When setting goals for social situations, it's helpful to consider three types of goals. Each type plays a unique role in guiding your interactions and decisions.
1. Results Goals
Results goals are about achieving a specific outcome from a social interaction. For example, you might aim to persuade a friend to join a project, get someone to understand your point of view, or seek support for a personal issue.
2. Relationship Goals
Relationship goals center on maintaining or improving the quality of your relationship with the other person, instead of an immediate outcome. For example, the goal might be to strengthen your bond, show empathy, or resolve a conflict without damaging the relationship.
3. Self-Respect/Emotions Goals
Self-respect or emotion-focused goals are about how you want to feel about yourself after the interaction, regardless of the external outcome. For example, standing up for yourself or expressing your needs assertively might be your goal, even if it risks the immediate results or relationship.
Note: The suggestions that Loop generates as examples pull from all three goal types at random.
Balancing Conflicting Goals
In many social situations, these goals might conflict. For instance, pursuing a results goal aggressively might harm a relationship or make you compromise your values, affecting how you feel about yourself afterwards. Or, focusing solely on relationship goals might mean you don't achieve the tangible outcomes you hoped for.
The key to setting effective goals in social situations, then, is to recognize which type of goal is most important to you in a given context.
Practical Tips for Goal Setting
Be Specific: Clearly define what success looks like for your chosen goal.
Stay Flexible: Be willing to adjust your goals based on the situation and the responses of others.
Reflect: After the social event, take time to reflect on your experience. Did you achieve your goal? How did pursuing this goal make you feel about the interaction and yourself?
Remember, this is a process, and learning to set and navigate through these goals takes practice and patience.