More Complementary & Integrative Healthcare Articles
Getting To Goal
Do you have trouble reaching goals? Sometimes people find that their best ideas and aspirations can be challenging to actually realize because they quickly get off-track and give up. This is the case with many New Year's resolutions. For instance, people decide they want to lose weight or give up smoking, but soon find themselves losing interest in their project.
It may depend on how you think about the goal itself. Whether you're dealing with a work project or lifestyle change, some people manage to accomplish what they are working toward more effectively than others.
If you know what the end point is for you, that's good. If you can define it clearly for yourself and be aware of exactly what you want to achieve, that is helpful.
However, and this may seem surprising, once you have defined the general idea of what you want to accomplish, it is better to put that to the side and start focusing much more actively only on the steps involved in getting to it, rather than often thinking about the ultimate goal itself.
There are probably several reasons why this is true. Obviously, if your desired goal will take time to accomplish, it will be easy to get discouraged if you continually measure where you are against where you hope to be. The gap in time and energy between where you are and the end you hope to achieve may just feel too daunting.
However, there are studies that seem to indicate that focusing on the process itself, rather than the goal, leads to distinctly better results. It would appear that once you have thought through what you want to accomplish, you stand a much higher chance of succeeding if you then mainly just apply your thinking to how you are going to go about doing it.
Perhaps that is because we find it easier to achieve small, modest goals (or steps along the way) so are less likely to give up because each step feels like its own accomplishment. But it is also possible that involving oneself with the process itself activates a kind of creativity in the mind, keeps one having something of interest to be working on, so your involvement in the steps toward your goal is more likely to remain steady than if you are constantly thinking only of what you want to ultimately accomplish.
