Consider all your needs when setting a goal
A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine about things we wanted to do in life. My friend mentioned that he always made good progress towards his goals and then stopped or just procrastinated for no reason at all.
He said ‘It’s like I sabotage myself almost every time’.
So I explained to him how not achieving his goals could actually be meeting some of his needs, hence the self-sabotage.
Sometimes when you don’t achieve a goal it’s because you are preserving something in your life that achieving that goal might have taken away. These hidden benefits are, by definition, outside your conscious awareness. Once these hidden needs have been met then achieving the intended outcome becomes a whole lot easier.
My friend wanted a job that paid a higher salary so I asked him to apply for a job that had twice the salary he was already on. He accepted my suggestion wholeheartedly and even believed he was worth more than that.
A week had passed and he’d still not applied for any higher paying posts. When I asked why, he said that he didn’t know. So I showed him how to uncover what might be aiding in his procrastination.
There is a simple question we can ask ourselves that can uncover our hidden priorities or benefits. And when we can meet these previously hidden needs in other ways then our goals becomes easier to achieve.
Here’s the question:
i.e. What would not happen if I got this new job?
or what would stop happening if I got this new job?
Keep writing down all the answers that come to mind until you can’t think of any more. Aim for around at least ten answers but it’s fine if you have a little more or less than ten.
Example answers:
‘I would no longer be able to leave work early on a Friday’
‘I would no longer be able to work from home on Mondays’
‘I would no longer have two hour lunch breaks’
‘I’ll actually have to do some work!’
The answers you’re not consciously aware of usually surface after you’ve asked yourself the question several times.
Now you can meet these needs in other ways. You may, for example, decide that you’d rather have extra money from the new job rather than the extra hour for lunch you get in your current job.
You’ll probably find that one of your answers is a major need that is met by your current situation.
i.e. ‘I’ll actually have to do some work!’
You might have mastered your current role so well that you’ve created a major comfort zone for yourself. Your current job has become easy for you because you’re so good at it and hence laze around in your comfort zone all day. Accepting a new role might mean breaking out of your comfort zone and having to master a new set of skills.
Funnily enough this was the answer my friend gave me. But after thinking about it for while, he decided that it wasn’t the amount of work but the fact that he’d have to learn lots of new skills for his new job.
Finally he fully thought through some possible options:
Increased income with some temporary discomfort settling into the new role
Or, remaining comfortably in his current job but with a lot less money
The imagined pleasure he’d get from the all the extra money motivated him to go for a new role. He applied for a new job and was accepted for an excellent role with a lot more money.
Of course there are other ways that people self-sabotage and I’ll be covering those in future articles but meanwhile why don’t you try out the question for yourself.
Do you have any behaviours or needs that are currently outside your awareness that might be slowing you down in achieving your objectives?
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