Another Year Wasted?
Why Your Goals May Have Died in February...
Kevin Hogan
Competing Objectives and The Power of Weakness
There is your conscious mind: explicit, logical, emotional, rational;
and there is your "implicit mind." The nonconscious, non-thinking,
highly reactive part of your mind...the part that actually drives
your car while you (conscious) talk to the person sitting in the other
seat.
The reactive part of your mind is that part which is, in large part, pre-programmed
to do things well that you already do over and over again....and it
comes installed for you, totally ready to survive.... and has been for two
million years. Or, if you wish, God programmed you that way at creation.
Either way the result is the same. Your genes are plugged into survival.
Your genes don't tell you to store nuts like a squirrel. Your genes
don't CAUSE you to DO much of anything except survive, have sex (reproduce),
find food and flee from danger or eliminate the danger.
From these four factors come 16 core desires that shape your behavior
within every context...and every context shapes your behavior.
And, of course, part of that "implicit mind" was also shaped, particularly
when you were young.
There are very few contexts or environments that exist that encourage
longevity, happiness, success, achievement, long-term security, or
anything else that benefits your family and those you love...or your
self.
(Failed goals gonna be a common story...)
The fact is that aside from the four "goals" or "drivers" you are programmed with
at birth...
STOP
The Power of Four Instinctual Drives
I want you to THINK about HOW you FEEL when you are eating food you
lust after, like chocolate.
I want you to THINK about how you FEEL when you experience the deep
pleasure of sex.
I want you to think about how you feel when you escape or overcome
danger.
I want you to think about what compares to those things.
No one has ever run this by you, but here is the reality of life...
There are only a few things that are really like those four instinctual
drives, and we call them "addictions."
Things that provide so much pleasure in the moment that they are equalled
only by acting on the four drives in overall PQ (pleasure quotient).
If you were defeating enemies, having sex and then chocolate all day, you
probably wouldn't want cocaine or an opiate to relax with later.
The artificial addictions...all replace that which you don't get by
the necessary "addictions" of life and survival.
I'll come back to this shortly.
What is it about goals that makes them so tough to achieve?
