With My Goal-Setting, Why Isn’t it Working? – I Don’t Know What is Wrong
As I and others have explained in articles, books and eBooks, follow a prescribed and well-tried process and you carry a pretty good guarantee of achieving a goal. Yet for many, as they progress towards the point of achievement, they sometimes feel themselves easing up, or even beginning to bail out. This can happen even when the goal is virtually achieved. There are psychological reasons for this which, if addressed, can be dealt with.
Like so many things, with the psychology simplified, goal-setting becomes clear. But leave it unexplained and you travel through life psychologically shackled and chained to your past. And you travel all too often unaware of the presence of the inhibiting force within us.
Looking at the problem, it will soon become obvious you can have varying degrees of difficulty with this. It will depend on how deep-seated the issue is in the inner sanctum of your mind as to which is the most effective remedy.
If you have a minor “attack” of easing up on your goal, when otherwise things are going well, make sure you listen objectively to the negative self-talk in you head surrounding the “attack” Usually, your subconscious will be responding to some latent and poor image of yourself. It causes it to surface when that poor image is about to be challenged and even dismantled by your impending success at a goal you have set.
Remember, research shows you cannot hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time. You cannot believe yourself to be effective and ineffective at the same time. You cannot be a success and a failure at one thing at the same time.
So you have this dilemma as part of you originally embraced the goal and set off to achieve it, then another part of you still has unresolved problems of a different origin. In serious cases, rarely would you get very far, even if you had started on a goal, before the power of the negative thoughts neutralise your motivation.
Dealing with minor attacks can be achieved by writing out positive affirmations in the present tense and as if achieved already. Each affirmation should express the opposite to the negative voice you are hearing in our head.
But if I look next at the major and relentless attacks of negativity next, then a spell of introspection is worthwhile. This can be achieved best with professional counselling where you are clueless as what is causing you to bail out.
My belief is that the cause most probably rests deep in your childhood and you have carried the issue into your life as an adult. May I say counselling has mush less of a stigma to it these days. So much more is known about cognitive thinking now. It can be incredibly helpful in dislodging us from thoughts that have dogged us since our childhood
In middle of the road cases, where you know you will have to battle against yourself to achieve your goals, of course counselling is an option, but there are some excellent books on the market that can tutor you on how to diffuse your inner gremlins.
And if it helps you, I have posted on my blogs the titles of some I recommend.to students whole-heartedly. I will post some examples of this dilemma. I know that the psychology of goal-setting is not an exact science and I have tried to include more material which could be helpful to you. I am also pushing an eBook before the end of the month Gerry Neale can be found at.
He can be reached on http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com and http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com.
May 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
I find what works for me is a goal setting app called GoalsOnTrack and it has worked very well. It saves me a lot of time in keeping track of my goals and most importantly it helps me better organize my daily todos towards achieving my goals. You may want to check it out.