Goals can and should be used to generate the specific tasks that will accomplish them. Goals without accompanying tasks to accomplish them will provide drastically reduced benefits compared to a complete plan.
Goals are not wishes. The presence or absence of a plausible plan to accomplish your goals will determine how wholeheartedly you pursue each task required to achieve them.
Planning reduces anxiety by providing evidence that you have a plausible solution to the problems you face. Overthinking about a problem is one source of anxiety. Making a plan for what you will do while fully processing all important factors alleviates this kind of anxiety. Once something is planned, there is no need to revisit it unless you have new information.
Vacuous hope is a senseless fantasy. True hope requires a plausible plan consisting of concrete steps and sufficient reasons to believe they will work.
Many people refuse to take any action whatsoever to approach what they claim to want because they know they are unwilling to do what is required to get it, preferring vacuous hope in the impossible to uncertainty in what is attemptable. Vacuous wishes can never provide the confidence of plausible hope.