How To Set Goals And (almost guarantee you) Stick To Them

What are you looking at? No serious question. What are you looking at right now? Are you looking at each word? You searching around the page for buttons and pictures? Maybe you’re just skimming through to see when I start talking about how to set your goals.

Before we get into that, I want to talk about what goals really are and why so many people have problems sticking to them. Firstly, it’s because people are too afraid to fail. How can someone be afraid to fail, but still have problems sticking to goals? Wouldn’t you just give up after a while?

How Do You See It?

The thing is in life, we’re always looking for improvements to our situation. We always wonder if our lives can get better. The problem is that by nature, we don’t focus. I mean that in every sense of the word. Humans are structured around visual perception. Meaning that we predominantly perceive through our eyes. Because of this, our eyes are constantly moving to get the most important information in any given environment. If it’s not directly in your sight, chances are very high that you don’t see it.

What this means is that we have to focus on something to see it. This is when you use what’s called your Reticular Activation System or RAS for short. How this essentially works is that your brain filters out all the non-essential information while picking up on the important stuff. It’s why it’s so important to know what you are looking for in your goals, otherwise, the likelihood that you’ll reach what you want is an absolute zero. Your brain won’t know what to filter out and what to sense as a tool to get you closer to your goals.

Pay Attention And Hit The Mark

So now we know that the first step into reaching a goal is to actually create it in your mind. After that, it’s important to visualize it or “see,” it. Essentially, you are creating it in your mind then, looking at it. The next step is to focus on it and aim for it.

You know, historically that’s been the hardest part for all of humanity. How do we know this? Well, you know what sin is right? Like the actual origin for that word means “to miss the mark.” It’s an old archery term, that worked to describe what happens when you don’t hit the target.

Okay so how we know what a goal is and what it means to not hit it, so how do you go about hitting the target and continuing to hit the target into the future?

Heaven And Hell

What does your perfect life look like? Have you ever thought of it? Most haven’t, which is the same reason why I talked earlier about people not reaching their goals. If you take all your goals for yourself and put them together, that would be your perfect life. That’s something to shoot for and honestly, as I was saying before, most people don’t even have that. Seriously, wouldn’t that have been nice if they taught us how to do that in school? Yeah, that woulda been great.

Now, here’s the other side that tons of people miss. Everyone thinks about how nice it would be if they reached all their goals and achieved the perfect life, but have you ever thought about the consequences of NOT taking any action toward your goals? Let’s think about this for a second…

Say your goal is to stop smoking. What would happen if 5 years down the road you didn’t stop? In fact, you continued along with pace in smoking and maybe even increased it. How would your health be affected? Your social life? Your bank account? Yeah, it’s tough to think about, but the consideration is that if you are going to have a vision, you increase the likelihood of you achieving it if you also have a counter vision of what you don’t want.

So in summary, when you’re looking to achieve something. First, consider exactly what it is that you want. Then focus on it. Think about what it would be like if you had it in five years and what it might take to get it. Also, remember to think about what would happen if you don’t take action to get it. How chaotic and disastrous your life might seem then as well. Lastly, write it down. Make it physical so it’s not something that lives occasionally in your mind when you think about it.

Jerry “hitting the mark” Washington

P.S. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but this method has been used throughout history in the psychology field to help people achieve their goals. Many of the methods that people are recommending today, are simply unproven theories that when tested, don’t really hold weight as reliable methods. They are simply things that people make up to try to sell to make them either seem knowledgeable or too make money, but most of the times both. I don’t have a course to sell here, just trying to help you make better decisions so we can all live a happier, more meaningful world…Talk soon!