Making Our Resolutions a Reality: The Magic of Goal-Clarity
It’s December 31st and you’re enjoying a New Year’s Eve dinner with friends. It’s calm now; the zaniness is still a few hours away.
The plates are just being cleared when one of your table mates asks the inevitable question:
“So, what are your new year’s resolutions?”
Thus begins the pointless drone of hope against hope.
- “I’m going to start a diet the day after tomorrow.”
- “I’m going to stop procrastinating.”
- “I’m going to become a better person.”
Puh-lease. Stop the insanity. Those things are NOT going to happen! At least not by way of resolutions based on nothing more than the proverbial wing-and-a-prayer.
Forgive my cynicism, but it’s well-founded. Research suggests that a whopping 92% of new year’s resolutions fail. (statisticbrain.com)
But why? What’s behind this spectacular failure rate?
The problem is that new year’s resolutions (or any other type of impulsive goal) lack one critical success component: goal clarity.
The Tyranny of the Present
If you are setting a goal, we can presume that the objective represents a departure from the current state.
- I want to lose weight – I don’t like the look of the “spare tire” around my waste.
- I want to increase my sales pace by 50% – I’m tired of being in the middle of the pack each year.
- I want to lay off the caffeine – my Starbucks addiction is costing me a fortune.
If I’m moving to something, I must first be moving from something.
Here’s the problem: the “to” is an abstract, but the “from” is concrete.
My current state is a known reality, and therefore it is normal. By extension, my future state is an unknown, and therefore it is abnormal.
Even though the current state is less-than-desirable, it’s what we know and, to some degree, comfortable. The comfort of the present trumps the unknown of the future.
Tracking?
So here’s the question. How can I make the mysterious future more knowable, more achievable?
The Magic of Goal Clarity
The trick is to make the future a reality in your mind.
The brain has a difficult time distinguishing between reality and synthetic reality. That explains why hypnosis and brainwashing really work. You can program a new normal into your mind.
And you can do this with goal clarity.
The idea is to set a goal and simply sit with it for a while. Too often we set a goal and immediately blast out to tackle the first steps. We quickly find ourselves in unfamiliar territory and retreat back to the known – the current state.
By setting a goal and just sitting with it allows the necessary time it takes for the goal to become normal.
Goal clarity is about making your objective so natural in your mind that your actions follow suit. You accomplish the goal not because of what you do, but because of who you (now) are. Your future state is now normalized.
Try It
Set a goal. Pick something important, realistic and uncomfortable. Then set aside a period of time to just sit with your new goal. Look at it every day, but don’t take any action right away.
Over time you’ll discover that the goal becomes a reality in your mind. It becomes normal. It becomes comfortable. And then it becomes achievable.
Leverage goal clarity – and you can change your world.
