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Pitfall #1: Not taking into account the knock-on effects of achieving your goal The ancient saying
"Be careful what you ask for, in case you get it" is a very wise one. Because your unconscious
mind will do its best to give you what you ask for - no more, no less - you have to be very clear
about what the goal is that you are setting.
Consider a businessman who very single-mindedly sets a SMART goal of owning a company with
a turnover of a million in its first year.
A year later he has his company which has turned over a million, so he has achieved his goal. But
- his health is shot due to working 19-hour days, he's a hundred pounds overweight because he's
been living on junk food, his wife has left him because he's never home, and he has no friends left
because he has made deals with them that left him with a big profit and them with very little.
This is not where he wanted to be, but because he did not consider the consequences and
knock-on effects, his unconscious mind gave him exactly what he asked for - and no more.
How could he have avoided this? As well as making the goal sensory-specific and putting a date
on it, he also could have looked at the consequences of achieving the goal on every other area of
his life:
- his health
- his family
- his friendships
- the wider community
If you don't consider all the consequences of your goal, you may end up with something you don't
want. The smarter way to set goals is to take the consequences into account, allowing you to
make changes to your goal and/or your route to achieving it. That way you stand a chance of
getting the benefits of your goal while avoiding unwanted side effects.
Bonus tip: listen to your unconscious mind
The conscious mind can only track around seven "chunks" of information at a time (less on a bad
day) so it's easy to miss something vital when you are thinking your goal through.
Your unconscious mind, by contrast, is potentially aware of everything, and it can notice pitfalls
that your conscious mind overlooks. One of the ways it communicates with the conscious mind is
by means of feelings. So - check how you feel when you think about your goal. Do you feel
enthused and energized, or tired and discouraged?
If you feel less than 100% about your goal, that may indicate that your conscious mind has missed
something about the consequences of achieving it, so check again.
Pitfall #2: "Taking too much on" and getting discouraged
It can be very easy to set a big, compelling goal - and then feel overwhelmed by the effort you
think it will take to get there. The goal is so big, and so different from how things are now, that
getting there by the deadline you have set will surely demand too much of you. And the more you
think about the legwork it will take, the more discouraged you feel.
There are two things you have to do to regain your motivation.
Firstly, when you think about your goal, picture how wonderful it will be when you have achieved it
, rather than what you will have to do to get there. This will instantly feel more motivating. When
you book a holiday or a weekend away, you are thinking about what you will do when you get
there - not about traffic jams or delays at the airport.
Secondly, break the goal down into smaller sub-tasks that feel easier to achieve. Make each of
these tasks a goal in itself. This means that you can feel good when you achieve each one -
maybe even give yourself a reward.
Sometimes it isn't easy to see what you should be doing first. The smart way to decide on the
sub-tasks that will form your route to the goal is to start from imagining the position of having
achieved the goal already. From that perspective, ask yourself:
"What conditions had to be in place in order for this goal to be able to happen?"
Ask the same question for each of these conditions - and so on, working backwards through time
until you arrive at the very first step you have to take. This gives you your route to the goal (or
routes as there may be more than one way to get there).
If the first task still seems overwhelming, break it down into smaller tasks until the first step is one
that you can definitely, no question, accomplish.
Remember what management guru Peter Drucker said:
"We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, but we underestimate what we can
accomplish in five".
The key is to get started.
Pitfall #3: Not Knowing What You Want
This is the biggest and most common goal-setting mistake of all - not getting round to setting any
goals because you don't know what you want.
You can be an expert in all the goal-setting techniques known to man, but if you haven't taken the
time to find out what you really want, one of two things is bound to happen:
You don't set any goals. This means that you drift, and life just happens to you, and you have to
react to whatever it decides to throw at you. This might work out OK if you're lucky - and it might
not.
(It's perfectly possible to drift in a well-paid corporate career, by the way - for the first twelve years
of my working life, I sleepwalked through my IT career and was quite comfortably off by the end of
it. But because I had no direction, I was unfulfilled and also vulnerable to career upsets.)
You set goals (because you think you should, or because someone else tells you to) but they are
not really about what you want. You don't achieve your goals, because your unconscious mind
sabotages them, or you achieve them but discover they are not what you really wanted. Either
way, you still feel unfulfilled.
So how, in Carlos Castaneda's words, do you choose "a path with heart?" How do you find your
calling?
You can use either or both of these methods:
1. Take some time to discover your values in each area of your life - for example, what's important
to you in a career? What's important to you in a relationship? Elicit the values for each area in
turn by asking just that question: "What's important to you?"
You will get the best results when you get a friend to ask you this question, especially if they keep
asking even after you think you have found all your values. Some of the deepest and most
motivating of your values will be the ones that you are not at first consciously aware of.
Some values are more important to you than others, so decide which are the 'must-haves' and
which are the 'nice-to-haves' - and then go for fulfilling all of them anyway!
2. Try out as many different experiences as you can. Notice what you enjoy (or don't enjoy) about
them? What is it about each experience that you really liked? Which of your values was it calling
to?
The more reference experiences you have, the clearer idea you will have of your preferences,
boundaries, and the 'hot buttons' that really excite your motivation; ultimately, the more idea you
will have of who you really are.
Conclusion
When you have made the necessary adjustments to your goal to take into account knock-on
effects, to make sure that it appropriately chunked, and above all to make sure that it reflects what
you really want at the deepest level, don't be surprised if you feel a renewed surge of motivation!
As you take action to make your goals happen, remember to take a moment every week or so to
check that you are still on track, and to scan the horizon for any new factors that might require
you to make adjustments to your course. And when you do achieve your goal, remember to give
yourself credit - after all, you've earned it!
Andy Smith is an Emotional Intelligence consultant and NLP Trainer based in the UK. He is the
author of Achieve Your Goals: Strategies To Transform Your Life (Dorling Kindersley 2006). You
can email Andy at andy@practicaleq.com. His website, at http://www.practicaleq.com/products/,
contains many free articles and downloads.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andy_Smith
"Be careful what you ask for, in case you get it" is a very wise one. Because your unconscious
mind will do its best to give you what you ask for - no more, no less - you have to be very clear
about what the goal is that you are setting.
Consider a businessman who very single-mindedly sets a SMART goal of owning a company with
a turnover of a million in its first year.
A year later he has his company which has turned over a million, so he has achieved his goal. But
- his health is shot due to working 19-hour days, he's a hundred pounds overweight because he's
been living on junk food, his wife has left him because he's never home, and he has no friends left
because he has made deals with them that left him with a big profit and them with very little.
This is not where he wanted to be, but because he did not consider the consequences and
knock-on effects, his unconscious mind gave him exactly what he asked for - and no more.
How could he have avoided this? As well as making the goal sensory-specific and putting a date
on it, he also could have looked at the consequences of achieving the goal on every other area of
his life:
- his health
- his family
- his friendships
- the wider community
If you don't consider all the consequences of your goal, you may end up with something you don't
want. The smarter way to set goals is to take the consequences into account, allowing you to
make changes to your goal and/or your route to achieving it. That way you stand a chance of
getting the benefits of your goal while avoiding unwanted side effects.
Bonus tip: listen to your unconscious mind
The conscious mind can only track around seven "chunks" of information at a time (less on a bad
day) so it's easy to miss something vital when you are thinking your goal through.
Your unconscious mind, by contrast, is potentially aware of everything, and it can notice pitfalls
that your conscious mind overlooks. One of the ways it communicates with the conscious mind is
by means of feelings. So - check how you feel when you think about your goal. Do you feel
enthused and energized, or tired and discouraged?
If you feel less than 100% about your goal, that may indicate that your conscious mind has missed
something about the consequences of achieving it, so check again.
Pitfall #2: "Taking too much on" and getting discouraged
It can be very easy to set a big, compelling goal - and then feel overwhelmed by the effort you
think it will take to get there. The goal is so big, and so different from how things are now, that
getting there by the deadline you have set will surely demand too much of you. And the more you
think about the legwork it will take, the more discouraged you feel.
There are two things you have to do to regain your motivation.
Firstly, when you think about your goal, picture how wonderful it will be when you have achieved it
, rather than what you will have to do to get there. This will instantly feel more motivating. When
you book a holiday or a weekend away, you are thinking about what you will do when you get
there - not about traffic jams or delays at the airport.
Secondly, break the goal down into smaller sub-tasks that feel easier to achieve. Make each of
these tasks a goal in itself. This means that you can feel good when you achieve each one -
maybe even give yourself a reward.
Sometimes it isn't easy to see what you should be doing first. The smart way to decide on the
sub-tasks that will form your route to the goal is to start from imagining the position of having
achieved the goal already. From that perspective, ask yourself:
"What conditions had to be in place in order for this goal to be able to happen?"
Ask the same question for each of these conditions - and so on, working backwards through time
until you arrive at the very first step you have to take. This gives you your route to the goal (or
routes as there may be more than one way to get there).
If the first task still seems overwhelming, break it down into smaller tasks until the first step is one
that you can definitely, no question, accomplish.
Remember what management guru Peter Drucker said:
"We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, but we underestimate what we can
accomplish in five".
The key is to get started.
Pitfall #3: Not Knowing What You Want
This is the biggest and most common goal-setting mistake of all - not getting round to setting any
goals because you don't know what you want.
You can be an expert in all the goal-setting techniques known to man, but if you haven't taken the
time to find out what you really want, one of two things is bound to happen:
You don't set any goals. This means that you drift, and life just happens to you, and you have to
react to whatever it decides to throw at you. This might work out OK if you're lucky - and it might
not.
(It's perfectly possible to drift in a well-paid corporate career, by the way - for the first twelve years
of my working life, I sleepwalked through my IT career and was quite comfortably off by the end of
it. But because I had no direction, I was unfulfilled and also vulnerable to career upsets.)
You set goals (because you think you should, or because someone else tells you to) but they are
not really about what you want. You don't achieve your goals, because your unconscious mind
sabotages them, or you achieve them but discover they are not what you really wanted. Either
way, you still feel unfulfilled.
So how, in Carlos Castaneda's words, do you choose "a path with heart?" How do you find your
calling?
You can use either or both of these methods:
1. Take some time to discover your values in each area of your life - for example, what's important
to you in a career? What's important to you in a relationship? Elicit the values for each area in
turn by asking just that question: "What's important to you?"
You will get the best results when you get a friend to ask you this question, especially if they keep
asking even after you think you have found all your values. Some of the deepest and most
motivating of your values will be the ones that you are not at first consciously aware of.
Some values are more important to you than others, so decide which are the 'must-haves' and
which are the 'nice-to-haves' - and then go for fulfilling all of them anyway!
2. Try out as many different experiences as you can. Notice what you enjoy (or don't enjoy) about
them? What is it about each experience that you really liked? Which of your values was it calling
to?
The more reference experiences you have, the clearer idea you will have of your preferences,
boundaries, and the 'hot buttons' that really excite your motivation; ultimately, the more idea you
will have of who you really are.
Conclusion
When you have made the necessary adjustments to your goal to take into account knock-on
effects, to make sure that it appropriately chunked, and above all to make sure that it reflects what
you really want at the deepest level, don't be surprised if you feel a renewed surge of motivation!
As you take action to make your goals happen, remember to take a moment every week or so to
check that you are still on track, and to scan the horizon for any new factors that might require
you to make adjustments to your course. And when you do achieve your goal, remember to give
yourself credit - after all, you've earned it!
Andy Smith is an Emotional Intelligence consultant and NLP Trainer based in the UK. He is the
author of Achieve Your Goals: Strategies To Transform Your Life (Dorling Kindersley 2006). You
can email Andy at andy@practicaleq.com. His website, at http://www.practicaleq.com/products/,
contains many free articles and downloads.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andy_Smith
Three Pitfalls In Goal-Setting (And How To Avoid Them)
By Andy Smith
By Andy Smith
