Focus on why
At the beginning of a recent goal-setting seminar I was running, I asked the question….
“What do you find is your biggest obstacle, when it comes to achieving your goals?”
Somewhat unsurprisingly, around 70% of the attendees had trouble staying focused. Obviously ‘staying focused’ wasn’t exactly what they said, but variations of it….
“I seem to lose focus after a week, or so”
“After a couple of weeks it doesn’t seem so important to me”
“I just seem to get involved in other things and before I know it, I’ve gone completely off track”
So, what I thought I’d do this week is to help you to stay focused on your goals and complete your transformation!
The Power of WHY!
The biggest problem people suffer from, is dwindling motivation. When you first set yourself a goal, you’re fully motivated. You’ve decided to set a life changing goal and you’re rearing to get started!
Then ‘life’ hits! Your initial enthusiasm and focus carries you over for a few days, or maybe a week or two. Then slowly, your determination seems to slowly drop away.
Every day you become just a tiny bit less motivated. A little bit less focused. Then, before you know it, the thoughts of your life changing goal have slipped away into the ether without you even noticing.
So why is it you become so complacent, so quickly? Just a few weeks ago you were charged with excitement and ready to change everything? Well, the problem is simply that you didn’t have a big enough WHY!
Your reason for wanting to achieve your goal, is your why. And it’s usually the bit of the equation that gets forgotten about.
Let’s use an example of a typical New Year resolution: “I’m going to stop/give up smoking”
Well, apart from the initial problem of wanting something that is phrased as a negative, most people leave it at that. (there are very good reasons why you should always phrase your goal as a positive statement… but I don’t want to get off track here, so I’ll explain more in another post)
But, I used to use this negative terminology too. Because that’s how most people who wanted to stop smoking would phrase it.
It should really be phrased something like… “I will be a non-smoker”
Anyway, once you have your positively phrased goal, most people leave it at that. They then try, using will-power alone to accomplish their dream.
As I said before, the initial impetus of setting such a life-changing goal/resolution will keep you going for a short while, then it just seems to fizzle out, because you didn’t give that resolution a good enough why!
So, how do I do it?
So, when your setting yourself any goal, always ask yourself “why must I be successful at this?” and then spend as long as you need identifying every reason, good and bad; eg…
Good
- I will save a huge amount of money every month
- My health will improve
- I will be able to take my children to the park without getting out of breath
- My clothes will smell fresh, instead of like a dirty ashtray
- I will be stronger and healthier
- My sense of smell will increase
- My sense of taste will improve
- I will be able to engage in more activities without feeling tired all the time
- etc, etc, etc.
Bad
- If I don’t stop, there’s a greater risk of Cancer and heart disease
- I may never experience the pleasures of having Grandchildren, if I don’t stop
- If I don’t stop, I’ll never be able to afford that ‘?????????’ I want
- There’s a good chance i won’t have the energy to do the things I want latter in life
- My health will suffer
- etc. etc. etc.
Once you’ve got a nice list of reasons for wanting your goal, write them out in big letters a put it somewhere where you’ll see it every day;
- Put one on your fridge, or
- On your bedside table, or
- Maybe on the wall by the kettle, or
- As a desktop image on your computer, or
- Anywhere else as long as you look at it every day.
Then, every day when you look at your list, picture yourself as that new person, swim in the ocean of good feelings that being that person will give you. Imagine being that happy and content, supreme being that has achieved their life-changing goal!
Obviously, before you can ‘properly’ set your goal, you’ll need to know how to make it most effective. You can start be reading this post on how to set successful SMARTER goals.
So, that’s how you overcome the biggest problem for goal-setters 🙂 Focus on your WHY.
If you have any questions, either drop them in the comments, or send me an email 😉
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