Sensory Based Goals Are Well Formed Goals

Are your goals truly goals (rather than dreams and wants)? By looking at how the goal is stated we can quickly tell the difference. The difference between a dream or a want and a goal is that the goal has specific features that make it reachable. Well formed outcomes have several criteria: stated in positives, individually driven, sensory based, and ecological.

This article shows you how to put sensory based outcomes into your goal statements. We interact with our world through our five senses. Everything we know about the world is what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. This means that the only way to know whether we have reached our goal is by checking our well formed outcome against what we see/hear/touch/taste/smell. Because we use the word "feel" to mean what we do with our fingers as well as what we do with our heart you will want to make sure what you will feel is actually something you’ll sense not just an emotion.

If you have "feel respected" as part of your outcome statement you will be better served by making it clear what you can sense when feeling "respect." What will you see when you feel respected? What will you hear? Is there a particular sensation in your body? A scent? Some taste in your mouth? We can ask these same questions of each of your goals. By making them solidly sensory based we make them that much more "real" and more attainable. Remember to make your outcomes things you can see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell to get to reach those goals!