Now, I know what you're thinking: what's the point of setting goals if you're just going to abandon them? Isn't the whole idea to complete tasks and keep moving forward? The answer depends.

The objective of a goal is to move closer to your desired path, in line with your personal values. Sounds simple enough, right? If it's that straightforward, why would you ever need to reassess or abandon a goal?

Let me give you a personal example. I’ve been casually running off and on for years, but I’ve struggled to find the right running shoe for my unusual foot shape. In early 2023, I finally got a pair and thought, “These are it; these are the ones.” I decided that for May—the month of my 30th birthday—I would run 100 miles, including my first 5k and 10k races. I'd run 5k distances before, but never 10k, and hitting 100 miles while still having rest days required a plan.

I started running 5-6 days a week, increasing my distances. Each week, I had a "discovery run" to push to new heights. At my peak, I reached 14.4km (9 miles). Three weeks and 75 miles in, I hit a wall. After the 10k race, my knees ached so badly I struggled to walk, and stairs? Forget about it. Every run felt like a fight. I was icing my knees daily, but it wasn’t enough. I later found out that while the shoes matched my foot shape, they weren’t right for my gait.

I had to have a moment of reckoning: What was more important—completing my goal or stopping to recover? Was my health and well-being worth sacrificing for relentless commitment to a goal that was hurting my body? If you're like David Goggins (link to his book here), achieving the goal is everything, no matter the cost. His unmatched willpower has led to body damage, but for him, that’s the right answer. For me, though, I value not harming myself over finishing a goal. I learned that I’d rather stop and change direction than keep pushing down a path that no longer feels right. Letting go of that goal was hard and felt like a failure, but it was the right decision. I gave myself space to recover and went back to weightlifting, still prioritizing my health but from a different angle.

The recurring theme is this: always return to your values. What’s driving your decision? Is this behavior still authentic to who you are and who you want to be? You set the goal with the right intentions, but now that you have more information, does the goal still align with where you want to go? Which is worse—leaving a goal that no longer serves you, or continuing behavior that no longer aligns with your values?