These Actions Will Murder Your Personal Goal Setting

Your personal goal setting is very important.

In this post I will be talking about some actions that can totally ruin your goal setting.

The human species is in general lazy.

Most people, including myself, are interested in achieving the best results with the least amount of effort.

That is also a rather smart approach (I said we were lazy, not dumb.)

The reason for us to start and actually complete a certain type of action is based either on the avoidance of pain or the pursuit of pleasure.

Studies have shown that the avoidance of pain is the strongest motivation of the two factors.

So when it comes to actions, we are kind of simple creatures.

For instance, let`s say that my girlfriend told me to vacuum-clean our apartment. I would probably not do it, at least not right away. Two things could happen:
1. She would continue to ask me to do it (nagging me, but I could tolerate that)
2. She would perhaps be so fed up by nagging at me, that she would just do it herself (yes, I would indeed be able to handle that consequence as well)

So If I didn’t see the pleasure in having a vacuum-cleaned apartment, and I could stand the pain (consequences) if I didn`t perform the action, the action would not be performed.

If we modify the example above; it is Friday afternoon and my girlfriend calls me and tells me that her mother and her is on their way to our apartment, and they are 30 minutes away.
Well only one thing would happen:
– I would immediately stop the activity I was doing and perhaps be stunned in 10 seconds, while my mental modus transformed from lazy to “I-don`t-want-my-mother-in-law-to-see-me-as-the-lazy-person-I-really-am”, then I would vacuum-clean the apartment in no time.

In the last scenario the avoidance of pain is so strong, that I will rather perform the task than experience the consequences.

Our mind and behavior is controlled by feelings, not logic. Have you ever said something constructive and really brilliant while losing your temper and having a heated discussion with someone close? I didn`t think so. Welcome to the club.

Why do many people spend more money than they usually do when they are not feeling good about themselves? Because they have an illusion that they will feel better if they buy another product that they don`t really need. Will they feel better? Yes, but only for a short period of time. Then they repeat the process.

Why do successful business people say that you should never take an important decision when feelings are involved? Because your feelings cloud your judgment.

You may now say: OK, Tor, I got the point. So what does this have to do with people failing to reach their goals?

I am coming to that.

Brian Tracy says that the key to success is to define what you want, then find out what you need to sacrifice in order to achieve it, and last, but not least, find out if you are willing to do the sacrifice in order to get what you want.

Person A and person B are both track and field runners. They have the same weight, height and physical conditioning. Both have the same knowledge, skill set, training plan, and even the same coach. They have the same goal: in 30 days to run a certain distance under a specific time.

Person A achieves the goal and person B doesn`t.
Why doesn`t person B achieve his goal, when he had the same chance to reach the goal as person A?

The simple answer is, person B wasn`t willing to perform the necessary actions in order to reach the goal. If he had just followed the plan as person B did, he would have reached the goal as well.

So the important question is: why didn`t person B want to perform the necessary actions to achieve the goal?

His true reason could be one or several of the answers below:
– He had not participated in the goal setting process, and therefore had no ownership to the goal
– He didn`t think it was a realistic goal
– He didn`t agree with the training plan
– He didn`t think that he had the right skill set and physical conditioning in order to reach it
– He didn`t have a strong motivation (the consequences of not reaching the goal or reaching the goal, didn`t trigger strong enough emotions for him to decide and keep on doing it until he reached the goal).

Do you know any additional actions that will sabotage people from reaching their goal?

Comment blow.