When was the last time you set your goal? Probably the closest was the previous year before this year. What was your goal setting?
Perhaps you want to start a business, earn more income, fall in love, or simply feel better about yourself. Whatever your goal, if it is important to you, there is a good chance something will eventually happen – you will fall short.
Now don’t get me wrong, if you know me, I am an optimistic person. You give me lemon; I’ll find my way to make lemonade.
It is not just a positive attitude that “I can do” or hard work or having talent. I knew many people from this group who found out they “can’t do,” including myself.
Attitude, hard work, and talent are vital and critical, but most of our big goals are not achieved because we set ourselves up to fail.
Defining goals can come to us as naturally as sleep. We are, in many ways, goal-desiring and goal-setting machines. But reaching them is the trouble.
Why is it so hard to accomplish what we set out to do? The answer is your brain. Generally, our brains function to keep us safe (emotionally, physically, and mentally), and it helps to run efficiently a list of the job (blinking eyes to thinking analytically). Our brain instinctively or automatically responds to making sure we are safe and efficient rather than learning from scratch new habits for every single thought, emotion, and action. It relies on familiar behaviours.
While we might consciously choose our goals, our thoughts often conflict with our hidden emotions and instincts. We can deliberately set our dreams, but our subconscious processing, habits, and old condition are working against us; thus, changes become difficult, if not possible.
Our brain has significantly evolved from ancient times to now. It’s no longer only helping to keep us safe and running efficiently, but it often struggles to keep up with the changes needed to meet our new priorities.
For transformation to be possible, we need to stop our brains from keeping us safe in our comfort zone. Stop the automated ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that keep us stuck. Learn to improve our thoughts by not changing our autopilot of thinking (which is hard) but by leaving it where it is and create a new whole new way of thinking (shifting the thought).
Shifting our thinking begins with “Recognizing” our negative disempowering thoughts, emotions, or past experiences that hinder us from reaching our goals. Be mindful and allow the moment to surface, experience it, and observe without judgment.
When we come to the awareness, learn to “Reverse” the unpleasant or unwanted thoughts or emotions into a positive one by labelling the emotions, being curious about how they arise, finding meaning towards the situation, and reversing the thoughts.
Once you can reverse the thoughts, “Reinforce” it by visualizing and emotionalizing the thoughts and feelings you want to have. Create a powerful mantra or words that you can use to interrupt this thought when it arises again.
Finally, we recreate the new way of thinking by “Rewire” the thinking, and the best way is to find as many possible ways as we can to celebrate the success of our rewire thoughts and emotions. A celebration is a great way to reinforce small changes and creates positive emotions and good feelings to wire the new habits into the brain. It will pave the way for big success.