Goal-setting can help us feel motivated and almost give us a sense of purpose. In order to have more goals that are no constrained by productivity and outcome, we can star by looking at activities that we want to work at, rather than having to. For example, instead of saying that you have to journal every single day, you can set a more gentle and flexible goal of writing. If you have a tendency to write only when bad things are happening then many try and write when you experience some simple joys.
One of my great passions is painting, however I rarely paint as most times I set the goal of creating a piece that I can hang around the house somewhere, to freshen up the look. However this puts a lot of pressure on me creating something “worth hanging on my walls”. Instead a more gentle approach can be to play with creating new colours, experimenting with textures and do abstract painting. This takes the pressure away from the end result.