Using The Third Alternative to enhance Self-Concordant Goal Setting
And how Self-Concordant Goal Setting sharpens The Third Alternative in return.
The Third Alternative is the practice of stepping back from two opposing positions, my way versus your way, and deliberately searching for a synergistic option that meets the real needs underneath both, rather than splitting the difference. Self-concordant goal setting is a filter you run a goal through before committing effort to it: does this goal come from what I actually value, or am I chasing it out of pressure, guilt, or someone else's script? Held together, on this reading, the widened search that produces a third option is only worth running if the goal it's searching to satisfy actually belongs to you; and a self-concordant goal, once named, still needs a way to be pursued that doesn't collapse into a compromise neither party wanted. Whether combining the two outperforms either alone hasn't been measured.
What The Third Alternative rests on
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Perspective taking expands frame
randomised trials
Deliberately adopting a vantage point other than one's own default view widens the range of interpretations or options available for a situation.
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Needs based solutions outperform compromise
practitioner report
Searching for a synergistic solution that addresses both parties' underlying needs produces more durable outcomes than splitting the difference between stated positions.
What Self-Concordant Goal Setting rests on
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Autonomous motivation sustains effort
randomised trials
Goals pursued because they align with a person's own interests and values are sustained with more effort and satisfaction than goals pursued from external pressure or guilt.
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Goal source predicts attainment
observational studies
Whether a goal originates from intrinsic interest versus extrinsic obligation predicts whether a person actually attains it over time.
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Self concordant attainment increases wellbeing
observational studies
Attaining a self-concordant goal increases wellbeing in a way that attaining a non-concordant goal does not.
Where they actually meet
Both practices refuse to accept the first framing that shows up. The Third Alternative refuses to accept that a disagreement has only two sides, my position or yours, and goes looking for a synergistic third that neither side had named because both were arguing positions instead of the needs underneath them. Self-concordant goal setting refuses to accept that a goal is worth pursuing just because it's on the table, checking instead whether it actually stems from what you value or whether it's really someone else's expectation wearing your name. In both cases, what looked like the only two options, fight for your side or drop it, chase the goal or fail it, becomes something you can examine before committing to it. The seam is that a third alternative is only as good as the needs it's built from, and a self-concordant goal, once confirmed as genuinely yours, still gets pursued through the same narrow either/or thinking the third alternative exists to break.
Using The Third Alternative to enhance Self-Concordant Goal Setting
Self-concordant goal setting is usually run as a private check: is this goal mine, or is it pressure in disguise? But a lot of goals aren't purely yours or purely imposed, they're a tangle of both, like wanting a promotion partly because you want the growth and partly because your parents' approval is riding on the title. Treated as either/or, that goal fails the filter and gets discarded, which throws out the part that was genuinely yours along with the part that wasn't. Apply The Third Alternative's actual move here: instead of asking whether the goal is concordant or not, ask what a version of it would look like that satisfies your real underlying need, the growth, without the piece that's just obligation, the title. The concrete move is treating a mixed-motive goal as a search problem rather than a pass/fail test, looking for a third version of the goal that keeps what's actually yours and drops what was never yours to begin with.
Using Self-Concordant Goal Setting to enhance The Third Alternative
The Third Alternative can generate a synergistic option that satisfies both people's stated needs and still be a goal nobody actually wants to carry out, because the search focused on reconciling two positions without ever checking whether pursuing the resulting plan is something either person values versus something they're agreeing to so the conflict will end. Run the self-concordance filter on the third alternative itself before adopting it: does pursuing this option, day to day, come from genuine interest, or is agreeing to it mostly relief that the argument is over? The concrete move is treating a creative synthesis as a candidate goal to be tested, not an automatic win, because a third option nobody is intrinsically motivated to sustain tends to quietly die a few weeks after the negotiation that produced it felt like a success.
You and your co-founder are stuck on whether to raise money or stay bootstrapped
The conversation keeps looping between two camps: raise a round and move fast, or stay lean and keep control. You call a break and instead of re-arguing either side, you ask what each position is actually protecting, for you it's not wanting the company to move slower than your own sense of urgency, for your co-founder it's not wanting decisions made by people who never build anything. Naming those needs opens a third option neither of you had said out loud, a small bridge round from people who've built companies before, sized to buy the speed without handing over control. Before committing, you each check separately whether pursuing that path is something you actually want or just the option that made the fight stop, and it's only once both of you can say yes to that, not just yes to ending the disagreement, that the plan actually holds a few months later.
Where this does not apply
The Third Alternative is built for situations where two people or two positions are genuinely in tension; a goal-setting question you're facing alone, with no other party and no competing position to synthesize with, doesn't have the shape this practice works on, and forcing a synergistic search where there's only one decision-maker tends to manufacture a false compromise between you and yourself. Self-concordant goal setting, in the other direction, has little to say about how to generate creative options once a goal is confirmed as genuinely yours, so leaning on it alone during an actual two-sided conflict leaves you checking your own motives while the disagreement with the other person goes unaddressed.
What the evidence does and does not support
The self-concordance principles carry RCT and observational support from Sheldon and Elliot's line of goal-content research, tracking real attainment and wellbeing outcomes over time. The Third Alternative's perspective-taking principle has broader RCT support from negotiation and social-cognition research; the principle of solving for both parties' underlying needs is closer to anecdotal, drawn largely from Covey's own case examples rather than controlled studies. No study has tested pairing a synthesized third option with a self-concordance check on that option; this page reasons from each practice's own separately evidenced basis, not evidence for the combination.
Practice this with IX Coach
The two practices on their own
Other pairings with these practices
- Action Planning (Implementation Intentions) and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
An if-then plan makes any goal run on autopilot, even one you only want out of guilt. Screen the goal first, then build the plan.
- Behavior Design (Environment Design) and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
A well-designed environment makes any goal easier to chase — including one that was never really yours. Which check to run, and in what order.
- Collaborative Problem Solving and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
A goal can pass the 'is this mine' test and still stall for weeks. One reading: it needs a diagnostic question, not more willpower.
- Collaborative Problem Solving and The Third Alternative
One gives you a step-by-step way to find what's really wrong. The other raises the bar on the fix you settle for once you find it.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
Guilt and genuine desire feel identical while you're flooded. DBT's pause is what lets you check a goal's source honestly before you commit to it.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy — Emotion Regulation Skills and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
Dread before a goal isn't always something to push through. One reading of when to regulate it and when to listen to it.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy — Emotion Regulation Skills and The Third Alternative
On this reading, regulating arousal first is what makes real synergy-searching possible, not a nice extra step. The pairing itself is unstudied.
- Mastery Experiences (Graduated Success Building) and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
Graded steps build real confidence at almost any goal you point them at, including one that was never yours. A filter for checking first.
- Mastery Experiences (Graduated Success Building) and The Third Alternative
Proposing a genuinely new option in a live disagreement takes nerve most people don't have on their first try. Here is where that nerve comes from.
- Positive Discipline and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
One asks what need a tantrum is really serving. On this reading, the other asks the same question about a goal you keep abandoning.
- Possible Selves Exercise and Self-Concordant Goal Setting
A vivid future self and a values-check for your goals sharpen each other. Here's how, and what neither can tell you alone.
- Possible Selves Exercise and The Third Alternative
A future-self image can fuel the search for a real third option instead of a compromise. One way to read how the two might connect, and where they don't.