly: pressure is a byproduct of how we have been taught to think about goals. Society has handed us the SMART goal framework — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound — and while that framework has its place, it has also quietly communicated that goals without numbers attached to them are somehow less valid.

They are not.

In fact, some of the most transformational goals a person can work toward are the ones that are hardest to put in a spreadsheet.

For instance:

• I want to stop reacting and start responding in situations that typically set me off. 
• I want to improve my relationship with a specific person in my life. 
• I want to get better at recognizing what I am feeling in the moment so I can communicate from a clearer place. 
• I want more peace and less chronic stress in my days.

These are real goals. A skilled coach can help you create meaningful data around them, build language for what progress looks like, and have honest conversations about whether the needle is moving. They are just not the goals we were taught to name out loud.

Want to know what I have seen over and over?

It is often these quieter, more abstract goals that actually shift a person. They change how someone carries themselves. They change how they show up for their team, their family, their work. They lay the groundwork so that when a season arrives where SMART goals are the right tool, the person is ready to use them from a much stronger foundation.

If you have ever sat across from someone — a coach, a mentor, a well-meaning colleague — and felt the pressure to produce a goal you did not actually have, I want you to know that is not a failure of ambition. It might just mean you are working on something that matters more right now.

If you’re looking at the last four months of the year and unsure what your goals are, a Clarity Session is a good place to start. It’s you, me, and whatever is actually on your mind, whether or not it has a number attached.