This is a compilation of a 3-day series on “The Right Mindset to Smashing Your 2021 Goals.”
This is a follow-up post on the series. You can catch up on Day 1 here.
Before we dive in, take a few seconds to answer this question.
Who are you?
Don't think twice about this. Just note down the first answer that comes to your head.
In Day 1, we established that the major reason behind having those your goals repeated every year is Ambivalence. - Having opposite feelings/wants/desires.
The captain, your conscious mind - He's the one who sets the goals and gives orders and he makes up just 5% of the decision making.
The crew members which is your subconscious mind makes up the other 95% and they include; your thoughts, feelings, emotions, decisions, etc.
So if you must smash your goals, your conscious and subconscious must be in total alignment.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
You can't have a goal to start a business and still think it's a waste of time or it won't be successful.
You may begin, but as time goes on, you'll start getting weary and mentally fatigued which may eventually cause you to give up.
This is why you have so many unfinished projects. Beautiful goals in a new book each year.
Super hyped the first week, the second month, third month, - "Maybe this is not for me." September, "Maybe I should push this to next year."
You'll keep recycling goals and blame it on procrastination, lack of resources, inconsistency, fear, etc.
Like I mentioned in the previous post when setting goals, a lot of people focus on the "what" and forget the "who."
For you to achieve your goals, you have to first become that person capable of achieving it, before actually achieving it.
When you decide on a goal to achieve, your mind needs to actually see you achieve it, it needs to be able to conceive that you can achieve it. You need to be that person (mentally) who can achieve those goals before actually being that person physically.
That's why I started by asking, "Who are you?"
Because it is who you think you are that fuels your drive to achieve your goals.
Imagine you know you are Dangote's child. Then you find yourself in a slum, picking dirt to eat.
Would you accept it and say, "This is where I found myself?" "Maybe it's my fate?"🤷🏻♀️
I'm guessing NO🤷🏻♀️
You'll definitely pick yourself back up and reclaim your identity as Dangote's child.
That's how knowing your identity fuels your desire to pursue your goals.
When you discover your identity, who you truly are, who you think and believe that you are, you will fight everything that tries to give you a wrong identity.
Some of the responses people gave as to the hindrances to not achieving their previous goals were:
1. Procrastination
2. Inconsistency/Lack of Enthusiasm.
3. Lack of resources
All others fall under these categories. But these were the major ones. We'll deal with each individually now.
1. Procrastination
Procrastination seems to be the chief of them all because, everyone, at some point have experienced procrastination in one area or more of their lives.
Procrastination is quite synonymous with self-sabotage.
You know you have a goal in mind to achieve, but you decide to chill out on it first, and in chilling out, you eventually decide to push it to next year.
The consequences of self-sabotage are that you begin to take yourself less seriously.
And your mind falls into the mental loop of not trusting or believing in yourself anymore...which is very dangerous to achieving your goals.
People procrastinate because of the lack of congruence in their thoughts, actions and decisions.
Lack of congruence is simply not being in complete alignment with your thoughts, feelings and wants.
Most of the time, when I want to achieve something, I think about how it'll positively change my life and I cringe.
I am scared of the change it'll bring to my already stable life so I sort of resent it, while secretly wanting it at the same time.
When you have these 2 opposing thoughts, wants or feelings, you'll naturally find the mind drifting towards the negative.
The moment you decide to dwell on it and not focus on the little spark of positivity, you'll get immediately overwhelmed by the task at hand which would cause you to procrastinate "mentally" because you feel, perhaps, you're not ready.
Dealing with this is a lot of consistent effort which may require external effort from time to time, especially if you're the chronic procrastinator.
2. Inconsistency/Lack of Enthusiasm
You start becoming inconsistent when you begin to feel lackadaisical about your goals, that is, the initial excitement (gra gra) that you started the year with, begins to wane.
Why does this happen?
The result, which is the goal we hope to achieve starts with a thought.
T - F - A - R
The results you hope to achieve starts with a thought.
Your thoughts influence your feelings, your feelings spark your actions, and your actions bring about your desired result (goal). TFAR.
Now, look at the drawing above.
Do you realize that, after setting your goals for the year, month, week, etc, you're usually very excited?🤔
This is because the thought of achieving that goal is positive,
Hence the feeling is an outburst of positive energy, excitement, joy, you go around, telling everyone who cares to listen about your SMART goals😉
Oshey, smarty!😆
Now, as you move on, you realize the goal wasn't as smart as your head🤣 then a negative thought comes in, "Hey, Lokoja, you think you can build the next Facebook ehn, you haven't finished building yourself, it's business you want to build."🤦🏻♀️
Now, that's a negative thought and the moment you dwell on it, you emit negative energy and then you start feeling frustrated.
"Na wa o, which kind app be this one na, na so so bug bug I dey see every time. You sure say this thing make sense so?"
Then you stop spending more time on building the app, because once your mind remembers the app, you get mentally fatigued and decide instead, to try out something more mentally appeasing at the moment such as chatting or jumping on Twitter trends and laughing the frustration out...
After all, you no kill person na🤷🏻♀️
So your negative thought brought up the frustration which negatively impacted the work you'd originally put in and of course, leads to struggle in the end.
Then you eventually give up and say, "Maybe this thing self is not for me."
Next year, you're hyped and set the same goals again and...the cycle repeats itself, sadly.
To break off this mental jinx, you must understand that there'll be times when you won't seem to make any headway on your goals and choose to hold on to the little spark of positivity that blooms so you regain some positive energy and enthusiasm to push through.
3. Lack of Resources.
Another major hindrance people claimed to have towards achieving their goals was lack of resources.
What is money?
When you ask people, "Why are you not doing this?" The first thing they want to tell you is that they lack resources, no money.
But the truth is, even if you give that person the money he's looking for, there's a 90% chance that he'll blow it and not do anything meaningful with it.
Money is divided into 2 key parts: Financial and Non-financial resources
Financial Resources includes:
1. Cash - Physical cash
2. Credit - Credibility, having a "name"
3. Cashflow - from your biz.
Non-Financial Resources
1. Time
2. Knowledge - What you know.
3. People - Who you know
4. Courage - Courage is an underrated currency, many people don't even know about. Tap into it.
Time will fail me to explain all of these individually and how it relates to resources that you possess. But bear them in mind when next you're thinking of the resources available to you at your disposal.