Not pursuing your goals is often good for your mental health

People who shelved their long-term goals during the pandemic or during other stressful times were better able to avoid anxiety and depression, according to a new study published in the journal Motivation and Emotion.

Researchers behind the latest study aimed to investigate the relationship between what they call COVID-frozen goals – goals for which progress has been disrupted due to COVID-19 – and psychological well-being.

What the researchers say: “Typically, when we think about how to increase goal success and well-being, we focus on how to be more committed and more engaged with our goals,” said the lead author. “Our research highlights that being able to let go of goals, particularly during stressors such as a pandemic, is actually a critical part of staying mentally healthy.”

The researchers surveyed 226 participants to examine the relationship between psychological well-being and goal pursuit. Participants reported on their psychological distress and life satisfaction and were asked questions about normally progressing goals as well as COVID-frozen goals.

The researchers found that COVID-frozen goals were associated with poor well-being: the greater number of them people had, the greater psychological distress they experienced, such as suffering from stress, depressive symptoms and anxiety.

The researchers also highlighted that the way in which people engage with their goals drastically impacts their well-being.

“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” they explained. “We hope people can apply these findings to their own life by taking the time to assess their goals and engagement with them.”

The lead author adds that disengagement is not an all-or-nothing situation, and sometimes we relinquish one type of engagement but not others. By quitting unattainable goals and redirecting efforts to alternative goals, individuals are setting themselves up for a healthier relationship with their goals and better psychological well-being.

So, what? This is an interesting study, but I think the emphasis on stressor-disrupted goals is misplaced. It’s a statement of the obvious that we are less motivated when we’re under stress—a gazillion studies have shown that. A more interesting question is the relation of goal-attainment to life satisfaction and happiness generally.

Many eons ago while working on the antidepression Uplift Program with the University of South Florida I did some research which confirmed an observation that I first made when I studied hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari some time before. This was that humans are not naturally goal-driven animals, rather we are process animals. We are driven by the desire and need for experience, not ends. Achieving a goal can give us a temporary lift but the experience of trying to achieve it is what matters in terms of mental wellbeing and life satisfaction.

If we enjoyed the process, we were more likely to have a better mental health outcome regardless of whether we actually achieved the end result. Also, if we enjoyed the experience we were much more likely to achieve the goal.

There are two exceptions to this rule, I postulated, and those were goals connected with survival and mating.

Good outcomes in the business sense, therefore, are a result of people meeting the goals because they enjoyed the experience of what they did to reach them.

We’re going to have better mental health if we put aside goals we can’t meet, don’t enjoy the process of achieving, or which are not important to our personal or group survival.