My Main Goal: Goal Setting
When I began the informal practice of life coaching in 1991, transitioning to the formal practice of psychotherapy in 2011, I knew little about personal and professional care for mental, emotional, and behavioral health (collectively “mental health”). I simply wanted to help people.
Nevertheless, I soon figured out the importance of starting the helping process with a goal, which the American Psychological Association (APA) defines as “a target of proficiency to be achieved in a task within a set period of time.” Without a setting goal, a person remains aimless.
For example, when I began life coaching, as a children’s home resident, other kids expressed general goals regarding a desire to improve their level of functioning and quality of life (e.g., to attain happiness). Thus, we began goal setting, which the APA thusly defines:
[A] process that establishes specific, time-based behavior targets that are measurable, achievable, and realistic.
In work-related settings, for example, this practice usually provides employees with both (a) a basis for motivation, in terms of effort expended, and (b) guidelines or cues to behavior that will be required if the goal is to be met.
Goal setting is effective only if individuals concerned are aware of what is to be accomplished and accept the goals for themselves, believing in their attainability.
Noteworthy, because goals are subjective (taking place or existing only within the mind), not objective (having verifiable existence in the external world, independently of any opinion or judgment), I wasn’t able to help all kids in the children’s home to achieve a goal for happiness.
In many cases, the best I could do was to try (to make an effort or attempt) to help them achieve a level of contentment regarding matters over which they had no control or influence. Ever since then, my main goal regarding the practice of care for mental health has been to try to help others.
When further contemplating this matter, a meme comes to mind. Per one source, “My Mango Is to Blow Up, also known as My Main Goal Is to Blow Up, refers to a Vine video by [rapper] Riff Raff in which he says ‘My main goal is to blow up then act like I don’t know nobody.”
Because of his southern pronunciation of “main goal,” many people perceived that Riff Raff was referring to a “mango” when admitting that his main goal was to become famous and then behave as though the rapper was unfamiliar with virtually everybody who wasn’t also successful.
An evidently shrewd businessperson, Riff Raff later collaborated with music producer DJ Paul (of Three 6 Mafia fame) and created the song “My Main Goal” (2025) that contained a sample of the rapper’s Vine video line. Now, I consider that line and my view of care for mental health.
As Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was formed by the late psychologist Albert Ellis, who reportedly developed the first cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) psychotherapeutic modality in 1955, this blog entry is part of an ongoing series regarding his book, Ask Albert Ellis?: Straight Answers and Sound Advice from America’s Best-Known Psychologist.
Now, REBT uses the ABC model to illustrate that when an undesirable Action occurs and you Believe an unhelpful narrative about the event, it’s your unfavorable assumption, not the event itself, that causes an unpleasant Consequence. This is known as distress or disturbance.
Noteworthy, with virtually any undesirable Action that occurs, it’s your unfavorable Beliefs which cause unpleasant distress or disturbance (Consequence). Given this framing of self-distress and self-disturbance, it’s worth noting that one REBT source states (page 71):
REBT conceptualizes [distress] as healthy even though it is intense. Other approaches to therapy have as their goal the reduction of the intensity of negative emotions. They take this position because they do not keenly differentiate between healthy negative emotions (distress) and unhealthy negative emotions (disturbance).
Now, REBT keenly distinguishes between healthy distress and unhealthy disturbance. Healthy distress stems from your rational beliefs about a negative activating event [Action], whilst disturbance stems from your irrational beliefs about the same event.
Complete elimination of distress is highly unlikely in an impermanent and uncertain world, wherein people conceptually suffer, struggle, and battle with, or merely experience hardship. Still, individuals often make matters worse for themselves by disturbing about such instances.
In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people often use to distress or disturb themselves: global evaluations, low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and demandingness. When contemplating these unproductive scripts, think of the acronym GLAD.
Additionally, from a psychological standpoint, people distress or disturb themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.
From an A-C view, I tried to help other kids when living in a children’s home (Action), though my efforts weren’t always successful (Consequence). Still, it was the B-C connection that I used which caused negative, though unhealthy agitation, whereby I worried about my ability to help.
I was sometimes unsuccessful at helping others (Action), I Believed, “I’m worthless [G], and I can’t bear to be unhelpful [L], as it’s awful [A], because I absolutely must be helpful to others [D],” and I then caused my own negative, but unhealthy agitation and worry (Consequence).
Addressing how people upset themselves with unhelpful attitudes, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unproductive philosophies of life in order to explore Effective new beliefs. Whereas rigid beliefs cause self-disturbance, flexible beliefs result in an un-disturbed condition.
Unfavorably, I carried my unaccommodating GLAD narrative from the informal practice of life coaching to the formal practice of psychotherapy. Therefore, my main goal yielded poor results when goal setting was influenced by unhelpful Beliefs. Of this, Ellis stated (page 34):
Goal setting is an important, and even an essential, part of life. Our main goal is to survive and to be happy in various ways, including personal achievement, mental health, and good relations with other people.
When we don’t seem to have goals, we usually do have them in our underlying desires, but we sometimes insist that we absolutely must achieve them and achieve them remarkably well.
Our demand that we have to achieve our goal then leads to anxiety [i.e., agitation, worry, etc.] in case we don’t accomplish them remarkably well. Consequently, we make achieving them too “dangerous,” and often cop out and make ourselves goal-less.
The aimlessness or goal-lessness of having no goal may sometimes be less beneficial to success with one’s interests and goals than to have, at minimal, a main goal with which one can begin the helpful process of goal setting. This is true, even if your “mango” isn’t what others value.
Subjectively, your main goal may be to become successful and then behave as though you don’t know anyone else. So be it! There are plenty of people who awwwready do this without having ever achieved relative success. Personally, that goal is unappealing.
Therefore, I’ll stick with trying to help as many other people as possible with achieving relative contentment before I die. How about you? Do you have a main goal, or are you aimless and goal-less? If you’d like to know more about this subject, then I look forward to hearing from you.
If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As the world’s foremost hip hop-influenced REBT psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
References:
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Hollings, D. (2025, August 2). My philosophy. Hollings Therapy, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.hollingstherapy.com/post/my-philosophy
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Hollings, D. (2025, October 9). Self-awareness, self-examination, and self-determination. Hollings Therapy, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.hollingstherapy.com/post/self-awareness-self-examination-and-self-determination
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