The Question That Changes Everything About Goal Setting

While everyone's talking about crushing goals and using willpower to achieve more, let's talk about what you're really after. And a completely different way to get there.

Here's the truth most people miss: your goals aren't really about the goal itself.  What you're actually seeking is a feeling.

Maybe it's competency, creativity, deep connection with your animal, or a sense of freedom. But somewhere along the path to achievement, many people abandon these very feelings in favor of force, dominance, and willpower.

We'll explore why the methods you use to achieve goals matter just as much as the goals themselves, and how you can pursue what you want through ease, connection, and integrity instead of force.

In this episode, you'll discover why visualizing the process rather than just the outcome creates better results and actually prepares your brain for success.

As you move into 2026, ask yourself: "How does this feel?" That simple question might change everything.

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical or veterinary advice or professional training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or your dog are unwell or injured.  Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Transcript

Hello. Hello. And if you're listening to this in real time, Happy New year. It's now 2026 and everyone is talking about goals, goal setting, goal achieving. You know all different things about goals. Well, I'd like to invite you to think about goals in a different way. So, because after all, most goals are not about the goal themselves. They're actually about the feeling you want to have when you attain that goal.

So let me give you some examples. Just say you want to teach your dog, you know, agility and you want to compete in agility. You know, there's a certain goal you have about agility or your horse. You want to compete in first level dressage or hunter jumper show or western dressage or something else entirely. And you think, okay, once I get the goal, like you just think that's a worthy goal.

But really what you're after is a particular feeling you want to experience when you achieve that goal. Now that could be competency. You know, you want to feel like, wow, we did it, we made it happen. You know, there's that kind of feeling. There is the creativity involved in achieving the goal. There's the connection you get with your horse or dog as you're working towards the goal. Those are all wonderful things.

But often what happens is the goal becomes the thing and you forget about the state or the feeling you want to be in when you achieve the goal. So, so for example, let's go back to our agility dog, right, or our horse that we're training for a specific thing. You might start using methods that actually don't give you a feeling of creativity or competence or connection with your animal.

You might be start to use methods that are dominance based, that you feel like you have to show the animal who's boss and things like that. I just recently, recently had a conversation with a woman about this and this applies to both horses and dogs because we first started talking about her small little Morkie, you know, a Maltese Yorkie cross. And she was talking about how she trains her dog to listen to her no matter what, that, that there's a sense of fear or, you know, domination involved in her training.

I think that's really unfortunate, frankly. And you know her, her thing is just you, you make sure that your animal listens to you no matter what. So there's a level of coercion, force, whatever you want to call it, involved if that is your intention. And then she started talking about her horses and she does the same thing with her horses and using methods that put the horse in a let's just say not ideal emotional and physical state.

So the horse is stressed physically and emotionally and she dominates the horse. And so therefore she feels safer when she takes the horse out on trail because the horse, as she feels, is now been dominated, for lack of a better word, and will listen to her no matter what. Frankly, that is not the feeling I want to have with any animal. Hey, I don't want to feel like I'm dominating them, that there's a sense of coercion.

And a lot of times these are people like this woman. I'm sure she loves her animals, but she doesn't know that there's a different way that she could keep that feeling of love and have a dog who has an exceptional recall. Right. Who will come to her when she asks the dog to. Or she doesn't know that there's a way to engage with a horse with a sense of playfulness that will help change inappropriate behaviors.

So that, you know, that's a lack of understanding, a lack of maybe exposure to other methods. That's one reason why I'm always on my little bandwagon or my soapbox, whatever you want to call it, you know, helping people realize that there are other ways that you can work with your animals and yourself to feel better in body and mind. Right. So that we don't have to rely on these methods and to think about, okay, so what goals are you looking to achieve this year?

And is your method aligned with the feeling you want to have or feelings that you want to have with your animal? And this of course applies to goals that are unrelated to your horse or dog. Right. They may be just goals you have for yourself, maybe career goals or other relationships, health and wellness, other things like that. Because if you're doing it through a sense of forcing yourself, okay, you're rehearsing tension, you're rehearsing how to force yourself to do something.

But if you learn how to embody a sense of pleasure and ease towards achieving a goal, then you'll get more of that in your life. So this is a really, really important topic. And again, this is very different than how so many people approach goals. They're very often single minded that they will use willpower, use force, whatever it takes to achieve the goal. And what I'm inviting you to do is to take a step back and ask yourself, how am I feeling?

How does this make me feel? And the other thing that can be very helpful towards goals is to visualize you not just achieving the goal, like for example, having a successful agility run or, you know, really nailing that level one test or whatever it happens to be with your horse or your dog, but instead to visualize the process, like visualization. Visualize yourself working with your dog or horse as you go through and even realizing what would you do when there's some challenges, right?

When things don't go as smoothly, what do you fall back on? How do you overcome those challenges? And you actually practice that mentally. So it's not just about like telling your brain you've already achieved the goal. Because then your brain's like, okay, we don't have to do anything. But instead you visualize the process. You visualize yourself taking that time every day, maybe for your agility work and your just, you know, your writing work, you do some Feldenkrais awareness through movement to have yourself really ready in your body and mind for doing that type of activity, you know.

And you think about what about the days where, you know, you come home tired after work or something like that? What are you going to do to stay on track and to feel good about it? Remember, we want to kind of rehearse that, the state that we want to be in, okay? Because that's after all why we set goals. You know, even if you take a money goal, for example, maybe unrelated to your horse or dog, you have a money goal, maybe like a career type goal, certain amount of money you want to make or something like that.

Well, you think about what, what will you feel like when you get there, when you have that number in your bank account or you see that a certain paycheck, you know, number, whatever. And you think about, okay, how can I have that feeling now and work towards that goal? But this way you don't lose sight of the feeling you want to have. Maybe it's a feeling of freedom, financial freedom, creative freedom, time freedom, right?

Are you sacrificing the feelings just to get to the end goal? Right. Maybe you think the end justifies the means. Well, you might want to rethink that. A lot of people have been led down a really bad path by thinking that way. They just set their sights on some goal that they've set, and they don't think about the feelings they want to have. So when you're setting goals and you're actually working to achieve them, you might want to ask yourself, how do I feel?

Like, as you're, as you're working towards the goal, how does this feel in my body? Is it congruent with how I like to feel? Like the quality of the life I Want to live in, to experience. And when it comes to goals that are related to your time with your animals, you know, do they align with your values? Maybe you have very strong values about feeling a partnership, a really deep connection with your animals that.

That things should be mutually satisfying, right? So that your dog and horse feel good while you're working towards that goal. Now, some people don't place value on that. I have met many people who don't care how their animal feels. Right. I. I'm guessing if you're listening to the podcast, you don't fall into that camp, right? You fall into the camp that your animal, your. Your horse, your dog, they're feeling, right?

They're. The way they feel in body and mind matters to you, right? You want to have a sense of harmony. I like to talk about, you know, you know, like. Like a sense of, you know, you're. You're enhancing your movement and you're enriching your life together so that your horse and dog and yourself move more freely and live with a higher quality of life. You're enriching their life.

You're not subjugating them and saying, well, this is my goal and we're achieving it no matter what. And you, yes, you think about challenges and how you could overcome them, but the goal is flexible. For example, if your animal has some kind of physical setback, has an injury or something else happens, you don't press on and disregard the animal's safety. Right? But you may think, okay, well, maybe we need to be more flexible about that goal.

Either change the goal entirely, like maybe level it down a little bit, or extend our timeline. Maybe we won't get there by the end of two months. We may need three or four months. That's okay. But we think about what is the feeling I want to have with my animal or whatever the goal is. Right. Of course. I'm. I'm. I know you're here because you love your animals, so I'm using those examples.

But this applies equally importantly to goals outside of your life with animals. So, you know, and let's. Let's say one more thing about the whole animal connection. We have to remember that how we breathe, right, how we move, and our sense of either ease or efforting is felt by our animals, and it shapes our experience with them. So, again, this is why I want to invite you to think about when you're pursuing a goal, that you're thinking about the feeling you have in yourself, like feeling physically and emotionally as you pursue that goal.

And maybe you're working with a coach or a trainer right. It's sometimes not sometimes I think it's important to question whether those methods that you're being taught align with your own values and the feelings you want to have. So this isn't about being permissive or unintentional quite the opposite right. It's about integrity between how you feel and the methods you use to achieve goals and these even towards goals that you may not have written down you may not have really, you know really defined but you know just to think in a general way you want the you want to have that sense of integrity between the feelings you want to engender to create and the methods you're using to get there.

So let's practice a sense of ease and joy and connection as we move into the new year and well beyond it. So thank you so much for listening I always appreciate you listening and I love sharing this work with you and I hope to talk to you again soon. Bye for now.