Help with Achieving Goals: by Dublin based hypnotherapist Ailish McGrath

 

What we (really) want & how to get it:

 
We all have goals – things we want to achieve. They are as varied as the people who have them, yet they all have one thing in common:

• We believe we will gain something we think we don’t currently have by succeeding in our goal. And regardless of the FORM the goal takes (e.g lose weight, get fit, make more money, meet a partner etc) what we hope to get by reaching that goal is a FEELING.
• What we actually want is a feeling of happiness, contentment or security and the goal is the way we’ve come up with to get those feelings.

 

Core Belief that requires correction:

 

That’s the belief:

“If I get/achieve/win this goal then I’ll be happy”

The problem with this belief is that it is a mistake, and it is the main reason we actually fail to achieve the goals we set.

The reason for this is that we usually come up with a goal or plan AFTER we have judged some situation as unacceptable.

• We JUDGE our bodies as fat, so we set a goal for slimness
• We JUDGE our job as boring so we set a goal to re-train
• We JUDGE our partner as unloving so we set a goal to get another or improve the relationship

 
Our goals tend to stem from JUDGEMENT (dissatisfaction / unhappiness) of what we currently are or have as ‘not good enough’. Then we come up with a goal or plan that if we were to succeed then (in some future time) we’d be happy.
 
The problem with this approach is that while we are focusing on what’s wrong / missing / bad and judging it, we are giving it attention. Our power of attention is our creative power / juice. And focusing on the problem is keeping the problem in place.

Focus is Fertiliser – It GROWS what it’s put on!

So, focusing on ‘I’m fat’ keeps you that way – it’s like saying to your creative powerful mind ‘give me more of the same’.
 
It’s also a mistake to think the solution is to train your attention to think about being slim. If you do that from the initial position of being disgusted with how your body looks today, it’s like using the goal of slimness by comparison to reinforce a belief that ‘you’re not good enough’ and makes losing weight more difficult and often impossible.
 
This is an example of using a law of the mind called ‘Coue’s Law’ against yourself.
 

The first two steps to Goal Success:

 
The solution to successful goal achievement is:

1.  To take ALL significance off achieving the goal! Realise that happiness comes from your perception / thoughts about a situation / person / thing – not the situation itself. Once you fully own that happiness and unhappiness is an ‘inside job’, you have acknowledged your power, are in the driving seat and can actually achieve what you want.
2. To totally accept and make peace with the situation as it is now, without any need or desire to change it. This sounds ridiculous or even impossible, right? However when you come to realise that you have been given some very bad mind training by our society it will become easier to understand this point.

We have been given the thought system that we must reject what’s ‘bad’ as ‘bad’ before we can change it.

BUT, as an experiment:

• List all that you judge is wrong about your life and yourself.
• For each of these items how long have you been judging it as ‘bad’ – years??
• How many have successfully changed as a result of judging it? – usually none, or at least not permanently.

 

What we Fight we Strengthen.

 
Focus is fertiliser – we grow the problem by putting our attention on it in a fearful way.
 
Or put another way – What we resist, persists.
 
So the antidote to judgment is ‘Acceptance’.
 
You may need help / training / strategies to facilitate bringing about acceptance to what you have been rejecting and fighting against, but unless you do, effective change is almost impossible.
 

The third step to Goal Success:

 
3) Decide to be happy now! cultivate the habit of happiness by:

• Accepting your power
• Letting go of emotional blocks, memories and grievances
• Releasing limiting feelings of unworthiness, fear and guilt
• Challenging limiting beliefs that hold you back
• Remembering who you truly are and what you deserve

 

Once this is completed Goal Achievement is logical, easy and straight forward…

 

1. Decide what you want to achieve and be specific.
   1. Make the end goal picture/goal clear, precise, detailed, taking up the full of your mind’s eye (inner screen)
   2. Get into what it would feel like having achieved your goal
   3. Visualise and entertain this outcome in your imagination often, with an attitude of play, enthusiasm, effortlessness and ‘I can’ attitude.
   4. Let it go and with the motivation you have created take whatever is the next logical step to achieving the goal
2. Realise you have the capacity to be happy, content and secure whether you get it or not.
3. Accept you deserve to have the goal manifest.
4. Accept it’s within your ability and power to achieve it.
5. Enlist a strategy / plan that’s proven to help you achieve it.
6. Take the next step, learn from mistakes, tweak the process and be consistent over time until you have met your goal.

The techniques and processes I use can help you achieve any goal you set for yourself.