Keeping Deterrents at Bay in Pursuit of Your Goals
When you set a new goal for yourself and make a commitment to start working to achieve it, by the second day or second week, you can count on something creeping up that will get in the way of your progress, if you let it. If that’s not enough, all manner of interruptions will pull you of course if you’re not steadfast in your pursuit. It’s important to use positive wording when devising your goals, use positive language when referring to them, and maintain a positive outlook so that doubt has nary a foothold.
The Human Predicament
No matter what goal you’re seeking, whether it’s something that will take you a day, a week, a month, or many years, along the way all kinds of reasons will begin to appear as to why you will not be successful, why you shouldn’t proceed, why the goal is not worthy and why it’s hopeless to continue.
These thoughts will arise because you are a human being and it’s natural, not because you’re deviant or negative or don’t truly want to achieve the goal.
Armed with the knowledge that negative thoughts and negative perceptions will creep up, you’re better prepared to handle them. Doubt, you see, is like a small break in a dam. It might start as a crack or small hole, but slowly gets larger, and then if you’re not careful, opens up into a major break. Before you know it, all the water rushes through and your quest for a desired outcome is flooded.
Doubt is a cousin to fear. Both conspire to make you believe that you are not capable of achieving your goal.
Why, you ask, do you have to experience these feelings at all? Without getting into a lot of detail, the human organism essentially thrives on homeostasis — achieving a comfortable balance in life.
Working for You Whether You Want it Or Not
Undoubtedly you’ve heard that the mind contains both conscious and subconscious realms. The subconscious realm ingests information about your life and concludes that however things are is how they ought to be.
- If you smoke, your subconscious is convinced that you want to continue to smoke.
- If you weigh a certain amount, it concludes that you wish to weigh that amount.
- If you’re fearful of going out in public, it concludes that you wish to stay away from public places.
When you have a goal to improve yourself or better your life, even though on a conscious level you may truly desire to move, your subconscious concludes that yes, despite what he’s currently saying, he wants to stay right here. Hence, you tend to continue to think how you’ve been thinking, continue to act how you’ve been acting, and continue to be how you’ve been.
So, doing what you’ve always done will get you where it’s always gotten you.
Your Subconscious in High Gear
Consider the situation where a spouse has suffered long-term physical abuse. Ninety percent of battered spouses are women, so let’s focus on the situation where a women is the battered spouse.
She wants to leave the relationship and has made plans to do so several times. She knows that it’s never going to improve. Worse, the physical abuse has been escalating. Sometimes she doesn’t know how she can stand it, but after a couple days of calm, it doesn’t seem so bad after all.
I’ve Had Enough, or Have I?
One night she gets beaten up badly and decides that this is it. There’s no way she’s going to stay in this relationship. She stays at a friend’s house or with her mother –anywhere but with her physically abusive spouse.
The friend, mother, or advisor has long implored her to get out of the relationship. Many times it seemed as if she was going to, but then, to her own amazement, she found herself continuing on. What in Hades is going on here? How could she possibly continue on when she knows on every level that the relationship is doomed?
As you guessed, the answer as to why she can’t move on is because on some level her subconscious has concluded that this situation is what she wants. It sounds almost maddening, doesn’t it?
Fear of the Unknown
To her subconscious, leaving the relationship represents fear. Her subconscious has concluded that her ability to leave, to venture off on her own, and to develop a new relationship, are all doubtful events. However bad it is here, at least there are knowns. I mean, the guy does settle down, sometimes for weeks at a time. As potentially nonsensical as it may seem, the fear of the unknown is much greater than the fear of staying in the relationship.
Your Subconscious is Busy Planting
As you guessed, the same phenomena occurs all the time — not just in an abusive partner situation. Everyone’s subconscious, including yours, in every situation, automatically concludes that the status quo should continue.
It may be helpful to think of it this way: Your subconscious plants fears and doubts when you select a goal that represents forward movement. The subconscious fears change, and hence, will do its darnedest to keep you right where you are.
Into Its Clutches
In acknowledgment of the relentlessness of your subconscious, the need to form positively worded goals becomes paramount.
If you choose to avoid something, as in the goal, “I seek to quit smoking permanently by the end of this month,” the subconscious surveys the situation, sees that smoking is still part of the goal (even if it’s to quit smoking) and summarily concludes that what you actually want to do is continue smoking!
When there’s one week to go before the end of the month, and for three weeks you’ve been doing marvelously, guess what? Your subconscious isn’t sure if you mean business, so to give you another chance to keep smoking it “decides” to test your mettle. It starts installing tripwires all around your life. If you walk into a room and people are smoking, all of a sudden you think to yourself how good it would be to take a quick drag.
With three or four days to go, the subconscious shifts into high gear. If you’re flipping through the pages of a magazine and you see a circle, you might think of Lucky Strikes, or if you see a cowboy, you might think of the Marlboro Man, even though the actual cigarette ads are now banned.
Your subconscious knows how to get to you in ways that are most effective. It will wait and wait and wait and then spring its trap, catching you at a point of vulnerability and launching its campaign for maximum impact.
So, Why Bother?
If even half of the above description is true (actually all of it is true), by now you may be wondering why you should even bother to ever set a goal. “Aren’t the cards stacked against me?”
The Answer You’ve Been Waiting For
The antidote, the magic elixir, the cure, the winning formula for overcoming homeostasis, for vanquishing the subconscious’ quest to maintain the status quo, is here. Are you ready for this?
It’s to steep yourself in the positive.
- positive thoughts,
- positive deeds,
- positive outlook,
- positive words,
- positive everything.
