How to Reach Goals

If you’ve followed all the right steps to achieve your goals and success still eludes you, look for obstacles in your subconscious clinging like grease deposits clogging up the works.

Here are six common blocks and strategies for dissolving them:

1. Comparing Yourself to Others
Comparing yourself to others is counterproductive because it makes you feel bad (you know that part) and creates unconscious negative programming. For example, if Rosemary sees others getting big commission checks and thinks in sadness and frustration, "What's wrong with me? Why don't I get checks like that?" she’s programming her subconscious to forever be the one left empty-handed. When you repeatedly feed your subconscious negative criteria (missing big check) and feelings (bad) it dutifully produces more of the very thing you don’t want.

Action Steps:
Write positive denials linked to affirmations such as: "I'm not different from associates who receive big checks. I'm just like them. I no longer say I don't have big sales. I do have big sales. It's not true that my deals fall through. They all close. I don't believe I don't have enough money. I have more money than I need. I'm not sad, mad, and scared any longer. I'm happy and rich. I forgive myself for unknowingly creating 'no big sales’ in the past. I now create big ones. I work smart, and get lots of money. I have several big sales, and big, monthly commission checks just like the others."

Take your photo with associates who receive big checks. Write, "I'm one of them. I get $____ checks, too."

2. Language Boomerangs
Your subconscious always takes you literally. When you say, “Gee, I really need a sale this week,” your subconscious defines “need" as "lack of" and hears, “Gee, I really lack a sale this week.” Your appeal backfires because you feel the need for sales rather than the joy of receiving sales. Change your tune. See and feel the excitement of achieving your goals rather than the fear of needing and not getting them.

Action Step: Talk with a friend about your block. Describe the situation in detail. Tape your conversation and edit it for literal meanings. For example, if you hear yourself say, “This is getting serious. I have to get on the phone and make some calls,” recognize that the goal you’ve stated is to “make some calls,” so once you’ve keyed the phone the goal is reached. Be specific. Set a goal to reach x-number of people and sell x-amount of your product or service on or before x-date.

3. Stalled Creativity
You may be trying to achieve goals by relying primarily on logic and ill-fitting techniques borrowed from others. Instead, tap into your own creativity.

Action Steps:
Stare for ten minutes at a picture of your completed project. Or sit quietly and visually focus on a flower, tree, or other appealing object while muting the chatter in your mind. An idea may suddenly come to you.

Tune into sounds that stir your creativity. Could be voices, music, birds chirping, even machinery, like the hum of electrical tools, a printer or washing machine. Crashing waves and bubbling fountains are favorites — and both water and plants give off negative ions which also increase creativity.

Being physically involved may trigger your creativity. Try sitting at your computer or piano in a state of relaxed expectancy. Doodle with a pencil, clean the garage, walk, or go for a leisurely drive. While pursuing activities that don't require much concentration, your subconscious may supply a creative idea to help you reach your goal. A plus: Mild physical exercise brings more blood to the brain.

Think of times when you were most creative. List the factors operating (alone at the beach, sitting at water’s edge, reading a relaxing book) when the creative idea suddenly came to you. Then repeat the sequence of events to get your creative juices flowing.

4. Loss of People or Things
Feelings of loss generate more loss until you dissolve the feelings and forgive all involved.

Action Step: List your losses as far back as you can remember — all the way to early childhood. Connect your mind and body by hitting a chair with a rolled-up towel, having a temper tantrum on your bed, pounding a board with a hammer, or hitting a punching bag. Cry till your are not sad and pound till you are no longer mad about the loss. Forgive yourself and others.

5. Feeling You Don't Deserve Success
Due to childhood experiences, you may believe that doing something wrong requires being deprived of something pleasurable. If so, you could be basing decisions about how much you deserve on wrong-doings as well as good deeds and accomplishments.

Action Step: Forgive yourself for all past misdeeds. This will allow you to have the things you want.

6. Slumps After Major Accomplishments
It is common for people, particularly salespeople, to experience a lull following a major accomplishment. Here are three possible causes of slumps:

You think, "I'll never be able to make that big a sale again,” or "I'm not doing as well as I did last month. I don't know what’s wrong with me.” As you look for reasons to explain the dry spell, you unconsciously formulate a new goal — the goal of not doing well.

Action Step: Listen to what you’re saying to yourself and remember, your subconscious takes you literally. Amend your self-talk.

You simply forget to program the next goal. It’s like baking a cake. Once the cake is eaten, it's gone. If you want more, you must bake another one.

Action Step: Set a new goal.

After a major accomplishment you continue business as usual, albeit a little more slowly (the old postpartum syndrome). Pretty soon a voice in your head says, "You're not working. How do you expect to put bread and butter on the table?" You start affirming, "Gosh, I'm not selling. I won't be able to make ends meet!" Repeated over and over, this message becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and you find yourself in a slump.

Action Step: You need to enthuse and rest. Give yourself guilt-free time to relax and celebrate. How much is entirely up to you.

Affirmations to go with all of the above:

I never compare myself to others and feel bad. I am fully deserving of all my goals.
It's easy for me to relax and tap into my creativity.
I freely release all feelings of loss.
When there is a delay in reaching my goal, I easily discover the cause and dissolve it.
I prevent slumps after major accomplishments by resting, celebrating and programming ahead.
I'm grateful I don't judge or punish myself for mistakes I made in the past. I unconditionally forgive myself and others.
I dissolve all previously accepted limits on how much I deserve to have, be, or do. I am free to achieve at whatever level I choose.

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Lynea Corson-Hadley, Ph.D., is an expert in helping others break through blocks to reaching their goals in all areas of professional and personal life. She is president of Life Skills Unlimited, publishers of sales, health and educational materials; an international speaker and trainer; and coauthor of the book, The Secrets of Super Selling, from which this article was adapted. Corson-Hadley was one of only twelve people in the U.S. to qualify for the 1985 President’s Honor Club with Success Motivation Institute, the world’s largest personal development company.