Goals can be motivating, as they help you plan for the future and have something to strive for. They can also be demotivating when you don’t complete them perfectly. You might criticize yourself for not achieving the goal fast enough or not sticking to the goal. Self-judgment can make you want to give up or not even try to set future goals. Recognize the unhelpful patterns you have around goals and intentionally reframe how you think about setting and working toward your goals.

One way to change your relationship with goals is to think of yourself as a scientist doing experiments. A scientist's mission is to make educated guesses (i.e., hypotheses) about how things work and discover new ways to improve on how we currently do things.........

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