Achieve Your Goals Faster:
Leverage Neuroscience & NLP
Tom O'Connor
In my last post I shared how your ability to see and construct your future self has big implications on your ability to set and achieve goals.
But behind that idea is a really important principle, supported by neuroscience.
Human beings, for the most part respond and act, not on the external world but rather on the representations they create in their mind.
It’s those representations which, for most people, are outside their conscious awareness, which triggers and creates the arousal response to act, or when absent, results in no actions being taken.
When it comes to setting goals, people are driven by the anticipated reward. They like the idea of achieving the goal.
However when it comes time to execute - the (untrained) brain switches to think of the effort required.
If the effort required is perceived to be greater than the resourcefulness of our state and mindset in that moment we think of working on our goals, we won’t take any action.
No action = no change = no result.
So the first step to achieving your goals is to learn how to perceive your goals so the thought of them triggers the desire to act…
There’s a way of perceiving your goals that when present triggers the ‘Go For It’ state in you.
In fact, research from neuroscience has shown that a properly set goal actually boosts your blood pressure. Indicating to your body you are primed to act. While goals we perceive as ‘impossible’ can create the opposite - a decrease of our blood pressure.
How you CODE your goals in your mind-body has significant implications on your short and long-term success.
How we use our perceptions, the relative size, shape and distance we perceive our goals and how we have organised them in our mind has a huge impact on whether we will take action and ultimately achieve them or not.
If you struggle to achieve your goals or if you feel the pang of regret when you think about how little progress you have made thus far, know this:
You’re not lazy!
You just haven’t learned how to think about and plan your goals so that it automatically triggers action and thereby makes accomplishing your goals much easier.
::: Test This Out For Yourself :::
There’s a lot of things that the field of neuroscience is finally catching up with ideas discovered in NLP. Here’s one to try out.
Think of a goal you believe would be easy for you to do.
Create a representation of it. I’m going to assume you are going to make a picture of it, however this process works in whatever sense you feel most familiar with.
Next, notice where the picture is in your mind.
- Point to where it is physically located.
- Is it a movie or a still?
- How close or far away is the picture?
- What’s the relative size?
- How bright or dark is it?
- Is the image relatively clear and in focus or blurry?
When you think of the goal like this, is there any accompanying internal dialogue? Do you say anything to yourself?
Become aware of any feelings connected with it.
- Where is the sensation strongest in your body?
- What is the quality and strength of the feeling?
On a scale of 1-5 how easy do you think it would be for you to achieve this goal and take action?
Good. Capture what you have learned about how you encode goals you find easy to do.
Next, interrupt your state.
For example, think for a moment what did you have for lunch yesterday?
Now think about a goal that you think would be really difficult, if not impossible for you to achieve.
Make a picture of it.
Repeat the same questions from earlier:
- Point to where it is physically located.
- Is it a movie or a still?
- How close or far away is the picture?
- What’s the relative size?
- How bright or dark is it?
- Is the image relatively clear and in focus or blurry?
- Do you have any internal dialogue accompanying it?
Become aware of any feelings connected with it.
- Where is the sensation strongest in your body?
- What is the quality and strength of the feeling?
On a scale of 1-5 how easy do you think it would be for you to achieve this goal and take action?
Constrict the difference in how you represented things between the goal you imagined as easy to do vs the one that was near impossible.
Notice anything interesting?
If you are like most people I do this exercise with you will have discovered you have a very different way of representing goals when they are easy vs. hard.
How you code your goals in your head matters!
Now that you’re aware of this, for those goals you have struggled to get started on or stick with – do you think there is any connection to HOW you have been representing them in your mind when you think about them now?
Most people are completely unaware of how their mind is unintentionally working against them by how it is perceiving their goals – hence they never can ‘get themselves’ to take action.
And constantly need to find ‘motivation’.
So they search for something external – a new planner, a productivity app, a journal or workshop that will inspire them to take action.
You don’t need inspiration.
You aren’t lazy.
You just need to learn how to make your brain work for you - to train it how to think and perceive so it turns orange and red lights around your goals, GREEN.
Achieving your goals can be far easier and occur automatically once you learn how to train your brain to think differently…
To your success,
Tom
P.S. Stay tuned for an email on Sunday where I share another practical idea why you shouldn’t visualise your goals... till you understand this ONE thing.
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