Have you ever pondered why you chose previous goals? Modern psychology holds that there are three elements to any behavioral change: antecedents, an action or behavior itself, and the consequences of that action or behavior.Your behavior, in its simplest description, is a continuing chain of antecedents leading to behavior, leading to consequences. You’re driving along on the road, and you see a stop sign (an antecedent), so you stop (behavior), and as a consequence, you don’t get into an accident, you don’t get arrested for rolling through the stop sign, and you contribute in a small part to a smooth, functioning traffic plan.

Take the same situation and alter your behavior. You come to a stop sign, and rather than stopping, you roll through it. What are the consequences? Possibly, nothing. Maybe no one was around, so you save a couple seconds and continue on your way. Or, you get into a serious accident and die. Or, a policeman across the street sees you, stops you, gives you a ticket and you lose your license.

Identifiable Patterns

When you think back through everything major that you’ve accomplished in your life, from making the decision to go to college, to getting your first job, getting married, and then reading this article, you would find that everything you’ve done essentially follows the pattern of antecedent, behavior, and consequence.

Antecedents precede Behaviors which precede Consequences= A B C

When the consequences turn out to be good, your experience can be an antecedent for other people. For example, the date of the final exam is announced. So, you begin studying a week in advance, take the test and as a consequence, ace it. Your roommate sees what happened, and the next time he has a test, emulates your behavior and does well.

When books like The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, The Road Less Traveled, or What Color is Your Parachute? keep selling for more than a decade, chances are they’ll continue to sell far into the next decade if not longer–the A B C is well established. Meanwhile, if other books that could offer similar, if not superior, benefit do not reach critical mass, i.e., enough people are not talking about them, then the antecedent-behavior-consequences “chain” does not take effect and the book falls by the wayside.

So, now you know–virtually every goal you’ve ever set, and every one that you will set is based upon some antecedent.

What’s My Antecedent?

Traditionally, authors and goal-setting gurus have pontificated that you either proceeded in goal-setting behavior based on opportunities that you envisioned or pain that you wish to avoid. Opportunity and the fear of pain are the two fundamental antecedents to engaging in behavior that leads to goal achievement. To understand these more fully, however, you need to look at the nuances.

Intertwined Motivation

The notion of gain is multi-faceted. Meanwhile, the avoidance of pain can show up in so many different forms that it would take an entire book to elaborate on all of them. The two are often intertwined as well in ways you don’t even realize. For example, if one of your mental goals is to obtain a Ph.D., it might be for any one of the following reasons:

• To improve your mind.
• To be recognized as a expert.
• To enhance your employment opportunities.
• To get an increase in pay.
• To work with some of the top minds in the field.
• To gain a teaching position.
• To rise to prominence in your field.
• At the same time, however, a variety of “avoidance of pain” type goals may be part of the mix. These could include, for example:
• To avoid missing out on income opportunities.
• So that your spouse won’t be the only one in the family with a Ph.D.
• To not disappoint your parents who always wanted this for you and would be crushed if you didn’t get it.
• To gain respect because the only people in your field taken seriously have a doctorate.
• To proceed now because if you don’t, you are concerned that you never will.
• To feel adequate because you feel lacking without one.

Perhaps your motivation stems from your perception that everyone else expects you to get a Ph.D. Maybe you crave people having to call you “Doctor.” Certainly not last of the possible reasons, perhaps you want a Ph.D. simply because you know there is someone out there who is convinced that you can’t do it.

Choosing the Positive Reasons

For any goal that you set, in any arena, it’s to your extreme advantage to understand from a pain or avoidance of pain standpoint why you choose what you choose. I know a woman who decided to get a masters degree because her husband had one (Note: this example could have easily been about a man). She didn’t necessarily need it, as she was already doing quite well. Indeed, after she earned the degree, her annual salary didn’t change much.

Her husband didn’t regard her as any less intelligent than himself. In many respects, he thought her to be much more brilliant than himself. During the time she was studying for the degree, she was generally miserable. She was always tired, frequently doubted the course she had embarked upon, and grumpy to boot.

As it turned out, getting the degree didn’t resolve any of the concerns she was attempting to address. Among a variety of reasons, the most vivid was that she had never precisely identified the precise positive reasons for pursuing the goal.

All Too True

You’ve undoubtedly seen this scenario played out time and time again. Someone sets a goal and actually achieves it, but because he or she didn’t mentally identify the positive aspects of why they sought why they sought, the achievement seems hollow.

Hereafter, for whatever goals you choose to pursue, engage in the mental exercise of identifying the highly positive aspects of achieving it. That will help keep you on target and have a more enjoyable experience both along the way and when you’ve reached your goal.

Don’t Play Games with Your Mind

People often pursue goals which they mentally know at the outset they won’t attain and settle for a slightly higher outcome rather then the desirable outcome. Such advice has found its way into many books and articles on goal setting. The underlying premise is that if you reach for the stars, even if you miss them, you still may reach the moon.

There are so many problems with this approach, I don’t know where to begin. First, if you set a goal that is too challenging for yourself, you run a much greater risk of abandoning the goal because you instinctively realize that any energy or effort you expend will be futile.

What’s worse is that in your attempt to reach the stars, even if you end up beyond where you were before, it may be undesirable or less satisfactory than ending up where an attained goal would have placed you.

Reaching for the stars lacks specificity. Most people who have set such types of goals end up exactly where they are. One fellow speaker, for example, is perpetually overweight. He set a goal of losing so much weight by a certain time that seemed all but impossible. Sure enough, he didn’t meet his goal. In addition, he didn’t make any real or long-term progress.

Today, years later, he weighs exactly the same as when he made his reach-for-the-stars weight loss goal. Learn from your experiences, and, as you set new goals, factor in what you’ve learned. Don’t fall prey to the largely useless gesture of so over-reaching your grasp that the predictable outcome is no progress at all. In your pursuit of these appropriately set goals, you may find you have reached the stars.

Attending College in Your Car

One of the most brilliant ideas for attaining mental-related goals involves making great use of your drive time or commute time. If you drive to work, there are many things you can do to support mental goals you may have chosen. When it comes to material, you have five broad-based areas to choose from:

1. You can listen to books, lectures and plays by downloading and burning material on a CD, checking CD’s out from the library, or through a CD subscription.
2. You can listen to programs on a variety of other topics such as self-improvement, leadership, sales, and career advancement. Skillpath, the aforementioned Nightingale-Conant, and Dartnell are the leading producers in this category.
3. You can learn a foreign language on your iPod or iPhone using an application called BYKI.
4. You can keep up with the latest business books and articles summarized by such groups as Executrak and Audio Summaries.
5. You can, of course, listen to music–any music that relaxes you or puts in a desirable mental and emotional state.

In a little more than a year, you could achieve the equivalent of having audited five college courses, equivalent to an entire semester. The beauty of such an experience is that you get to pick what you want to hear, you make an otherwise meaningless commute meaningful, and there are no quizzes, term papers, or final exams.

Obviously, when the spirit suits you, you also have the option of driving in silence.

Use commute time to reflect on what you’d like to accomplish or how you’d like your day to go. Wean yourself off flicking on the radio the moment you step into the car, or listening to shock talkers who offer little to your life.

Using commute time to listen to educational material or reflect is only one of many opportunities to enhance your mental abilities. State your goals clearly and positively, then embark on your journey!