Why You Haven’t Accomplished Your Goals in the Past and What to do about it

HOW TO UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL & MEET YOUR GOALS

Do you set a lot of goals, but rarely follow through to achieve them?

If you answered yes, you are not alone.

According to scientific research, only 8% of people actually achieve their goals. That means the other 92% of people don’t!

We tend to focus on external factors like willpower and discipline to drive us toward our goals. Unfortunately, relying on your conscious thoughts and willpower alone can leave you with the other 92% of people who aren’t meeting their goals.

Our subconscious mind plays a major role in how well we reach our goals. Unless we take the time to understand and properly harness the power of our subconscious mind, we’ll continue to make the same mistakes. To reach your goals, you need an understanding of your subconscious mind and how it can be leveraged to reach your goals. You also need to know what your particular limiting beliefs are that are sabotaging you so you can learn how to overcome them, build better beliefs, and move beyond discipline and willpower. 

The Difference between Goal Setters and Goal Getters

The conscious mind is the goal setter and the subconscious mind is the goal getter. To fully leverage the benefits of both your conscious and subconscious mind, you need to make sure they are working together toward the same end goal.

Productivity plans and processes often rely on the power of the conscious mind. Unfortunately, willpower and discipline will only take you so far in reaching your goals.

To maximize your effectiveness in reaching your goals, you need to tap into the power of your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is where the bulk of your work will get done. When you take the time to focus on changing the beliefs that shape your subconscious mind, you empower yourself to reach your goals.

Your conscious mind is like the tip of an iceberg. It’s the part people see in your actions, habits, and outcomes. But below the water there’s more to the iceberg. That’s your subconscious mind, which includes your beliefs, values, thoughts, and feelings. Although those things aren’t always seen, they make up such a large part of your life that ignoring them leaves you at a major disadvantage.

Limiting Beliefs & How to Overcome Them

So how do you leverage your subconscious mind to meet your goals? You’ve probably heard the saying, “The sky is the limit.” The sky is not the limit; your belief system is. Everything you are and everything you do comes back to your belief system.

When you discover the beliefs that are holding you back, you can work to form better beliefs that will no longer hinder you in progressing toward your goals. Your beliefs become your values, which become your thoughts, which become your feelings, which become your actions and habits, which become the outcomes in your life. 

If you have a subconscious belief that successful people are just “lucky,” you may have formed values, thoughts, feelings, and habits that limit you to that way of thinking. To improve your effectiveness in reaching your goals, you need to change that belief. A new, better belief may be something like “With the right actions, I can be successful.” A mantra I personally love to remind myself of is ‘I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13).  With that better belief in your subconscious thought, you’ll be more motivated to work diligently toward your goals. When discouraging things happen, you’re less likely to attribute them to “bad luck” and more likely to formulate ways to work past them. You truly do have to believe something is possible before you can achieve it.

How Beliefs are Formed

Children between the ages of two and seven are in a critical period of development. Although they are a blank slate at birth, during their early years they learn and absorb the bulk of their beliefs about the world and themselves. For example, a child in these critical years may adopt the belief that they are “annoying” or “frustrating” if the people around them act annoyed or frustrated in their presence. On the flip side, if a child is loved and nurtured, they’re likely to form the deep-seated belief that they are valuable.

While not all of our beliefs can be traced back to this formational time, the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world are critical in either helping or hindering our goal getting. As you work toward your goals, it’s important that you uncover your unhealthy beliefs and replace them with better beliefs. Some may be traced to particular incidents in your childhood, and some may not. Wherever these bad beliefs came from, you’ll need to replace them with better beliefs.

For moms, it’s extremely important to remember how formational those early years are in forming your child’s beliefs. As you work to unlearn the unhealthy beliefs from your childhood, it’s critical that you work to instill healthier beliefs in your children. You’ll save them a lot of frustration and heartache down the road!

How Better Beliefs Help You Expand Your Success Boundaries

When you get better beliefs, you expand your success boundaries. One way to understand success boundaries is to look at elevators in tall buildings. To get to the very top of the building, you may have to switch between elevators. While one elevator may take you up the first part of the building, you may need to move to another elevator to get all the way to the top. With your current beliefs, you’re in that first elevator. And in the same way it is impossible to get to the top with just that elevator bank, your beliefs limit the level of success you can attain.  To move beyond your current levels of success, you’ll need to move to another elevator (build better beliefs).

If your current belief is that success is determined by luck, you can expand your success boundaries by embracing the belief that hard work plays a role in determining your own success. Instead of allowing “luck” to determine your outcomes, you’ve expanded your success boundary when you see the value of hard work in your own life.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle tells us that approximately 20% of your effort should produce approximately 80% of the results in reaching your goals. When you tap into the power of your subconscious mind you equip yourself to work more efficiently to reach your goals. Think of this as that 20% of activity that yields 80% of the results.

For example, maybe you have set a goal to write a book or lose weight or something else in the past. If you weren't successful, chances are there was something in your belief system holding you back. Something in your subconscious mind didn't think you could accomplish it so you made choices or took actions that sabotaged it. See, your conscious mind may set a goal to write a book, but if there are underlying beliefs telling you things like ‘you aren't smart enough', 'what do you have to say that's worth reading’ or ‘nobody's going to buy the book’ chances are you self-sabotaged and found excuses to not write the book. That’s the sneaky thing about the subconscious mind.  We are usually unaware of some of the deeply held beliefs that are holding us back because we have had them for so long and they have become so embedded in us that we don’t realize it.  We might think we want to write a book but unless we identify and remove the limiting beliefs running in our subconscious, we will stay stuck and unable to make the progress we seek.  And worse, not truly understand why we aren’t making the progress we desire.

As part of your goal getting plan, set aside time to learn to intentionally build better beliefs. The work you do to get better beliefs today will help you to reach your goals tomorrow. 

The Spiritual Aspect: Beyond Discipline and Willpower

As you work to become a goal getter, it’s important that you move beyond discipline and willpower to reliance on the Holy Spirit. Although it’s up to you to do a lot of work to build better beliefs, your relationship with God will help you with the heavy lifting. When you allow the Spirit to permeate your conscious and subconscious mind, your old beliefs are replaced by new ones.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will” (NIV). As you work to create better beliefs, submit yourself to God’s authority and power in order to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. A renewed mind is essential in expanding your success boundaries and meeting your goals.

When you live with a mind that is renewed and re-energized by the Holy Spirit, you’ll find it easier to reach the goals you set. When your goals and God’s will match up, your subconscious mind’s beliefs will aid you in reaching those goals. Instead of working against your subconscious mind, working with it will allow you to be a more effective, efficient worker. 

Do you want to be both a goal setter and a goal getter? Are you tired of being a part of the 92% of people who set goals but never reach them? My 5 step system will help you set and get goals like never before. Read about my 5 Step Goal Achievement Process here.

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