goals

Successfully formulate goals

How we goals formulate so that they lead to the desired success was the topic of today's lesson. The path to our goals will not always be easy to walk, so here are some tips on how you can navigate potential pitfalls.

You just have to want it! This well-meaning message is probably still remembered by most of us. No matter whether back in school the promotion was at risk or whether we are about to abandon a necessary fasting cure for the umpteenth time – whenever there was a danger of not achieving a goal, a friendly person with this advice was not far away: You just have to want it! The firm will to achieve a goal is important, but a firm will alone does not seem to guarantee success.

How do I actually know that the set goal is also the right one?
Emil Coué said:
“If you do not achieve a goal,
you should check,
whether will and imagination
are not working against each other!”

Aha, it seems that besides will, there is another relevant criterion on the way to the goal – the imagination. Imagination is the image that we can place before our mind's eye; otherwise, we cannot imagine it. And all too often, we want something without developing a concrete and precise idea about our goal that affirms the goal. In extreme cases, an (often unconscious) idea that negates the goal or certain aspects of it can even nullify the achievement of the goal – despite the greatest willpower. A crystal-clear idea, on the other hand, of what it will be like to have achieved a desirable goal contains such a great source of energy that we can seemingly effortlessly achieve even ambitious goals – the secret of many great visions.

We can compare the human mind to a house in which we have accumulated everything that has ever encountered us in our lives, which seemed useful or valuable to us at the time. All rooms are cluttered, including the basement and attic. Over the course of our lives, the free space in the house becomes increasingly narrow; indeed, there are entire areas that are no longer accessible at all and others that are frightening to us and that we avoid. Eventually, we can only move in narrow, predetermined paths. Life becomes increasingly strenuous, and freedom is lost. Who would not feel a strong desire in such a situation to clean up thoroughly, declutter, and free themselves from everything that hinders and is useless?

“On average, a person has about 60,000 thoughts a day. This is not surprising. However, it is somewhat disturbing that 80% of the thoughts you have today are the same as those from the day before and the day before that and the day before that…”

Some time ago, an experiment was conducted in the USA in which three-year-old children were given voice-activated recorders that recorded everything said to them. The shocking result was that over 70% of what was said were limitations, such as 'You can't do that,' 'You must not do that,' or criticism of what the children were doing at the time. What beliefs will a child adopt based on such messages? And then we wonder when these children, as adults, are repeatedly plagued by feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness.

The power that our beliefs have over us extends far beyond our emotional life. Our bodies are also determined by them. Just think of the different experiences of aging in different cultures. In studies on living conditions in societies where people are often still very fit even at an advanced age, where even centenarians still swim in cold rivers or ride horses, it has been found that there is a completely different basic attitude towards aging. There, people believe that individuals get better with age, becoming wiser and more understanding. Status and respect also grow with increasing age. Younger people look up to them, and often even envy them. There, aging is a phase of life that one looks forward to. Older people continue to participate fully in social life. Beliefs about a connection between age, illness, and decline do not exist. In contrast, comparing this with the beliefs that prevail about aging in our society can be frightening in light of the facts.

Experiment on rejuvenation through imagination

Deepak Chopra, founder of the American Association for Ayurvedic Medicine, once described an experiment conducted at Stanford University in the mid-1980s.

A group of seventy-year-olds was brought into an environment completely oriented to the 1950s for 14 days, with the requirement to be as they were thirty years ago. All newspapers and magazines available for reading were from that time, discussions were held about Khrushchev, films like 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' were shown, music from that era was played, and so on. At the beginning and end of the experiment, body height, muscle density, grip strength, finger length, blood pressure, and many other physical values were measured. The astonishing thing was that within just fourteen days, the aging process had reversed: finger length, body height, grip strength, and muscle density had increased, and blood pressure had stabilized. People who had barely been able to dress themselves or eat independently suddenly refused any help and moved effortlessly. Many felt so energized that they wanted to go dancing. They engaged in lively conversations deep into the night and came back to life. And all this just because they moved in the belief that they were thirty years younger.

So it is important to regain the ability to use our mind as the brilliant tool it is and to handle it, rather than letting it and its old programs handle and control us. Unfortunately, we have not received a user manual for this complex mechanism, as is provided for even the simplest household appliance. It has disempowered us and made us victims of programs for which we never consciously chose – or we chose them and then forgot that decision.

Our beliefs about certain personal inadequacies, for example, generate corresponding thoughts, also called beliefs ('You will never manage that,' 'That's utopian...'), precisely when we want to do or achieve something extraordinary.

Countless methods are known to show us a way out of these conflicts. However, how far a method helps or a therapy heals primarily depends on whether we have changed our perspective and our beliefs about the experiences when processing the situations and traumas of the past. If we want to change our own consciousness profoundly and permanently, we must change the beliefs and thought structures originating from our past that tend to keep us stuck in a cycle of repetition. We must dissolve them and replace them with new, consciously chosen ones. If we do not do this, we will repeatedly find ourselves in situations that are uncomfortable for us and hinder our personal growth.