How Your Beliefs Can Stop You From Achieving Your Goals

By: Eunice Coughlin
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:47
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Have you ever failed at reaching a goal you had in mind? Do you ever wonder why you can’t achieve your goals but you see other people reaching their goals all the time? Do you ever wonder what’s wrong with you that you just can’t reach your goals?

I’ve been there and I’ve finally discovered the secret of how other people do it. It’s so simple yet I never realized the importance of this very important aspect of goal-setting.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve done my due diligence. I’ve read the “how-to-set-goals” articles and books. I’ve written my goals down; I’ve visualized them. I’ve spoken them out loud, over and over again. I’ve done all the things they tell you to do except for one simple thing.

I didn’t let go of my “undermining beliefs” and therefore I failed to reach my goal.

Belief is such an important aspect of goal-setting because, as Napoleon Hill said, “If you can believe it, you can achieve it.”

You might be saying, “Well, of course I believe I can achieve my goals. Why would I set a goal that I don’t believe I can achieve?”

Beliefs can be used for positive affect in goal-setting; in can also be used against you in goal-setting.

Your beliefs about yourself can undermine the goals you say you believe you can achieve.

One goal-setting area that I have struggled in is weight loss. I’ve set goals for myself to lose weight. I’ve joined the programs and believed I could do it. But there’s one belief that was causing me to fail at losing weight. I believed that I couldn’t give up sugar. Deep in my heart of hearts, I believed I couldn’t be happy without being able to eat sugar. Sugar like cookies, candy, cake. So I would always sneak it, believing that cheating just a little wouldn’t hurt. It ended up sabotaging my weight loss efforts. Pretty soon, this belief made me stop believing that I could achieve my goal of losing weight.

These “undermining beliefs” need to change before you can achieve the goals you believe you can achieve.

But how can they be changed? There’s a small bundle of nerves in the human brain that controls behavior. It’s called the reticular activating system.It allows your brain to take action on the things that you consciously or subconsciously believe are important. It filters out the stuff that doesn’t matter. If you can affect this part of your brain by focusing on the particular thing you want to change and believe that it’s important that it change, you can change your behavior.

Let’s go back to my belief that I can’t be happy unless I am able to eat sugar. I can change this behavior by believing that I will become very sick with Diabetes if I continue to eat sugar. I must believe that I won’t be happy if I am sick with Diabetes. This is the only way I will stop eating sugar.

I will reach my weight loss goal if this belief stops me from eating sugar, as long as I am following the rules of a healthy diet and exercise plan.

This concept can be adapted to any “undermining belief”. If you’ve made goals and failed to achieve them, examine whether you have an “undermining belief” that’s become an obstacle to reaching your goals. Look for things that you often say to yourself after experiencing a failure at not reaching your goals. These are the “undermining beliefs” that you must change in order to experience success.

Article source: Expert Articles