The one thing most people forget to consider in goal setting and New Year resolutions

Are YOU ready?

The reason we don’t achieve goals is often because they aren’t important enough for us to commit to them, or because we have some pattern of behaviour that prevents us from achieving them.

So, before you ‘fall off the wagon’ with your New Year goals I thought I’d share some of the areas you may want to explore before you fall prey to some of your unconscious patterns.

Your brain is fundamentally lazy and will follow the path of least resistance and our unconscious patterns are so ingrained that they work on autopilot. We (our brain) don’t even have to think about them. However, they are usually triggered by an event or situation. Think about your morning routine you don’t really think too much about what you’re doing because your pattern (routine) is fully embodied and you are pretty much operating on autopilot.

This is just one example and there will be many more throughout your day, so I put together some questions to hopefully prevent you from sabotaging your future achievements.

Spotting potential obstacles – 5 questions to accelerate your success 

1) What is your perceptions of your goal? Do you think this will be easy of hard? Is it going to be fun? On a scale of 1 – 10 how much do you want it where 10 is high and one is low.

If you consider your goal difficult to achieve break it down so it appears more manageable. How can you make it more playful?

2) What excuse are you making about getting started, or staying on track? Some excuses might be:

• I’m not quite ready yet, I need x, y or z in place before I can make a start.
• I haven’t found the time to fit this in/make it happen.
• Someone else hasn’t given you what you need yet.

If you find you are making excuses the chances are it’s not important enough for you, or you’ve hit another obstacle. In which case read on…

3) What sabotage patterns are you running? Here are just a few examples:

• Keeping busy so you don’t have time.
• Agreeing to do things for others without considering the impact to your own commitments.
• Relying on others to make things happen for you.
• Following your ‘old’ routines/patterns…

 What is triggering this behaviour? Pay attention to what, where, when this is triggered. Is it a particular thought you have that is conflicting with where you want to get to (your goal) or how you feel at a particular moment in time, or when you are in a certain place or with a particular group of people.

Once you’ve identified the trigger, what can you do to avoid these situations or think differently about them?

It may take you some time to identify the trigger, particularly if it’s one of your unconscious patterns, and I’d encourage you to stick with it. The more aware you become of what you’re doing automatically the more you are likely to change.

4) What changes do you need to make either in your self, or your environment in order to ensure you achieve your goal in the long term? (See your answers to the questions above).

5) What support do you need to achieve your goal? We all need encouragement and support to keep going, who can you ask for support to ensure you stay accountable? Who may be able to join you? How can you make it more fun?

When we set goals, or intentions, or New Year resolutions we are aiming for a future that we don’t yet have and there will always be an internal battle between your present self and your future self.

Staying ‘on track’ requires self-discipline, a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly. It’s easy to forget what you are aiming for when your present self is here and now, which is why identifying your own self-imposed obstacles can make a difference.

"The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them."

Jim Rohn