Mastery and Pleasure in Goal Setting: Conquering Your Goals Series
This post is all about gaining mastery and pleasure while conquering your goals. These two concepts can be game changers when it comes to staying motivated and making progress.
Why Mastery and Pleasure Matter
When we think about setting goals, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement at first. But as time goes on, motivation can change, and the goals that once felt so attainable start to feel out of reach. That’s where the concepts of mastery and pleasure come in.
Pleasure refers to activities that are enjoyable and provide a sense of satisfaction. These are the things that bring you joy and help you relax, like spending time with friends, enjoying a good meal, or engaging in a favorite hobby. Incorporating pleasurable activities into your life can help you stay balanced and motivated.
Mastery involves activities that challenge you and help you develop new skills. These tasks might be difficult at first, but they provide a deep sense of accomplishment once you achieve them. Whether it’s learning a new skill, sticking to an exercise routine, or tackling a challenging project, mastery is about pushing yourself to grow.
By balancing mastery and pleasure, you can create a more sustainable approach to reaching your goals.
Understanding Goal Setting
Before we dive into the activity, let’s talk a bit about goal setting itself. Effective goals are SMART—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. But even SMART goals can be hard to stick with if we don’t also consider how to balance the hard work (mastery) with the enjoyment (pleasure) that keeps us going.
Creating a Mastery-Pleasure Map: A Step-by-Step Guide
To help you balance mastery and pleasure in your goal-setting journey, try this activity:
Identify Your Goals:
Start by writing down 2-3 goals you want to achieve. Make sure they’re SMART goals.
For example, if your goal is to improve your writing skills, you might set a goal to write for 30 minutes each day or complete a short story by the end of the month.
Map Out Mastery Activities:
For each goal, list activities that contribute to mastery. These are tasks that challenge you and help you grow.
If your goal is to improve your writing skills, mastery activities might include following a structured writing course, practicing different writing styles, or setting daily word count goals.
Write these activities under the "Mastery" column on your map.
Map Out Pleasure Activities:
Now, think about activities related to your goals that bring you pleasure. These are things that you genuinely enjoy and that make the journey feel rewarding.
Continuing with the writing example, pleasure activities might include writing about topics you love, joining a supportive writing community, or enjoying a cozy writing space with your favorite snacks.
Write these activities under the "Pleasure" column on your map.
Integrate and Balance:
Look at your Mastery-Pleasure Map and consider how you can create a weekly or daily routine that incorporates both types of activities.
Aim to balance your efforts so that you’re not only challenging yourself but also enjoying the process. For instance, you might alternate between mastery-focused days (writing practice) and pleasure-focused days (writing about your favorite topics).
Reflect and Adjust:
After a week or two, reflect on your progress. Are you feeling motivated and balanced? If you’re leaning too heavily on mastery and feeling burnt out, try adding more pleasurable activities. If you’re enjoying the process but not seeing progress, consider incorporating more mastery-focused tasks.
Note: While both mastery and pleasure activities relate to the writing goal in this example, you can incorporate other activities for pleasure too! Mastery goals can also be indirectly related, such as improving vocabulary or discovering a new genre for the above example.
Overcoming Challenges with Mastery and Pleasure
As you work towards your goals, it’s important to remember that you deserve to feel good. Often, motivation follows activity rather than the other way around, so the key is to start taking action, even if it feels difficult at first. Engaging in both mastery and pleasure activities can help you break negative thought cycles by gradually experiencing the emotional and physical benefits of achievement and enjoyment.
For example, if you’re trying to learn a new language but feel stuck, start with a small, manageable task like practicing vocabulary for just five minutes. Pair this with something pleasurable, like listening to music in that language or watching a favorite movie with subtitles. As you begin to see progress and enjoy the process, your motivation will naturally increase.
Fear of Failure: By focusing on mastery, you can reduce the fear of failure. Remember, it’s not about being perfect, but about making progress and developing your skills.
Procrastination: Use pleasure as a reward to help overcome procrastination. Complete a challenging task and then treat yourself to something you enjoy.
Burnout: Make sure you’re not just working hard but also taking time to recharge with pleasurable activities.
Maintaining Motivation: Mastery provides a sense of achievement, while pleasure offers immediate rewards, helping you stay motivated in the long run.
Let’s Get Started!
I encourage you all to create your own Mastery-Pleasure Map. Start with your goals, identify activities that will help you master those goals, and balance them with things you genuinely enjoy. Feel free to share your map here or let us know how this approach is working for you!
Discussion Questions:
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
This post is part of the Conquering Your Goals Series. Check out all the posts here.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Discussion Questions:
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
Challenges I have faced are exhaustion, fear and doubt. Once I am set on a particular goal I tend to be unstoppable for a little while, until I burn out and can't keep it up anymore. So, balancing mastery and pleasure might help me to overcome this, have a more balanced approach, and avoid burn outs.
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
Normally I would say I reward myself with a cigarette, but trying to quit smoking... So just doing something I enjoy... Watching some videos, at the end of the day, just be ok with stopping to work and relax, have some downtime with my boyfriend, go into the pool...
@SoulfullyAButterfly
I want to eat less carbs and more fruit and veg. But that's not very SMART. So, to eat at least 5 portions a day? But then I have to remember to count. Which isn't so achievable. So, to consider fruit and veg, before eating some else. The getting to eat the something else would then be a pleasure/reward. But, if I forget to consider fruit and veg, and just eat what i was going to eat, I get the pleasure without the objective. So maybe a specific treat for considering/planning in fruit and veg.
mastery would be learning new quick and tasty ways to prepare fruit and veg. Also learning/practicing growing my own.
I like the mastery/pleasure balancing concept for maintaining motivation. But I still find setting the initial goal hard. Perhaps I'll try another goal later.
@Clio9876
Another goal. I want to improve my posture. Two SMART possibilities. I will walk 10 paces in good posture every dog walk. And/or. I will do one posture exercise every hour at work.
My biggest challenge is remembering. Particularly the second one.
A long term pleasure is less pain. Does just feeling good that I'm caring for myself count? Because I could self validate for pleasure. "I'm so good, remembering to do it today". Treat myself to the cost of a physio session if I don't miss one for a whole week. Or maybe a new outfit, to show off in.
Mastery. Do Pilates once a week to practice the habit of good posture. Maybe the physio session to learn next steps comes under here too?
@SoulfullyAButterfly
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help? The main challenges are procrastinating, burnout and motivation. I've been dealing with depression and grief - that hasn't been helping. Doing something pleasurable would help with the burnout and help me be more consistent with self care. Better self care would help with motivation which better motivation would stop the procrastination
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine? This is something new for me because I never rewarded myself for any progress. Recently though with trying new things I give myself a reward of something I know I like and enjoy
@SoulfullyAButterfly
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
procrastination and not feeling motivated, which i think focusing on doing it first and then treating myself helps. as this balance automatically keeps you engaged and motivated. love the post btw!
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
i can buy a new item i like, or read some books, watch an episode of series i like, or have a facial haha
@SoulfullyAButterfly
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help? I believe I have faced challenges due to poor planning and time management, and balancing mastery and pleasure will help me be able to better complete my tasks while also doing things I enjoy doing.
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine? I usually reward myself by going out for coffee or tea, and some pleasurable activities I could add to my routine is reading and spending more time with my doggos.
SMART Goals - I like this.
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
@Celestine22 mentioned burnout. And I get that way too. I find that I can "derail" and come off the tracks with any goal when life gets in the way of my "perfect" plan. Reading what other folks have written here, I am going to try just saying to myself. Today - life happened and the goal was missed. There is tomorrow. Try again. And just put the train back on the tracks and start anew and not let setbacks become deal breakers. Allowing myself a larger...bucket...of tolerance for what I can't control seems like a way forward that I haven't tried before.
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
There are some days that feel like, to me, very challenging. And sometimes it feels like there ought to be an award for just facing that day. LOL. Just getting up and showing up. So, this time, I tried to build into the goals their own rewards. One goal of mine is that I want to get back to reading. I used to be a voracious reader and I loved it. I stopped that because work needed required reading and reading technical manuals became a chore. I want to flip that back and turn reading into its own reward. So, the goal is reading and the pleasure reward is reading what I want to read not what I must read for work. This is so helpful - thank you.
@Fortunata67Anima
Perfectionism can be tough. Glad that you are tackling it. It's important to find that happy medium betweenperfectionism and not caring.
@SoulfullyAButterfly Sharing my SMART goal here.
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
So far, I am only 15 days in without soda and that is big for me. Drinking soda has been a bad habit of mine. So far I have had no desire of drinking it except one time. The weekend we had pizza and wings and my craving for a cold, crispy, burn my throat cherry Pepsi was strong. Lol. I went as far as pouring a whole cup and trying to force myself to drink it. I didn't drink it but I smelled it like 3 times. 🤣🤣🤣 It was horrible. The craving passed and I'm good now.
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
I'll probably just go out to eat dinner somewhere. Just knowing that I went 90 days when I hit that milestone is reward enough for me.
@YourCaringConfidant absolutely amazing graphic! Let us know if you are able to share it and we can repurpose and share externally too -- I recently made a more detailed one too for a Huddle one I am running.
@SoulfullyAButterfly Thank you. It's actually a template that was in Canva that I just edited. Just search it and you should find it. :)
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
I think that I definitly fear failing. I think that I also get very overwhelmed easy. can find hard to get the motivation to start when i'm struggling with other things
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
rewards can celebrating the achievements or giving yourself like a treat!
@SoulfullyAButterfly
What challenges have you faced in maintaining motivation towards your goals, and how do you think balancing mastery and pleasure might help?
Staying motivated can be tough when progress feels slow or when I focus too much on the end goal. So if I can find ways to enjoy the journey, I’d be more likely to stay engaged and keep going, even when progress isn’t as fast as I’d like.
How do you usually reward yourself when you make progress towards a goal, and what are some pleasurable activities you could add to your routine?
I usually reward myself with small treats like a break or a snack or movie time and bigger rewards like a day off.