How To Stop Giving Up On Your Goals

 I've got some advice for you in this blog that you could find incredibly helpful.

A few days ago I sent out a survey to my email list and several social media platforms (thanks if you filled it out). The feedback has been very informative and has highlighted the primary problem people face as: "I Wasn't Really Committed Enough".

The second most popular excuse / problem was "Life Got In The Way".

That might surprise you, but not much surprises me these days.

The good thing this exposes - is that the cause of the problem is YOU - and that's great because "Life" is a much bigger thing and isn't really within our control. But you are in control of you (and no one and nothing else!) and if YOU are the problem, you are also the solution!!

When I was struggling to get in control of my body’s response to the stress and anxiety of the life I was living, I didn’t realize I had the wrong goal stuck in my head. 

I couldn’t see the forest for all the trees. Taking advice from others that conflicted with my learned beliefs (programming) was so uncomfortable that I rejected a lot of it at the time, simply because it didn’t make sense to me or fit “my story”. 

I saw a lot of different therapists, social workers, coaches and counsellors. And I immersed myself into their world of self improvement and self development.

I have to say I was never really comfortable taking orders off others or feeling obligated to take their advice and do what they told me.

They meant well, but, as I’ve said to many of the clients and patients I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years, no one is in a position to understand you or your life better than you.

It’s like we are the experts on ourselves, but we aren’t always our own best friends! We can be really mean to ourselves and even sabotage our own progress out of fear of success.

I know that sounds odd and more than a tad counter intuitive, but just because we think something consciously, it doesn’t guarantee that we believe it deep down.

If you don’t hold a deep belief that is 100% congruent with your conscious intentions, you are highly unlikely to get anywhere you think you want to get to.

So how could someone else consciously command you to do anything successfully without knowing you as deeply or as  intimately as you know yourself?

Simply put, they can’t!

The tricky thing is, unless you’ve invested some time exploring your own deep desires and beliefs, you aren’t very likely to overcome your own unconscious defences, just by telling yourself to do something uncomfortable.

And let’s face it, all changes are a bit uncomfortable, at least in the beginning stages. And that’s when people most often give up!

I had a really hard time finding someone that understood the specific challenges I faced, well enough to help me overcome them.

But over time, and thanks to exploring so many different avenues of help, I managed to uncover a great deal of my deep unconscious content and made some significant improvement... all by myself!

I found it incredibly useful to dissect and direct myself - even recording myself meditations and motivational audios that I repeatedly immersed myself into. 

I didn’t have to do what I was told as long as I was discovering what I really needed to do. But it was not easy, and I often had to defy my own impulses - especially when I felt like throwing in the towel and giving up. 

FUN FACT!

There are a lot of defences built into our psychology that can convince us to give up trying, like:

• Denial of a desire, so you don’t even realize you want to try to satisfy it.
• Rationalizing how impossible it is to even try, and then not trying.
• Conforming with the general consensus of others so you don’t face disapproval.
• Projecting blame onto external enemies for “making you” give up.

What’s holding you back from going for your goal? Procrastination? Perfectionism? Imposter syndrome?

You wouldn’t trick yourself into giving up by justifying why you shouldn’t start, changing your mind about beginning, or holding your partner to blame for you not being able to get going, would you?

You might be surprised how many people fall for bad advice they get from their own Negative Nelly! Please don’t let that keep happening to you.

Thankfully my painfully self reflective journey culminated in my becoming a Registered Psychotherapist and a High Performance Mind Coach (in addition to Meditation Teacher, Brainwave Biofeedback Trainer and Master NLP Practitioner). I discovered that my problem was ultimately my programming.

We are all programmed by parents and teachers, our culture, the society we live in, and the messages our media broadcasts to us like magic spells that go under the radar and subliminally sneak into our minds.

We can’t defend ourselves from messages we aren’t consciously aware that we are absorbing through repeated exposure, because our neurology is so vulnerable to being hijacked and brainwashed.

The good news is, by repeatedly exposing ourselves to positive messages of our own making, we can very easily weed out ineffective and discouraging beliefs that don’t serve us well, and “brainwash” ourselves into behaving better.

But it will take some repetition to make a dent in the compliance programming that we’ve all been subjected to (especially lately!)

If you are truly going to get a goal clearly in mind for yourself and you’ve decided it’s time to make real progress, I’ve got some great tools to help you do just that, and a lot more painfully earned wisdom to share with you.

Your mission (should you choose to accept it):

 1. Take some time to ponder this week, what you really (really) want, and more importantly : why? 

2. Then explore what the unpleasant consequences would be for failing to achieve it. It won’t be fun to think about, but it could be incredibly helpful in helping you overcome your obstacles.

3. Weigh the benefits of achieving your goal against the pains of failing. It will help you get really clear about what you should or shouldn’t do.

Above all - please remember that if you’ve got a goal in mind for yourself for this year, or you need to find one to focus on, I’m here to help you!