Why Achieving Your Goals Can Lead to LESS Happiness and How to Fix It as a NGO Leader

Do you feel like no matter how much you achieve, it's never enough?

If you're a humanitarian or development leader constantly focused on what's next—without pausing to reflect on what you’ve already accomplished—you're likely stuck on the “goal treadmill.” This episode introduces a powerful mindset shift that allows you to stay motivated and find fulfillment while you work toward your goals.

In this episode you'll discover:

• The critical difference between "gap thinking" and "gain thinking"
• Learn how to measure your progress in a way that boosts satisfaction and motivation
• Explore practical reflection tools to help you celebrate small and big wins consistently

Hit play to uncover how modern leaders are transforming the way they pursue goals—and why it's making their work (and life) more meaningful.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

On today's episode, learn a small shift and perspective that can completely change how you approach achieving your goals. Are you ready?

Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.

hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And a question that I think is worth asking occasionally is how are we doing in terms of achieving our goals?

This could [00:01:00] be your annual goals. It could be your performance planning or your project goals. It could be any type of goal, like personal or work-wise or leadership-wise that you have in your work or your life. And what I find is if you're like me before I learned what I am going to share with you today, you are probably on the gold treadmill.

And what I mean by that is: you are pursuing a goal thinking that once you've achieved it, then you will feel a certain level of satisfaction. And then once you have that satisfaction, then everything will be great and then you can, be happy in your life. And this is just not the way things work.

Actually what usually happens when we are on the goal treadmill is we are running, trying to [00:02:00] catch that goal, trying to achieve the goal, not necessarily enjoying the process while we're doing it. And then when we achieve the goal, we feel like me. "Okay. All right." And then we just move to the next goal.

So this is what I'm calling the gold treadmill, and there's a there's a tool that I've learned which can help you not only get off the treadmill, but to look at goal achievement in a totally different way, which is a lot more fun and motivational. So sound good? Alright.

In this episode, you're going to discover a small shift in perspective that a modern leader does can make pursuing goals much more satisfying.

Why the traditional way of pursuing goals is so discouraging and how to perceive achieving your goals so that you can enjoy the process and not be on the eternal goal treadmill. Ready?

[00:03:00] Okay, so we're talking about the glass full versus glass half empty here, right? I happen to have this glass if you're watching on YouTube. So glass half full of course meaning that we are focused on the positive, right? We are focused on what we have. Kind of like you could say, an abundance mentality.

Whereas if we're focused on what we don't have, which is the glass half empty, then we are going to only see the negative. And it is very interesting how we can direct our brains to see more of the glass half empty in a situation versus glass half full, depending on

what we tend to focus on. And that kind of has to do with what I want to introduce to you today, which is an important concept that I learned from a great book, if you have time to check it out. It's called The Gap in the Gain, and it's a [00:04:00] concept by a strategic coach named Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan noticed after coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders, that there was a certain way that they were looking at their goals

that left them always dissatisfied. It didn't matter if they achieved the goals or not. They were never happy. And I have seen similar things with some of the leaders that I coach, that they are always looking to achieve something more in order to finally feel satisfied with themselves. In order to finally feel happy about where they are in their work or their life.

This small shift in focus, which Dan teaches in "the gap and the gain" which I'm gonna share with you today, and which I have shared with other leaders, have made a big difference in how they see their goal achievement and allows them to [00:05:00] suddenly be very happy right where they are right now. Okay. So the idea is that whether it comes to the gap and the gain, most of us tend to focus on what he calls the gap, and he see, he actually explains it as we are always looking at the horizon, right? When we are achieving a goal, we are looking at the goal as it is out there that it's something that is still not achieved yet. It's in the distance. But we can see it just on the horizon.

And when we focus on this gap between us and our goal, or the between us and the horizon, it tends to be very demotivating because we are focused on what progress we have not yet made. [00:06:00] We are focusing on how much further we have to get to go to where we want to go. And we're also usually measuring against some future ideal.

In other words, there's some kind of result that we want and a goal that may not even be achievable because it's an ideal. It's a, let's say something that's a perfect way of leading or whatever it is, some ideal that is not necessarily realistic. And so what happens is as we move and we do make progress, and we may not notice that we're making this progress because we're always focused on what's out there on the horizon, on this future ideal.

And so as we move forward, so does the horizon. As if you've ever tried, I don't know if you've ever tried to do this, but if you've ever tried to walk toward the [00:07:00] horizon, you're never going to reach that point, right? It's always in the future. It's always in the distance, and that is what's so dissatisfying, is because we're always focused on something that's out there that's not realistic or attainable and it always seems like we're never there.

We're always having to compare ourselves from where we are now to where we want to be, which is actually not realistic. So this is a way most of us are focused on goals, is how much more we have to get go to get to that goal. And this is also why we feel like, oh I won't be happy until I'm able to achieve that goal.

And what happens is we never are able to quite get there because whenever we reach the goal, even if we attain it, we see the horizon shift. So then there's another goal that we wanna attain. And then when we think, oh, when we [00:08:00] attain that one, then we will be happy. But this is just not the case.

It's impossible. And so Dan saw this in his entrepreneurs, and so he introduced like, rather than measuring how far you have to go, measure backwards. Measure how far you have come. And this small shift is actually quite powerful and is what he calls the gain. So rather than measuring the gap, which is what's left in front of us to achieve something, we measure how far we've come up to achieve where we are now in this point. And even if you're just starting out with a goal, you can look at all the experience you have already achieved up until now that allows you to be able to be more likely to, be on the path to already start achieving the goal that you want.

So [00:09:00] this is like measuring as the glass half full. Now, I worked with someone I was coaching someone and I introduced this concept to this person. They were very focused on how much they don't have, how many things they still need to learn, or how many things they still want to do, all these future ideal goals that they had.

And so what I said to them was I want you to just list all the things that have allowed you to get up until this point that have allowed you to be successful up until where you are now. Let's look at how far you've come rather than how far you have to go. And this shift from the gap to the gain of how much this person had achieved was very powerful to them. I could see when they came to the next call they were very motivated. They were very excited. They [00:10:00] had not even realized how much they had achieved because they were so focused always on what's in the future, this treadmill of going, and never reflecting on what and how far they have come.

A modern NGO leader, understands this concept. And the other thing that I, find very important in which I encourage my students to do in my modern leader course is to pause for celebration. Because when we pause and we celebrate, we are sitting in the moment of the goal achievement.

When we finally have completed that course or achieved that degree or achieved a promotion or maybe, finished a project, whatever it is, we can pause and really recognize that. And also it's healthy once again to look [00:11:00] backwards at how far we had to go or come in order to get to this point.

How many things we had to achieve, how many skills we had to learn, how much we had to step out of our comfort zone in order to achieve where we are now.

So another thing that I have started doing with a friend, which you could easily do as well with your own goals or your own work, daily life is at the end of my day, I leave her a voicemail through WhatsApp and I share the goals or the things that I've achieved today.

And it is also a very motivational way to end the day because rather than focusing on all the things I was not able to do in my to-do list, I focus on how many things I was able to get done and how much I was able to move forward and basically looking at the gain in my day. So a small look [00:12:00] at how far I've come within a day. And you can do the same for a week or a month.

You can do all of them daily, weekly, monthly, but I promise you what's happened for me is I've become a lot more motivated, excited, because I feel like I'm making progress and it's just a more pleasant way to really. Enjoy while you are achieving your goals. So the process, not just the destination.

I also ask my students to share their wins on a weekly basis because I find that this is also very important. Sometimes my students, they don't realize how much they're learning, how much they're progressing until they pause and reflect and they see how they've applied some of the things that they've [00:13:00] learned. Oh yeah, I've noticed that I've become a better listener, or I'm more empathetic to my team, or now I ask better questions, better quality questions, and I can see how my team responds better to that.

So reflecting on all of these things, these ways that we're growing and changing constantly because we all are, is very important when it comes to maintaining that motivation and, staying on track for your goals. Okay? So I hope that this was helpful for you. Try it out this week, maybe take a day and even list all the things that have led you to where you are in this moment now in your career. What are all or some of the major achievements or even the minor ones that you're very proud of that have led you to where you are now? And I promise you, you will [00:14:00] feel like you have made so much progress in terms of your life and your work in that way.

Alright? Until next week. Keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to [00:15:00] www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.