Why Your Goals Setting Doesn’t Work?

Hi guys, its the beginning of the new year 2009, have you set your goals for the year yet? Have you reviewed your goals that you set last year? How many of them have you achieved?

Many of us have set goals for ourselves last year, but not many have achieved them! Why your goals setting doesn’t work?

If you are a long time reader of my blog, you would have remembered i have written articles on how to set a SMART goal, and why it is very important to link as many reasons for achieving the goals as possible. Because reasons are the fuels for you to persevere on the plans you set to achieve them.

Then why do so many people, after setting the SMART goals, and writing down all the reasons for them, still did not follow through their action plans? You know you need to take actions, you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it.. you feel frustrated, overwhelmed and even angry with yourself.. but still procrastinate.. why??

This have been happening to me many years … until I read the book “Awaken the Giant Within” by Anthony Robbins and it gave me the “Ah Haa” moment!

Anthony was explaining about a single driving force behind all human behavior that is controlling us now and will continue to do so for the rest of our life.

PAIN and PLEASURE!

Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure. - Anthony Robbins

This is huge! All these while we are teaching people to find the reasons why they wanted to achieve their goals… and most of the reasons listed are the desire to gain pleasure!

For example, you set a goal to own a Ferrari sport car. You picture yourself driving it, seeing all the vivid details of the design… the color, the steering wheel, the engine and all other details.. you are visualizing the pleasure of owning the car. You set other reasons like, the car giving you the status that people envied, it gives you the sense of achievement, it is a chick magnet, etc… all these are the pleasure of owning the car!

But avoiding pain is a greater force than the desire to gain pleasure! People always choose to avoid pain than to gain pleasure!

Therefore, even though you are linking a lot of pleasures to your goals, the pain of following through your plans, sacrificing your favorite soccer matches and tv shows, the pain of working extra few hours every night after coming back from office when you can simply rest on your sofa.. you are feeling more painful at this moment, and all the pleasures of the goals seems to become so distant… and it doesn’t hurt so much as to put the work off to perhaps next day?

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.

Therefore, when setting our goals, we need to add one more step. I call this step

The Pain and Pleasure of Continuous Actions!

After we have set our goals and come out with the action plans, we need to link pleasure to our actions, like rewarding ourselves for completing every action.. but more importantly, we need to link massive pain to non-action.. pain like humiliation or punishment if you fail to follow through an action plan.. example of humiliation can be publicly announcing your action plans and completion dates to your friends and loved ones, so that you will feel compel to action or face their disappointment.

When the pains of non-action are far greater than the pains of action, it will be much easier for you to start working on your plans and follow through.

It is equally important to write down your goals and the reasons for them, and read them everyday! This will keep you in focus of the pleasures of achieving the goals. Never keep your goals in your drawer!

Constantly reminds yourself of the reasons why you wanted to achieve the goals, and constantly reminds yourself the pains of not achieving them. With the help of both the pains and pleasures, it will definitely increases your rate of success!

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