Goal setting for personal improvement is a complete waste of time

You might as well suck canal water unless you are prepared to think differently and check out what your new future will look like with your goals in place ahead of time. Start with a sharp mental vision in perfect detail, of what your life looks like after you have changed (even though you haven’t yet).

It needs to be a ‘picture’, more vivid than current reality that you ‘call up’ at will. A picture, you repeatedly recall to re-train your subconscious toward your prevailing goals.

You have decided current reality isn’t where you want to be, so you need to visualise what life will look like after you change. Don’t try to force change on a conscious level; will-power rarely succeeds with such things before the ‘old you’ reappears. Usually more entrenched than before. Refer to your abandoned New Year’s resolutions to check that possibility!

Before you start writing down the goals you hope will change your life, take two steps back. What got you here will not get you where you want to be. Whether you are after a more fulfilling job, an extra qualification, improved personal fitness and better health you need to replace your current thinking with new thinking. Constantly visualising the future ‘new you’, with the changes ‘already graphically in place’, means you are sub-consciously creating and imprinting your positive renewal and growth.

Importantly, have a conversation with your self-talk. Yes, we all talk to ourselves, thousands of times a day. Often ‘that noise’ can be strewn with negative ‘put downs’, many directed inwardly! Things like, ‘What an idiot, I am always doing that!‘ or ‘I could never do that in a million years! or ‘I have no chance; I’m not bright enough.’

Take close notice of your self-talk and change the unhelpful stuff. Instead of the self-deprecating junk  you might want to say to yourself, ’Stop! That’s not like me, I am a very positive person, my self-talk is always uplifting’, ‘I get past blocks, setbacks and disappointments with ease’ or ‘I have a powerful outlook and high expectation of success in everything I undertake.’

Our current reality is often crawling with a web of self-doubt because of old established habits, limiting attitudes, restrictive beliefs and low expectations. Start driving out that negative self-talk today. Watch your thoughts; like a hawk. They become words, their actions form habits. Habits develop character to  shape your future. Everything starts with a thought.

Controlling self-talk and being able to see yourself having made the changes before they have happened becomes the dominant version of you.  Add an uplifting first-person present-tense description of your mental picture e.g.’ I am making tremendous progress; personal success flows toward me.’ Imprint it several times a day over a few weeks and the old habits disappear to be replaced by the new picture. You are on your way to achieving your potential. By the way, this process is universal; it works perfectly for achieving business goals too.

Don’t just commit to cold, lifeless written goals; they won’t change anything on their own. Visualise ahead of time what your world looks like after you have mastered the improvement. Then see how fast you sub-consciously move toward and become the new you.

Find out more about my people development coaching programmes HERE.