Setting Goals is Easy - Achieving them is not.

 

Setting goals that work, at work or in any other part of your life, can be a difficult affair.

 

Coaches, managers and your best friend will tell people like you to "dream big and set great goals". We are always encouraging you to create a vision of what you want to achieve.

 

So you do that, then you are surprised and disappointed when things do not turn out just as they were in your vision.

 

Here are just five reasons why you may be having great difficulty achieving those goals and plans.

1. Not your Vision: Your vision was not what you really wanted – you created it to meet the needs of others, not yourself.
2. Your vision was not clear enough. You did not see, hear, feel, taste and smell the reality that would exist when you had achieved your dream.
3. Focussing on the negative. For some reason humans are programmed to focus on negative things. We swear we will stop being overweight, eat less/lose weight rather than that we will love the food we eat and gain the body size we desire. At work this can result in our constantly focusing on putting out minor fires and totally missing the great things that are happening.
4. Fear Factor. It is hard to break out of your comfort zone. and if we are trying to do something new we tend to focus on the fear we feel of doing different things, and ignore the fantastic potential outcomes of taking that action.
5. Break-Down. Finally and most important of all,  ambitious people are good at taking their visions and setting long, medium and short-term goals and action points. What they are not so good at is applying their skills to visualising successful outcomes for those mid and short term goals. In other words they do not programme their brains.

Creating a good visualisation of a successful day, programme, plan, project or action can add massively to your success. Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University in his book 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lotadvises exactly that.