How To Achieve Goals Through Visualization

September 29th, 2009

You have to set meaningful goals. Many people set goals and then think to themselves 2 weeks later…

“Why did I give up on that?”

If this happens to you, you need to be asking yourself some really important questions such as:

• Are they really my goals? – If they are goals placed on you by others such as your boss or family or society in general you are less likely to go after them because the benefit is not immediately obvious to you. You may even feel that someone else is using you as a means to an end for their purpose. Try setting goals that are based on you and how you can help yourself to help others. That is the root of all success after all.
• Do they inspire me and make me grow? – Do your goals really make you come alive when you think about them? Is your gut instinct that they are the right path that you should be following? If not then you are setting goals that are too small. You need to set huge goals that scare you a little. Setting tiny goals is a great way of getting some of your power back after you have failed in other attempts but you need to be setting long-term huge goals. What do you really want? What would you do if nothing was impossible?
• Would they change me as a person? – Goals can sometimes be meaningless even if now they seem useful. Don’t less this dishearten you though. You just have to loo at things from another perspective. A great exercise is to think of yourself at your own funeral and what the people would say about you. Envision this in great detail and it can be a huge motivator. What would your family members say? What would your friends say? Now come back to the present moment. What would you want them to say? You are writing your own life story here and now. What contribution are you making in the world? What would you like to be remembered by and by on your Epitaph on your grave? Morbid but hugely motivating.

Motivation In The Moment

You have between your ears the most fantastic piece of equipment in the known universe. Your Mind. It is often said that your brain cannot tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine and something that is actual reality. Your subconscious mind will set you on path towards your goals (even if you do not know how you will get there) if you give it a clear picture of what you want. When you are in that moment where you make a decision about something related to your goal, bring up this picture of exactly how you want to look. In fact, think of it regularly. Picture it in great moving detail with all senses and emotions involved. Live the moment as if it is actually true. Before you know it, you have an incongruency.

You have this mental picture of this wonderful moment where you have fulfilled your goal and your current lifestyle. You will find that your actions naturally start to follow to move towards the envisioned final state. For example, you may find that coffee repulses you now if you envision your future drinking water. As long as you keep that final state clearly envisioned you will achieve it. Make it a practice to clearly envision this final state for just 5 minutes a day, at any time of day. Make sure that you are relaxed.

Small Steps – “A jug fills drop by drop” – Buddha

If you find yourself looking up at a huge goal and it looks impossible to scale and mountain like then you need to chunk it down into smaller steps. Take a small action towards a huge goal everyday and it is unbelievable how much ground you have covered when you look back and realise that you have gone so far with so little apparent effort. This is how all rich people get rich. Hardly any make a million in a day, these are just the ones that you hear about because it is good news.

Effortless Goals

Make your goals effortless so they do not even feel like they are goals. This is a principle I picked up from the Tao Te Ching (you can read about my experiment here). They concentrate on the principle of non-action or wu-wei. This is a state you enter where all actions flow and it is as if nothing is ever done but nothing gets left undone. A crazy paradox. Paraphrasing Eckhart Tolle, he puts it best when he said it is like a bird thinking “Should I hop to that next branch, no I had better not risk it”. Animals can teach you this state. They are constantly in the moment and flexible to its demands. Be present and you too can come into this state.

Simplicity and Elimination

In your life you have to eliminate everything that is blocking you from your goals. This involves people/things who waste your time repeatedly and unnecessarily, things that are not in your envisioned reality and things that you know are holding you back. This is part of what will happen naturally as part of the envisioning process but there is no harm in naturally doing it. Start eliminating things where you live that keep you stuck to your old goals. You might want to throw out all the unhealthy food and replace it with new food. This will feel uncomfortable at first but can speed up the natural process.

Set Goals But Have Flexibility In Your Plans

Your goal should be clearly envisioned and you know what exact state you want to achieve. You must set out a plan to get to that state but that plan is likely to change several times within a short space of time. This is necessary to bow to demands from external sources and just because flexibility is the way there. Think of it like this. Some people set goals and after years still do not achieve them. Even though they put in the hours consistently. Why is this? It can only be due to a poor approach. We do not know all the information at the start and have to correct our course along the way.