Setting Goals in Tune with Your Desires

by Graham Dragon Personal Development Consultant

A lot of people try “affirmations”, “creative visualisations”, techniques such as the Law of Attraction and other methods outlined in "The Secret", or other ways to achieve their goals. They do this for a while, sometimes for a long while, but find nothing appears to be happening. They are no nearer their goals than when they first started. What is going wrong?

Does this strike a chord at all? Have you found yourself in this position? I know I have! But not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with those systems. They have certainly worked for many people. So why didn’t they work for me when I first tried them?

Continuing the musical metaphor, I believe the biggest cause of failure is that our goals are simply not properly in tune with our real underlying desires. And until they ARE in tune I can pretty much guarantee they CANNOT work.

The first task, therefore, of anyone attempting any kind of self-improvement or success programme should be to isolate all of those underlying desires.

The second task is to check that each of those desires are in harmony, and work on “retuning” any that create a discord.

And finally, once we are certain all our desires are congruent, we can then check that our goals are also congruent with these “tuned up” desires. At this point we will find those personal development and success systems really start to work.

Enough of the metaphors! What exactly am I talking about?

Let me give you a simple example.

Imagine a young man who has decided he wants to find his perfect “mate”. He has bought a system that claims it will teach the user to seduce any young lady he fancies. She will be swooning over him before she even realises what is happening (yes, there really are such systems for sale out there, although I have never bought one or recommended one to any of my subscribers). He is delighted with his purchase and immediately begins putting the system into practice. It doesn’t work.

Why? Was the system itself wrong? No, in fact there was nothing technically wrong with the system. I suggest there WAS something morally wrong, but technically it should have worked.

The reason it didn’t work is that this particular young man is not as lacking in morals as you might have imagined at the outset of my story. Deep down inside he respects all people as individuals. He has an underlying desire to love and respect everyone, and to be loved and respected by them. This desire is quite out of harmony with his superficial desire to “seduce” any young lady he fancies. He does not recognise this conflict, as he has interpreted his desire to be loved in the wrong way, and believes it will be satisfied by applying this “seduction” technique. But his very powerful unconscious mind does recognise the conflict, and refuses to allow him to achieve that goal which is not properly aligned with his real underlying desire. Every time he makes an affirmation that is out of line with that true desire, his unconscious mind throws a counter affirmation into the equation, which completely neutralises it.

Now the example I have just given was perhaps rather an extreme example, and one which is easy to recognise and to fix. This young man should recognise that his goal of seducing a young lady is simply not appropriate for him, and throw away the system he bought. That system would only work for him if he were not, underneath, the moral person he really is.

Most of us, of course, are not trying to use our success and personal development systems for such an obviously inappropriate purpose. But still the reason they are not working for us is almost certainly that we have not yet fully understood our inner desires and made sure our goals are properly aligned with them. Until we do, every time we “affirm” or “creatively visualise” we will be fighting with our own unconscious mind. And believe me, in a battle between the conscious and unconscious mind the unconscious always wins.

So take some time now to analyse exactly what it is you want out of life. Meditate on each of the desires or goals you have identified – do you really want this, or is it just a passing fancy (or something someone else wanted for you). Make sure they are all aligned and none are out of kilter. Eliminate those that create a discord – you will not find it too difficult to recognise them once you get into the habit of this practice. If you take the time to do this I can guarantee you will at the very least be happier. I cannot guarantee whatever success or personal development system you are using will then work – apart from anything else this will depend on the quality of that system itself. But you will certainly be much better positioned to get better results from any systems you apply.

You can download four self development e-books, including one on goal setting, at http://www.beallican.com.