Very few of us ever set any goals and even fewer of us commit them to paper even though we know that people who DO set goals actually achieve them. If it really works that well, then why don’t more people do it?
To unpack this, it is important that we understand a little bit of our brain's physiology. It’s impossible for a human being to be conscious of more than 5 or 6 things at a time.
In your daily activities, you’re conscious of many things:
- The temperature
- The color of someone’s hair
- What someone is saying to you
The minute that something else comes into your conscious mind, something has to leave.
The reason that we don’t set goals and struggle, is because the things that are really important don't have time to settle in our minds. What we tend to focus on, is what we have experienced in the past - and this is why we repeat the same patterns over and over again.
They reason why people who set goals achieve more is because they are occupying that conscious space with places they are GOING instead of places that they’ve BEEN. They are much less likely to get distracted by old thoughts and old notions because they are focused on the behaviors that are going to get them where they want to go next.
So what stops people from doing this?
THE TOP 3 REASONS WE DON’T SET GOALS.
1. WE UNDERESTIMATE SELF-WORTH
o The #1 belief that most of us have is that we are not worthy or that we can't do something. We just don’t believe that we can succeed. Because of this belief, we keep proving ourselves right by sabotaging and continuing to hold onto negative ideas.
2. WE SET THE WRONG GOALS
o Our first exposure to goal setting as a young person, is often someone else setting a goal for us that has more to do with them as opposed to what we want or need to reach what we want. A lot of us grow up, accepting goals, only knowing what’s in it for someone else, instead of what’s in it for us. This means we tend towards "people pleasing" instead of manifesting our own desired outcomes.
3. WE GET DISCOURAGED
o We get excited, we set a goal and we fail. And so we give up. This plays inot the false idea of success vs. failure. We must abandon the idea of success OR failure. We must embrace the idea of cause and effect. If we do something, we get a result – if we like the result, we keep doing it. If we don’t like the result, then we should stop doing it. Failure is not the opposite of success - it is part of it.