After we’ve jotted down a mouthful of resolutions, burnt all our candles to the end of their wicks in manifesting, and read every growth-oriented book on our shelves, it’s easy to feel exhausted and stuck.
January is one of the most frustrating times of the year for many of us. We all want to get a head start on living our best lives in 2023, but sometimes all the endless resolutions do is place excess pressure on our shoulders. Maybe it seemed realistic when we were sipping on mimosas during the festive season, but now that we’ve snapped back to reality, that list is looking mighty.
What can we do to get the ball rolling realistically? And where do we start?
Beyond setting intentions, one of the biggest discussions in the wellness community right now are ‘Anti-Goals.’
No, it’s not an ironic play. And, ironically, your anti-goals might be the most positive thing you do this year.
What the heck are Anti-Goals?
If you’ve ever made a pros and cons list, you know that the cons are just as important as the pros. Ie: we have to look at the negative to guide ourselves toward the positive.
Anti-Goals, shared by entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson, gained traction back in 2017. In 2023, it’s hot in the discourse scene once again.
In short, the concept, or “little trick” as Wilkinson calls it, plays on a saying by Warren Buffet’s business partner. “Tell me where I’m going to die, so I never go there.”
“He’s talking about inversion, the idea that problems are often best solved when they are reversed. That it’s often easier to think about what you don’t want than what you do,” writes Wilkinson.
Wait, does that mean focusing on the positive isn’t enough?
Positive thinking is a no-brainer in taking action toward your goals. However, getting consumed by it actually does the opposite. According to Gabriele Oettingen, a Professor of Psychology at New York University, “positive thinking impedes performance because it relaxes us and drains the energy we need to take action.”
“Such relaxation occurs because positive fantasies fool our minds into thinking that we’ve already achieved our goals—what psychologists call ‘mental attainment,” Oettingen expands.
Now this doesn’t mean we should scrap positive thinking. Instead, it reminds us that it’s only one part of the puzzle to achieving our imaginings. Oettingen goes on to say that the point is to bring your dreams in contact with reality, and that’s where Anti-Goals come in perfectly.
Anti-goals to the rescue
Wilkinson and his business partner took Munger’s words to heart, and imagined their worst day instead of their best.
To them, this looked like dealing with people they didn’t like or trust, long meetings and overpacked schedules.
The inversion technique came in when they used want they didn’t want to reveal what they actually wanted. And, even better, what ‘not to do’ to achieve that.
If you’ve read the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, this thinking might remind you of the book’s early chapters.
“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative is itself a positive experience.”
When we accept what we don’t want, we’ll likely always make positive steps away from those things, as our brains now see them as a threat. When we spend all our time imagining what we do want— with no action—we’ tend to stuck in those mental places and trick ourselves into thinking we’ve already attained it through the mental energy of thinking about it.
Focusing on Anti-Goals makes the process toward what we want a whole lot easier, because we’ll be quicker to take action and make faster decisions. And of it, the result lends itself to positivity.
So if you’re stuck on heaps of resolutions, try cutting to the chase with a few Anti-Goals, a little action, and most importantly, intention.
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Feature Image: Pexels
