How Your Current Goals System Completely Failed You
Kevin Hogan
Page 2
Goals are Not "Comfort"-able
You set a "goal" and then moments or days or weeks later, you
have the opportunity to sleep, rest, meditate,
bliss out, putter, play, you name it...it makes no difference...ANYTHING
is better in the moment than WORKING TOWARD a goal.
By its nature, a goal is typically something that is NOT in the status quo.
Goals are not comfortable, they induce stress and require change.
Ants and squirrels spend their lives building a life and giving them
survival advantages in harsh environments.
The vast majority of people (to be referred to from here on as "people")
don't do so beyond bare minimums. The aren't comfortable with the
unfamiliar and they aren't familiar with discomfort....and ANYTHING
feels better than being outside of a comfort zone.
Fighting with the wife...much easier than moving toward a goal.
Going to the horrifying office...much easier than moving toward a goal.
Being being an ongoing victim of violence...much easier than moving
toward a goal.
For people, just about anything is more comfortable and feels more
familiar than moving toward a goal, and people will do that which feels
comfortable and familiar.
People will fight with the wife, get beat up by the spouse, be an ongoing
victim of violence, because it is familiar and comfortable to the brain
so long as ultimate survival is not threatened and...survival appears to be
enhanced.
People only do what is absolutely necessary for raw survival.
People Don't Change - Everybody Lies
Dr. House (M.D.), the character on the TV show, says that,
"People don't change."
"Everybody lies."
I have a t-shirt that says "Everybody Lies," and that, of course,
refers to everyone except you and me...
Now, many would say that those are cynical points of view.
Let's look at that for a minute....
"People don't change." True or False?
Fact: People don't change and barely "shift" or "move."
People marry a girl from down the street or someone with the same
last initial (or the next letter in the alphabet) because she sat next
to the guy in school or had the locker next to him.
We don't move much...for anything.
People are unremarkably....lazy.
Lazy feels comfortable. It feels familiar and it feels like tranquility,
the opposite of flight/fight.
And that is why Achievers are remarkably different.
Achievers INTENTIONALLY shape themselves or have been shaped by
their environment to be a species that thrives on change.
Only Achievers set goals AND have the will and power to overcome
their inherent laziness, weaknesses and personal flaws to do
anything in life.
Perhaps 10% of people are "fortunate" enough to be able to change...to
thrive on change...to need change. And of course "fortune" had nothing
to do with not being a "normal person."
And
"Everybody lies." True or False?
Fact: Yes, everybody lies. Deception is necessary for survival and typically
for reproduction and definitely for flight and fight. People are pretty good
at deception, though 20% or so excel at it. Some for good, some for
evil. That ...we talk about in a few weeks.
So, for the most part, Dr. House (MD) is correct. People don't change.
You can predict people's behavior much easier than you can the weather.
Guy stunk at sales last month...he'll likely stink this month.
People will do tomorrow what they did today.
Major corporations spend BILLIONS on market research on what
products and services will catch on. The research is wrong well in excess
of 95% of the time. I show you at Influence: Boot Camp how to
know if your product or service will fail. This article is about goals.
