Journey 9 · Vision
Goals That Are Yours Tend to Get More Effort
In semester-long studies, students' goals that fit their own interests and values got more sustained effort and progress; reaching them went with bigger well-being gains.
Sheldon and Elliot followed university students through a semester in three studies. In the two that tracked personal goals, goals that fit a person's own interests and values, which they called self-concordant, got more sustained effort, and students rated more progress on them. Progress on these goals went with bigger gains in well-being, and in one study, feeling free to choose, capable and connected to others accounted for part of that link.
So the reason you hold a goal was linked to how it went, not only the goal itself. These were students over one semester, rating their own effort, progress, mood and life satisfaction, so it shows a pattern, not a promise. A goal that's genuinely yours can still feel hard.
Journey 9, Vision, guided by Drish, puts this to work in a game called “Owed or Wanted?”: you sort lines from the story into owed or wanted, then one line you carry about your own future. Which goal on your list would land on the owed side?
The research
Strong evidence Replicated findings and meta-analyses.
- Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.
- Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
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