Episode
Are Your Secret Goals Sabotaging You at Work?
- Podcast
- The Buoyant Leader
- Published
- Mar 24, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 366
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://howiejacobson.india-explore.in/captivate-podcast/are-your-secret-goals-sabotaging-you-at-work
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Summary
In How Emotions Are Made , Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that you don’t see the world “as it as,” but rather you construct it, moment by moment, by filtering and analyzing the torrents of sensory input that you receive. The main tool your brain uses to do this, once you’ve acquired language, is categories. What category includes the following?: a house, a fly swatter, a beekeeper’s suit, and a degree in entomology. Things that protect you from stinging insects. Cool, huh? These items have nothing in common, except for a specific goal. And once you’ve formed the goal, you can add other things to the category: a bottle of DEET, a zapper, a plane ticket to Antarctica. Conscious and Unconscious Goals Whether you’re aware or not, you approach every situation with multiple goals. These goals shape what you notice, what you prioritize, and how you behave. You’re aware of some of your goals: “find out what this person thinks” or “build team safety and camaraderie” or “impress the boss.” But you also have goals that are running below your conscious awareness, like “be the smartest person in the room” or “avoid conflict” or “don’t draw attention to yourself.” Can you see how the unconscious goals might interfere with and even sabotage your conscious ones? How Unconscious Goals Affect Perception Unconscious goals are even more powerful than conscious ones in determining what you experience in any given situation. That’s because you’re not aware of them, so you can’t perform any reality checks. If your goal is “be the smartest person in the room,” your brain will be working as follows: Other people’s ideas are stupid, or flawed, or incomplete When people ask me questions, they’re challenging my competence rather than being genuinely curious. All feedback is actually criticism. If…