The 7 Deadly Sins Of Goal Setting
Good news is that scientists now confirm what we already know – our happiness, career, relationships, health and self-confidence can be easily improved by using Goal Setting.
Bad news is that 96% of people still fail to achieve their goals.
There 7 main problems that come up again and again, keeping people from living the life they want and sabotaging their chances of success.
So what about you? Do you commit one of these seven deadly sins when setting your goals?
1. Sloth
This is a big one… Any goal loses its appeal the second it starts to look like a lot of work. For some reasons we are more motivated by avoiding hard work right now than we are by receiving amazing benefits in the future.
It doesn’t matter that we can eliminate credit card debt, send our kids to a good college or retire earlier just by adjusting our spending habits and investing in our developing new skills…
Who cares about the future?!…Right now it looks like hard work, and therefore, it must be avoided at all costs.
You know what amazes me, though? By avoiding some amount of work today we actually set ourselves up for the long, boring office job 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 20-40 years. Brrrr…..
Solution: Look around yourself. Do you like what you see? Do you want to live like that for the rest of your life? If no, then START DOING SOMETHING! Take a first little step that you weren’t planning on taking this morning. Set a goal and act on it! Change happens when we stop repeating taking the same actions and start taking different ones.
2. Impatience
We all have this sinful dream – getting everything we want today! Now! This moment! Or better yet yesterday! In our age of instant gratification if we don’t see immediate results of our actions, it can mean only one thing – whatever we are doing doesn’t work. So we lose interest and move on to the next ‘cool’ thing that promises even faster results.
The problem arises when we combine strong desire to achieve our goal with impatience. Instead of carefully planning, we take massive amount of absolutely useless action.
Instead of analyzing and avoiding our potential roadblocks to success, we smash right into them at a full speed and pick up the pieces later.
Instead of doing it right the first time we screw things up, hoping to adjust them later.
As a result what was supposed to be an enjoyable steady road to success, turns into a series of rather painful failures and bitter disappointments.
Solution: Plan your actions ahead and don’t expect instant results, because a lot of times you can give up on your goal just a second before achieving it.
3. Greed.
Greed usually comes from another deadly sin – impatience. Because we hate to wait for anything, we prefer to pursue several goals at the same time. Multitasking has really hit it off with goal setting.
It is a pity that no one has come up with idea to offer two goals for the effort of one. Appealing isn’t it? I would be sold!
Unfortunately, most things that sound too good to be true – are too good to be true. Sorry…
Behavioral and psychological research confirms that pursuing multiple goals is actually counter productive. In fact, setting more than two goals at the same time significantly decreases our chances to accomplish any of them. Why? Because it takes us three times longer to achieve them.
Solution: Write all of your goals down on a piece of paper. Then look at them and pick one that is most important for you. Make commitment with yourself to stick to that one goal until you achieve it! Other goals can wait!
4. Indifference.
Indifference is more widely known as lack of motivation. Or put even more simply, people can’t achieve their goals, because they don’t want to achieve them.
They like to think that they do, but their comfort zone is much stronger than their motivation. A temporary boosts of motivation don’t even last long enough to get people take their butt off the couch, turn off TV and actually do something.
Solution: If you feel that you lack of desire to pursue your goal there are two easy ways to solve this problem:
a) Find a different goal that is more inspiring to you
b) Find someone who will push you way out of their comfort zone, and finally gets you going.
5. Procrastination.
A sin we are all guilty with.
It is similar to sloth, apart from one significant difference.
Lazy people don’t want to do anything.
People who procrastinate don’t want to do particular task, but they demonstrate miracles of productivity when it comes to sharpening pencils, making coffee, organizing the desk, and checking emails.
Solution: Find something that you dislike doing even more than a task in hand and procrastinate against it.
6. Negativity.
Negativity is a tricky sin, because it reinforces itself.
One negative thought triggers the next one…. than the next one… than the next one…and two hours later a person is still chewing and re-chewing all the problems and difficulties that he have had in the past or might encounter in the future.
We all know that what we think of expands. If you choose to think about the problem, the problem will only get bigger and nastier.
If you think that you can’t achieve your goals, you will do everything in your power to sabotage your own success.
Solution: Become aware of your negative self-talk. Let’s face it, it is unrealistic to believe that we can eliminate negative thought once and for all. What we can do is train our mind to always have positive attitude. Whenever negative thoughts start to creep up, make a conscious effort to distract yourself with something positive. (listen to your favorite song, watch a funny or an inspirational video, tell a joke to your co-worker)
7. Fear.
Setting and getting a goal… What can be so scary about that? As it turns out a whole bunch of things! What if you fail? What if you succeed? What if you succeed and then fail? What if you set your goal too high? What if you set it too low? What if you don’t do it right?
I’m not going to lie to you. Your fear is well-grounded, because there is only one possibility to avoid failure – never try.
Let’s say you set a goal and you fail. You wanted to lose 20 pounds, and you have only lost 10! Bummer! But let’s look at it from a different angle. How many pounds would you lose, if you haven’t set a weight loss goal in a first time?
There is nothing terrible about failure. It’s just a chance to correct mistakes and gain valuable experience before trying again.
Solution: The best way to conquer any fear is to do the thing you fear. Set a goal. Start with a small, short-term one. That’s a great way to gradually build self-confidence and prove to yourself that achieving your goals actually feels good, not scary.:)
Good news is that scientists now confirm what we already know – our happiness, career, relationships, health and self-confidence can be easily improved by using Goal Setting.
Bad news is that 96% of people still fail to achieve their goals.
There 7 main problems that come up again and again, keeping people from living the life they want and sabotaging their chances of success.
So what about you? Do you commit one of these seven deadly sins when setting your goals?
1. Sloth
This is a big one… Any goal loses its appeal the second it starts to look like a lot of work. For some reasons we are more motivated by avoiding hard work right now than we are by receiving amazing benefits in the future.
