I can’t think of anyone who won’t acknowledge that in order to manifest something in your life you need to identify what that is and start taking actions towards creating or attracting it. We call that process goal-setting. We first identify the end result we are looking for, then decide on the interim steps or milestones to achieving that goal.
However, not everyone who sets goals actually achieves their goals. Here are some of the possible reasons why.
1. Lack of true focus.
We keep the desired result at the highest level. We use vague terms such as love, money, and success. We do not take the time to qualify what that really means to us in practical day-to-day terms.
2. It’s someone else’s goal for us.
This is the source of most of the ‘shoulds’ in our life. We ‘should’ do x, y or z because someone else keeps telling us that. We are made to feel less-than-worthy because not only do we not have the item in question, we don’t even seem to want to go for it. If there is no true personal passion behind the goal, no strong desire to have it, then it will never come into being. It’s only purpose, therefore, is to keep us feeling bad about ourselves, which gets in the way of going for the things we really do want.
3. We don’t recognize it when we get it.
Again, because of the vagueness of most of our goals, we often don’t realize that in fact, we HAVE created our desire and met the goal. For example, if your goal is described as ‘money’, will $ 50 be enough? Or $ 50,000? Or $ 500,000? Probably not. It is critical that goals such as money have a tangible, achievable target, one we will accept ourselves as reaching.
4. We don’t define reasonable milestones in-between here and the end goal.
In the case above, if we do put a number to our goal, we make it so large that it takes forever to get there and therefore we give up because it feels like it is impossible to arrive there. Much better to break down the goal into mini-goals. For example, if we have $ 0 and want $ 500,000, we might need to build a ladder of mini-goals such as $ 50, $ 250, $ 500, $ 1000, $ 5000, and so forth. When you have $ 0, it seems difficult to manifest $ 50, and $ 500,000 seems like a goal not attainable in this (or multiple!) lifetime.
5. We make the goal convoluted or contingent on too many other factors.
Whenever we are working on our goals, the simpler we can describe our goal the better. For example, stating our goal as “a new home in a wooded area with easy highway access and lots of friendly neighbors, etc.” is not a good idea. By the time we have finished describing what we want, we are tired and have no energy to do what’s necessary to start working on that goal. It is much better to make a list of what your ‘ideal’ home looks like but to keep your goal as ‘ideal home’.
6. Not willing to take action towards our goal.
Many of us think it’s enough to describe our goal and stop there. While I fervently believe that it’s our job to figure out WHAT we want and it’s God’s job to figure out HOW we will get it, without a willingness to show true desire for something by taking action towards it, it will NEVER manifest. It’s just that simple.
If you identify your own behavior in any of these un-strategies, take the time to think about and decide what the opposite action is, then DO IT!