Why Goal Setting doesn't work and what does...
Whats wrong with Goal Setting:
Widely used SMART and SMARTER Goals
Some people take it one step further by adding Ethical and Recorded to get to SMARTER goals rather than just SMART goals.
Unlike all the other life coaches out there, that will much rather teach you how to delude yourself and how to trick your mind into a false sense of positivity, my business coaching is aimed at teaching Authentic Success.
Unlike all the other life coaches out there, that will much rather teach you how to delude yourself and how to trick your mind into a false sense of positivity, my business coaching is aimed at teaching Authentic Success.
So should you practice Goal Setting?
There is a lot of junk out there when it comes to success and self help.
In between all the "positive-thinking-shapes-your-reality", stay-positive-at-all-costs and deceive-yourself teachings, occasional nuggets of wisdom do exist.
Most important, however is to verify so-called "universal truths", by looking at truly succesful people and more importantly, test against your own personal experience.
If you consistently do goal setting, do you ever get frustrated when you don't achieve them?
Is goal setting a way to motivate yourself, trick yourself into action, clarify your thinking, or is it actually something that gives you results?
What if goal setting has serious flaws?
ASK YOURSELF: Would you still follow it blindly, even if you knew of a superior method to structure your life?
In between all the "positive-thinking-shapes-your-reality", stay-positive-at-all-costs and deceive-yourself teachings, occasional nuggets of wisdom do exist.
Most important, however is to verify so-called "universal truths", by looking at truly succesful people and more importantly, test against your own personal experience.
If you consistently do goal setting, do you ever get frustrated when you don't achieve them?
Is goal setting a way to motivate yourself, trick yourself into action, clarify your thinking, or is it actually something that gives you results?
What if goal setting has serious flaws?
ASK YOURSELF: Would you still follow it blindly, even if you knew of a superior method to structure your life?
Biggest myths about Goal Setting
The first two myths are related to the "your-thoughts-attract-your-desires" theory (or broadly known as "The Law of Attraction"). Well its a serious misconception. Positive thinking doesn't work. There has been probably 100's of millions of books sold that explain the theory. The secret DVD and Book sold 8 million copies.
Napolean Hill's think & grow rich sold many millions everywhere in the world.
This category of books were already popular in the 1920's.
John Kehoe's Mind Power series another best seller. Norman Vincent Peale etc etc
Despite this, there is still not a single documented case of HIV AIDS being healed by positive thinking. Clearly, there ARE limits to what your thoughts can do. Also I don't see many superman's flying above.
Whilst there are some people where positive thinking/goal visualisation has been attributed as the source of their success (like arnold schwarzenegger), many more has no such indication.
What many highly succesful people do have in common are traits like Hard work, Luck, Circumstances, Intelligence, Tennacity, Superior understanding of a situation or trend, unique gift or ability, strive for perfection, compounding of previous successes.
Its also quite logical to see how one or more of these traits could catapult one to the upper echelons of achievement. Its not so logical to see how PURE positive thinking, without the correct action can lead to success.
(Risk taking deliberately left out above: its only a factor in success if coupled with luck, or used in combination with superior down side risk management.
Contrary to popular belief: The most succesful people aren't usually those that took the craziest risks. Unless you consider immoral CEOs of investment banks who take risks with other people's financial security as success.)
The second myth is around being super precise both in the exact goal, and in the time of achievement. The problem with the exact goal - IE to have exactly R 100,000 in cash in my bank account - is a bit suspicious purely on the grounds of simple anology - what if you get R 89,000 - should you be upset? Or what if you get R 110,000? I don't think reality is that precise.
What about I SHALL have R 100,000 by 31 March 2010?
Well what if the timeframe is impossible relative to your ability and circumstances?
Most goals involve an amount of external influencers.
These things are uncertain, not all within your control, and their effects compound in all sorts of unexpected ways.
Imagine reaching such a set date, and then accepting failure, when you should have just pushed for two more weeks?
Or what if you reach the date, and you realise that you were completely unrealistic and need another year? As you approach your deadline, your anxiety grows.
You cannot control time or external circumstance. Accept it and move on.
You can probably control either WHAT you want to achieve, or WHEN you are going to measure, but probably not both at the same time. Not in this reality.
Usually after you let up on artificial time constraints such as- I need to be a millionare by 25 or I need to drive a ferrari by 30, - you will find these things come to you much more easily.
By not being rushed, you can do things better and more properly, laying a better healthier foundation.
- Focus exclusively on the goal and totally disregard how you are going to achieve it.
- Obsess over goals, stir up red hot desire, so that your subconscious has no choice but to "attract" it.
- Set clear, precise, exact goals, right down to the last cent, and write down the exact date by which you are to achieve them.
The first two myths are related to the "your-thoughts-attract-your-desires" theory (or broadly known as "The Law of Attraction"). Well its a serious misconception. Positive thinking doesn't work. There has been probably 100's of millions of books sold that explain the theory. The secret DVD and Book sold 8 million copies.
Napolean Hill's think & grow rich sold many millions everywhere in the world.
This category of books were already popular in the 1920's.
John Kehoe's Mind Power series another best seller. Norman Vincent Peale etc etc
Despite this, there is still not a single documented case of HIV AIDS being healed by positive thinking. Clearly, there ARE limits to what your thoughts can do. Also I don't see many superman's flying above.
Whilst there are some people where positive thinking/goal visualisation has been attributed as the source of their success (like arnold schwarzenegger), many more has no such indication.
What many highly succesful people do have in common are traits like Hard work, Luck, Circumstances, Intelligence, Tennacity, Superior understanding of a situation or trend, unique gift or ability, strive for perfection, compounding of previous successes.
Its also quite logical to see how one or more of these traits could catapult one to the upper echelons of achievement. Its not so logical to see how PURE positive thinking, without the correct action can lead to success.
(Risk taking deliberately left out above: its only a factor in success if coupled with luck, or used in combination with superior down side risk management.
Contrary to popular belief: The most succesful people aren't usually those that took the craziest risks. Unless you consider immoral CEOs of investment banks who take risks with other people's financial security as success.)
The second myth is around being super precise both in the exact goal, and in the time of achievement. The problem with the exact goal - IE to have exactly R 100,000 in cash in my bank account - is a bit suspicious purely on the grounds of simple anology - what if you get R 89,000 - should you be upset? Or what if you get R 110,000? I don't think reality is that precise.
What about I SHALL have R 100,000 by 31 March 2010?
Well what if the timeframe is impossible relative to your ability and circumstances?
Most goals involve an amount of external influencers.
These things are uncertain, not all within your control, and their effects compound in all sorts of unexpected ways.
Imagine reaching such a set date, and then accepting failure, when you should have just pushed for two more weeks?
Or what if you reach the date, and you realise that you were completely unrealistic and need another year? As you approach your deadline, your anxiety grows.
You cannot control time or external circumstance. Accept it and move on.
You can probably control either WHAT you want to achieve, or WHEN you are going to measure, but probably not both at the same time. Not in this reality.
Usually after you let up on artificial time constraints such as- I need to be a millionare by 25 or I need to drive a ferrari by 30, - you will find these things come to you much more easily.
By not being rushed, you can do things better and more properly, laying a better healthier foundation.
THE FAILURE FACTOR
Many people right now just happen to be pumping positivity. Hopefully its the genuine kind - the kind rooted
in concrete plans or a history of success. Not the fake kind that’s going to fade any moment; won't stand up against
serious challenge; or that is this "happy positiveness without reason" that so many books and guru's are pushing lately.
The problem with being positive without reason, is that you are heading all positive and smiling to your own destruction. If you fall in this category, you just so happen to be the wolves-out-there's favourite kind of sucker.
For the rest - those that are genuinely miserable, I've got some constructive advice to offer.
First lets look at the two primary causes of this state:
* Many people have never tasted real success in their lives, or at least not in the most important field for most - the field of making real money. If you have ever built up or otherwise obtained a large sum of cash or passive income stream through ingenuity and hard work, then you know what the game is about. More than this, you've got confidence in your own ability to do it again.
If you've never been in this situation, it is easy to doubt yourself, because this world offers no positive encouragement and support for those who keep at the grind stone with no visible results. A large element of one's first big success in the Game of Money, is the ability to keep working, and keep working at the right things at that, in the right way, even in the total absence of positive feedback. Occasionally you get negative feedback when things fail spectacularly (which is truly helpful), but by far the majority of the time, you get NO feedback.
And the problem of course is that Guru's and other sources are only helpful to you if you are able to differentiate all the false prophets (those that make money from telling people how to be successful but have no clue) from the real deal.
This makes it extremely difficult to persist, or to know whether persisting is even the right thing to do. You don't want to wind up wasting 10 years of your life on some pursuit that is destined to fail.
It is therefore understandable that it is hard to have faith in your own abilities, and in the achievability of success, if you have no personal past success to refer to in this field.
It can feel like it is impossible, or that somehow "YOU" are jinxed or unlucky. Or some invisible force in the universe is holding you back.
* Major set back(s)
Sometimes a crushing defeat can achieve the same effect, leading you to believe that you are destined for failure. Having succeeded, and then lost it all again can feel even like a stronger jinx than just never having tasted the big time. Usually a big defeat resulted from a mental blind-spot in your believes about things or people. It is pretty devastating to realise that some of your core assumptions have been wrong for years, and that your entire (sand) "empire" was built on a fallacy, and the first wave to come along flattens it effortlessly into the beach.
Both of these two scenarios are things that most people have to overcome before they can be successful. If nothing else, they are great exercises in character building.
You are not beaten until you have stopped being able to come up with any ideas of things to do everyday to advance you towards your goals. If you are in this unfortunate position, it means you have one more thing left to do - TO SEARCH for the answer. A life or business coach like me, the internet, books, other successful people would all be great starting points for those that have run out of ideas.
The problem with being positive without reason, is that you are heading all positive and smiling to your own destruction. If you fall in this category, you just so happen to be the wolves-out-there's favourite kind of sucker.
For the rest - those that are genuinely miserable, I've got some constructive advice to offer.
First lets look at the two primary causes of this state:
* Many people have never tasted real success in their lives, or at least not in the most important field for most - the field of making real money. If you have ever built up or otherwise obtained a large sum of cash or passive income stream through ingenuity and hard work, then you know what the game is about. More than this, you've got confidence in your own ability to do it again.
If you've never been in this situation, it is easy to doubt yourself, because this world offers no positive encouragement and support for those who keep at the grind stone with no visible results. A large element of one's first big success in the Game of Money, is the ability to keep working, and keep working at the right things at that, in the right way, even in the total absence of positive feedback. Occasionally you get negative feedback when things fail spectacularly (which is truly helpful), but by far the majority of the time, you get NO feedback.
And the problem of course is that Guru's and other sources are only helpful to you if you are able to differentiate all the false prophets (those that make money from telling people how to be successful but have no clue) from the real deal.
This makes it extremely difficult to persist, or to know whether persisting is even the right thing to do. You don't want to wind up wasting 10 years of your life on some pursuit that is destined to fail.
It is therefore understandable that it is hard to have faith in your own abilities, and in the achievability of success, if you have no personal past success to refer to in this field.
It can feel like it is impossible, or that somehow "YOU" are jinxed or unlucky. Or some invisible force in the universe is holding you back.
* Major set back(s)
Sometimes a crushing defeat can achieve the same effect, leading you to believe that you are destined for failure. Having succeeded, and then lost it all again can feel even like a stronger jinx than just never having tasted the big time. Usually a big defeat resulted from a mental blind-spot in your believes about things or people. It is pretty devastating to realise that some of your core assumptions have been wrong for years, and that your entire (sand) "empire" was built on a fallacy, and the first wave to come along flattens it effortlessly into the beach.
Both of these two scenarios are things that most people have to overcome before they can be successful. If nothing else, they are great exercises in character building.
You are not beaten until you have stopped being able to come up with any ideas of things to do everyday to advance you towards your goals. If you are in this unfortunate position, it means you have one more thing left to do - TO SEARCH for the answer. A life or business coach like me, the internet, books, other successful people would all be great starting points for those that have run out of ideas.
The proper way to achieve goals
Decide what you want. Not just what you want, but also what you want to be, and what you
want to be DOING. In other words, think a bit more multi-dimensionally.
Perhaps you can set a floor: I want to earn at least R 70,000 per month, doing XYZ kind of things. Evaluate whether XYZ kind of things has a realistic shot at earning you what you want, and whether you will enjoy XYZ (or at least not hate every minute of it).
Create a broad plan. Figure out broadly how you will solve the most important challenges. Then simply take the most action you can everyday, in the direction of your goal.
If you hit roadblocks, sometimes you need to work harder, but more often you need to either adapt your current plan, or sometimes (HEAVEN FORBID YOU SORRY FOOL), abandom them.
Many plans don't work out. Hence feasibility checking in the beginning is crucial.
FRONT LOAD HEAVILY: I.E. If you plan to spend 3-5 years building a new business, spend 6 months thinking and planning it, evaluating feasibility, comming up with superior creative ideas BEFORE you even START.
Still, as much as planning is important, its important to stay flexible and rapidly adapt your plan in the face of contrary evidence. No plan ever works out exactly to every last detail. Most financial projections are usually way off. Yet making plans, and continually adapting them has the highest statistical chance for success. If you have NO plan, you need better be the superman of improvisation.
CORE SUCCESS SECRET: Everyday do whatever things you can to move you in the direction that you want to go. Even if you have no clue of the total plan, or how long it will take, or even have an exact goal - keep moving in the general direction of where you want to be.
Perhaps you can set a floor: I want to earn at least R 70,000 per month, doing XYZ kind of things. Evaluate whether XYZ kind of things has a realistic shot at earning you what you want, and whether you will enjoy XYZ (or at least not hate every minute of it).
Create a broad plan. Figure out broadly how you will solve the most important challenges. Then simply take the most action you can everyday, in the direction of your goal.
If you hit roadblocks, sometimes you need to work harder, but more often you need to either adapt your current plan, or sometimes (HEAVEN FORBID YOU SORRY FOOL), abandom them.
Many plans don't work out. Hence feasibility checking in the beginning is crucial.
FRONT LOAD HEAVILY: I.E. If you plan to spend 3-5 years building a new business, spend 6 months thinking and planning it, evaluating feasibility, comming up with superior creative ideas BEFORE you even START.
Still, as much as planning is important, its important to stay flexible and rapidly adapt your plan in the face of contrary evidence. No plan ever works out exactly to every last detail. Most financial projections are usually way off. Yet making plans, and continually adapting them has the highest statistical chance for success. If you have NO plan, you need better be the superman of improvisation.
CORE SUCCESS SECRET: Everyday do whatever things you can to move you in the direction that you want to go. Even if you have no clue of the total plan, or how long it will take, or even have an exact goal - keep moving in the general direction of where you want to be.
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