Sexual arousal contains several of the greatest lessons to teach yourself how to become self-motivated. Arousal begins by thinking about someone you find attractive. Thoughts create vivid images that lead to a growing intensity of feelings. As your feelings intensify, blood flow increases to certain body parts, breathing heightens, and your skin becomes sensitive. If you continue to immerse yourself in such imagery, eventually you need to act on those feelings.

The enduring desire and process to goal achievement is no different to arousal. Thoughts lead to vivid imagery, which creates intense feelings. Soon enough you must act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal. You can create an equivalent – if not more intense – desire as physical arousal to achieve your personal development goals while the people around you quit by continuing to reading part two of this article.

2. Stimulating an Intense Emotional Craving to Get What You Want: How to Be Self-Motivated

“The starting point of all achievement is desire.” – Napoleon Hill

“You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emotions play a vital role in goal-attainment. Nelissen, Dijker, and de Vries in their 2007 study titled Emotions and Goals: Assessing Relations Between Values and Emotions emphasize the importance of emotions in achieving goals:

“An emotional state is characterized by a motivational tendency to the attainment or maintenance of a particular, emotion-specific end-state. Some [studies] have further proposed that the goal-directed nature of behavioral consequences of emotions is adaptive, thus portraying emotions as solutions to obstacles and opportunities of physical and social survival.”

As a basic example of the importance of emotions in goal-attainment, let’s say you are on holidays visiting beautiful landmarks and you’re driving up a steep mountain. You get to the top of the mountain and make your way to an eye-grabbing location that borders the mountain’s edge. There is no fences or boundaries placed that control where you can walk on top of the mountain. As you approach the mountain’s edge, you see the steep fall and quickly take a few steps back to feel safe.

The emotion in this example is fear. It is a fear of danger to ensure you achieve your goal of safety. If you had zero fear of falling off the cliff, the chances of you falling – and failing your goal of safety – increase because you are closer to danger than if you stepped away from the cliff. Your emotions help you obtain goals.

Behind each goal you have, there exists an emotional void you seek to fulfill. Aristotle said the desire for happiness is the void behind all actions. Happiness is the ultimate void every human being pursues. Nobody can be happy enough. Knowing you desire happiness, however, is not much help when motivating yourself. There is little benefit in knowing you want to make small talk with anyone to be happy. This is where the pain-pleasure theory of motivation comes in.

Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, made famous the pain-pleasure theory of motivation. The theory states that we either seek to gain pleasure or avoid pain with anything we do. Pleasure involves chasing something. Pain has you run away something. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you,” says Robbins. “If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

By understanding how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you, I believe you give yourself unlimited opportunities to be self-motivated. When you learn to build as much pleasure in something as possible, while building pain in something you do not want, you become self-motivated. Manipulate pain and pleasure to build an intense emotional craving to achieve your desires.

We associate so much pleasure with physical arousal that it strongly drives our behavior to fulfill the emotional void whenever possible. Likewise, you can associate extreme amounts of pleasure with your goal, in becoming confident, for example, that you work towards better confidence under any circumstance. In fearful situations you normally avoid, extreme amounts of pleasure can be associated with fighting fear so it becomes exhilarating to be courageous and act in the face of fear. (This is a core secret of how you can become confident in social situations that I reveal in my conversation skills program Big Talk.)

Well-known motivational speaker Jim Rohn expands on the pain-pleasure theory. Rohn summarizes the primary emotions and desires that bring about change, like the pain-pleasure theory of motivation, into four categories:

1. Disgust – This is the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory. Disgust can occur when you have had enough. You’re sick of something from occurring, which motivates you to not let it occur again. Your pain leads to change.
2. Decision – There comes times in our lives that make or break us. These are fork roads where we need to choose the path on which to travel. The fork roads often arise from outside circumstances that force us to make a decision, such as a partner laying-down an ultimatum that sets the conditions if you’re to continue in a relationship. Make a decision and move forward in life. A wrong choice can be corrected at a later time.
3. Desire – We’re influenced by outside circumstances, but we must have an internal desire – a purpose that originates from within. You are shown throughout this article how to build a desire and increase pleasure with your desired pursuits.
4. Resolve – This state is defined by the decision to commit to a circumstance no matter what. “When confronted with such iron-will determination,” says Rohn, “I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, ‘We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.’” Nothing can replace commitment. When you know what it is you clearly want, resolve will make it happen.

Pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve – these are all powerful states you need to control or they will control you. The question remains: How do you control these mental and emotional states to become self-motivated? How do you build the emotional strength for endurance through the complete journey to attain your goals?

I believe an awareness of either pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve is sometimes enough to create the respective emotion. Knowing about disgust, for example, can help you create disgust to change your behavior and achieve a goal. Nonetheless, I feel there is one technique I am about to share with you that’s amazing for building a burning desire to achieve your goals. With this technique you will remove any lack luster efforts and reluctancy to pursue what you want. It is one of the best goal-setting techniques you will ever use. The technique is simple, but very powerful.

On the piece of paper where we started the exercise earlier on, you are now going to fill in the second column. Label the second column as “Why I Want It”. In this column, you’re going to use the technique of listing 20 reasons why you want what you do to trigger, spark, and amplify your emotional desires to hunger for what you want. Come up with 20 or more reasons why you want what you listed in the first column.

Take your time in coming up with the list. 20 reasons or benefits is a lot of work, but the list created from the hours of work in this exercise will be your psychological fuel for achieving your communication and personal development goals in the weeks, months, and years to come. For me, it is my source of inspiration. If there is one method that I frequently depend upon for stimulating a hot passion so that I can pursue my goals with vigor, it is this technique. No other technique injects so much enthusiasm into me.

If you have troubles coming up with good reasons for your goals, expand on ideas and ask other people for ideas. You can also try to think in themes like: feelings you will experience, how others will see you, physical outcomes, reducing pain, and increasing resolve.

Let’s say your goal is to avoid destructively erupting in anger at family members during family conflict. Here are 10 starter points you could use in the “Why I Want It” column:

1. I want to be a good role model for my children.
2. I want my family to feel safe.
3. I want to ensure we have open communication and that no one is scared of talking about certain issues because of my anger. (Prevent other people being demotivated to talk to me because of the pain they will experience.)
4. I am sick of fighting with my family.
5. I want my family to love me as much as possible.
6. I want my family to be relaxed and calm when talking to me; instead of being provoked by my anger.
7. I hate feeling the shame when people in public see my anger.
8. I want to increase intimacy with my partner.
9. I want other parents to look up to me with how I manage my emotions towards my children.
10. I want my children to think back in 10 years time and be grateful with my emotional management towards their difficult behaviors.

The above is a great example of a list of reasons to achieve the goal of anger management. Once you have listed at least 20 reasons, I guarantee you’ll be filled with fiery emotions to help you achieve what you want. I encourage you to look at your list on a daily basis because of its emotional power in hooking you to achieve your communication and personal development goals. Look at the list frequently and you’ll remain focused and persistent with your goals.

The exercise works because you create a list that summarizes the sale points to make you “buy into” pursuing your goals. The list builds your pleasure, boosts your desire, and intensifies pain to make you persist until your goals arrive. The exercise builds the amount of pleasure you get by changing and builds the amount of pain you get by not changing.

I believe this one technique by itself is enough to create a burning desire. Regardless, I really want you to achieve your goals. I know what it is like to have a down-day where you don’t feel motivated (don’t fret, it’s natural). Here are some quick-fire pieces of advice to help you stimulate an emotional craving for your goals:

• Dress for Success – How often do you see yourself in a mirror or reflection, or look down at what you’re wearing that day? Let’s say 5 times a day. 5 times a day is 1825 times a year. That’s a lot of subtle mental programming. The power of clothing on your mood is amazing. Wear clothing that makes you feel confident and other areas of your life will improve accordingly.
• Be Aggressive – Having an important goal should stimulate aggression. Misdirect that aggression and it can become costly. Do not create another problem with your aggression. Channel your aggression towards a productive goal – what it is intended for – and watch the steam condense into hard results.
• Relive Past Success – Think back to your past successes and relive the experiences in your mind. Past successes are not only stored in your mind, but at the cellular level in your body. Linked to the successes are winning feelings you can tap into for success. On the contrary, think of past failures and you stimulate feelings of failure. The technique builds the pleasure of getting what you want. For a more in depth teaching of this method and other mental reprogramming techniques, I highly recommend Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics.
• Here and Now – Focus on what you can do in the present to allow your creative imagination the potential to develop solutions. When you are obsessed with the past and the future, anxiety rids you of your ability to achieve results in the present moment.
• Details – Defining what you want pulls you in the right direction with specific details. Visualize, feel, smell, taste, and hear the intrinsic details of your desired state to put yourself in that winning state. Just as it is with the process of arousal, you can become aroused by experiencing the details of your goals. This technique is similar to reliving your past successes except you’re free to create what you want with this technique. You’re not controlled by the past.
• Feed Your Mind – You’ll be surprised at how uplifted you get by reading about other people’s passions and successes. Consume at least 15 minutes a day of motivational material from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, and Anthony Robbins. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last,” said Ziglar. “Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
• Create an Ultimatum – Use the desire of resolve that Rohn explains to create change in your life. Make an absolute condition that if something doesn’t happen, so-and-so consequences will occur. Tell others about this to hold yourself accountable. Sun Tzu in the Art of War knew soldiers fought their hardest when it was a matter of life or death. Soldiers given an escape route by the enemy had an option to winning or dying so they did not fight their hardest. Alternatives and exit strategies make it okay to fail. Do everything in your power to create an ultimatum such that you must succeed or suffer severe consequences. This technique increases the pain of not changing.
• Teamwork – Team up with someone who wants a similar goal as you. This technique is frequently used in exercising where trainers encourage newcomers to workout with a friend. When you make your goals known to others – and when they have the same goals – the two of you can work together towards a common cause. Each of you becomes more accountable for his or her own actions because you don’t want to let the other person down. It’s vital the person is supportive or they could demotivate you from setting and achieving your goal.

A word of warning though, as I have repeatedly mentioned, if you must rely on these techniques to provide you with motivation, question whether you want the goal. You can stimulate passion using the various techniques provided above, but I want you to remember that your goal must be what you defined in the first stage of the article. An intense desire to pursue your goal will come naturally if your goal is what you truly want.

Nonetheless, passion increases with the above techniques. You will pursue your goals with a passion by learning how to create a desire for what you have clearly defined. Once you are passionate and persistent towards a goal, zero events can stop you from achieving it. Outside circumstances may delay achievement, but passion with action guarantees your desires ultimately manifest into the results you want.

Be careful with what you wish for because you can get it by following the advice shared in this article. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how to stimulate a passion to get it. I believe this is mysterious state of success philosophers have tried to described for centuries. (If you haven’t done the exercise yet, you’re only cheating yourself. Go back and do it now.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. On Achieving Goals – Part 1: Defining What You Truly Want
2. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
3. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
4. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change
5. 10 Almost Guaranteed Ways to Fail in Life

For centuries, mankind has explored this mysterious emotional state that gets him want he wants. This power is not the law of attraction; rather, it is a power within you. The power is your power. It is self-motivation. You control whether you are self-motivated. Self-motivation will give you anything you damn well want if you want it bad enough.

Think of something you once wanted so badly that nothing stopped you from getting it. This is the passionate desire you need to achieve what you want. Contrast this passion to something you thought “would be nice”. Maybe you wanted to learn the guitar because you thought it would be a nice skill. Maybe you wanted to learn a new language to explore cultures. Maybe you wanted to go scuba diving for an adventure. Whatever “nice thing” you wanted, you didn’t achieve it because your hunger for it was deficient.

When trying to motivate yourself to learn a new language, for example, perhaps you purchased some books and CDs, but you never progressed further because you lack the emotional desire (it happened to me when I tried to learn Spanish). We can take steps forward to achieve what we want, but we fall short of our desire without the self-motivation required to carry us through our full journey. Without self-motivation, we fail.

To achieve your communication and personal development desires, goals, and dreams, I believe two characteristics need emphasis. Both deal with passion and having a fire-in-the-belly attitude. Firstly, you need to define exactly what it is you want.

1. Defining What You Want

“You will suddenly realize that the reason you never changed before was because you didn’t want to.” – Robert H. Schuller

“When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.” – Jim Rohn

“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.” – Erich Fromm

The first step to achieve what you want in your personal development journey is to know exactly what you want. You probably already think you know what you want, but I am pretty confident you do not truthfully know. What you think you want could be what someone else wants; a facade to get another want; a vague desire which creates a slow, unenergized pursuit.

When you do not define what you want with pure precision, you wonder through life’s jungle waiting for signs that validate your success. You have no proof you’re moving forward because you don’t know what you’re moving towards. Eventually, you get devoured by obstacles that demotivate you from trying to reach your mysterious destination.

Let’s say you want to be good at making small talk with anyone because you would love to have the skill of being able to approach someone and start a conversation. Wanting to make small talk with anyone, however, is not what you really want. What you really want is a host of outcomes small talk fulfills. What I mean by this is that you don’t want the skill of being able to talk to anyone for the sake of being able to talk to anyone – your desire to talk with anyone has hidden motives. Successfully being able to approach someone and start a conversation fulfills that want.

One reason you could want to make small talk with anyone is to control your fears when you meet new people. Another reason is to network more effectively so you can grow your business. Another is to feel secure around people. All these are emotional motives that drive your desire to make small talk. When you define your wants in the correct light, you become self-motivated to pursue that goal because it holds importance to you.

Do you want to raise happy children? Do you want what is best for your family? If you want what is best for your family, you’re probably lying to yourself. I’m not saying you don’t want what is best for your family; what I’m saying is the underlying motives behind “I want what’s best for my family” deals with your desires.

Perhaps seeing your family safe and secure makes you feel happy and comforted. Knowing your children are happy validates your parenting skills. When other parents see your successful children, you feel proud. Maybe you want successful children to make up for the failures in your life or you do not want to be frowned upon and humiliated by other parents. These outcomes are probably what you really want when desiring the best for your family.

Only when you accurately define what you want can you get what you want. You will aim with precision when focusing on a target clear to you.

I want you to do an exercise now. This exercise forms the framework for this article so you will greatly benefit from doing it. The exercise is a mental and emotional catapult successful people use to define what they want, become self-motivated, and achieve their goals.

Get out a paper and pen, and draw two columns. You will want the second column to be twice the size of the first column. This exercise is large and will take several hours. You may want to do it in two sittings, but the process should be energizing so you might be able to get it done in a single sitting.

In the first column on the left, label it “What I Want”. Obviously, under this you will write down what you want. Some people would write down goals as the heading for this column, but I don’t like using the word “goals” in combination with words that signify a deep desire because you don’t need to set goals when you want something bad enough. Your desires automatically become something you want without you sitting down and writing them as goals.

To help you determine what you want, remove all constraints around your desires. Forget about what you know or have. Stop letting the past limit your future. Remove financial, intellectual, and relationship constraints. Success is not what you know or who you know; it is how you think. You can overcome any constraint if you know how to think in an empowering manner.

It is absolutely necessary you do not reason to yourself what you want. The analytical part of your mind can hurt the emotional part. The most common form of reasoning contains “buts”. For example, “I want to work as a public speaker. But I am not good at speaking. But I don’t know how to get started. But I won’t be able to make money.” All these stupid constraints trick you into avoiding your true desires.

When we reason with “buts”, we rarely have tried to find a solution. I’ve heard people who want to become public speakers say they are not good at public speaking, yet they have not looked into how they can speak better in public. These people reason they don’t know how to get started in public speaking, but they never once looked into how they can get started. We have limiting thoughts based on limiting knowledge. It is crazy how we remove ourselves from our desires through this silly rationalizing process.

In determining your ultimate career, ask yourself what you would do if money was not a consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the necessary training. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew the right people. Remove all constraints and find what greatly turns you on.

Another thought to help you accurately define what you want is to not fall in the illusion of wanting what other people want. Society has norms and expectations that can mold your desires. I understand that everyone will not want to be married. Think deeply about what your goals really mean to you. Passion is more about caring than finding the right thing. You will be surprised at the many things you can be passionate about once you start caring.

As a verification step to knowing what you want, you can test to see if this is truly what you want by running a mental theater of what it will look, feel, smell, hear, and taste like when you achieve the goal. Rather than ask yourself, “What are my goals?” ask yourself, “What would excite me and why?” See what excites you by running through intense visualizations. The experiences that excite you (I am talking about a desire of 100 on a scale from 1 to 100 where 100 is the most intense) are what you want. They are your goal.

If you still struggle to determine your desires, remember to remove all constraints. Also, you can stop the exercise for a few hours to allow your subconscious to work and define what you want. Additionally, I recommend you get Jack Zufelt’s program How To Use The Conquering Force Within You to learn more about defining what you truly want. (I earn nothing from referring you to Jack’s program. I have two copies of it and encourage you to get your copy.)

Once you have defined what you want, write these desires down on the piece of paper under the heading “What I Want”. In the same column, and this optional, you can go one step further by using the SMART method. Having written down what you want, rephrase your want in a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible form. Write no more than five goals for now, unless you want to do extra work, because of the time it takes to complete the exercise.

If you’re finished, well done. You have defined what you want. That completes the first part of the exercise. Few people will ever do what you just did, which sets you apart from the masses.

The next step after defining what you want is to stimulate an intense hunger to get your desire. This second step could be unnecessary, because if you really want something you will have an intense hunger to consume it. Nonetheless, we experience demotivation from failure and have our down-days for everything so the second step boosts your self-motivation. If you did not hunger, you would hardly eat. Consume the advice in part two and you will successfully be devouring your passions.

This article is continued. Read part two: On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated
2. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
3. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
4. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change
5. 10 Almost Guaranteed Ways to Fail in Life

Let’s say the problem is being overweight – as it is for many. You have 20 pounds you want to drop. You are sick of the extra weight making you feel bad and not look your best, which motivates you to lose weight. You build the willpower and determination to drop a few pounds to feel good again and improve your looks.

Through determination to solve your weight problem, two weeks later you jump on the scales to discover you have lost nine pounds. You’re ecstatic! The tension you once had about your weight eases. Because you feel more comfortable with your body – and your willpower drained a lot of mental energy – you return to old habits. You take less action to lose weight.

One month passes since your weight loss accomplishment, yet the nine pounds finds itself back on you. It feels too difficult to exert willpower to maintain a strict diet and exercise regime. You criticize yourself over your weakness and your inability to change. You feel helpless in forever creating a permanent solution to your weight loss problem.

The scenario above is by no means unusual. Weight loss challenges occur everyday in diverse forms. Other common examples include: managing anger, but we still blow up; quitting smoking, but we still smoke; getting a new job, but we remain in the old one; starting a new healthy relationship, but we remain in a destructive relationship; communicating more effectively, but we don’t communicate effectively and remain true to our ourselves. Why is this?

The Problem: The Tension-Resolution Model

Robert Fritz in his book The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life says we fail to change ourselves when we problem solve. That’s right! Problem solving is responsible for, well, not solving the problem.

Problem solvers feel victimized for not receiving what they want. They often miserable and depressed, and blame circumstances for their reality. Their circumstances clinch them by the throat to direct what they do.

Fritz says we fail to change when we try to solve our problems because mental and emotional oscillation occurs between tension and resolution. One moment the pain creates tension. For example, you could be sick of loneliness and your failure to find an attractive partner who has a great personality. The tension pushes you along to improve your dating skills and better your life to attract a wonderful partner. Your efforts help you find someone you love. The tension dissipates – as does your efforts to improve your life. Eventually, you stop doing what worked to attract the person. The attraction disappears and you fight with each other more, which causes the two of you to break up.

The tension-resolution model describes tension as the problem. As the tension builds, you feel compelled to solve the problem. The intensity of the problem lessens as does the tension when you problem solve. You have less motivation to keep the problem at bay. The end result: the unwanted behavior returns!

Old habits reenter our lives because we problem solve instead of changing the underlying structure. Fritz says to solve a problem means to remove something, the problem. We try to remove anger, smoking, swearing, complaining, blaming, and negativity. In each of the hypothetical examples provided earlier, weight is regained because you did not want the 20 pounds and you lost your partner because you feared loneliness. We try to make something go away rather than create what we want. Our reactive nature to problems ensures we remain stuck in trouble. It is easy to think problem solving will make you happy when it only makes something go away.

Problem Solving Hurts Your Relationships

Problem solving also does not create what you want in relationship communication and persuasion. Too often we try to change people by building tension in them – and they may temporarily change to reduce the tension – but they quickly revert to old patterns. Sending people solutions makes them resist what you try to create!

One third of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program is about effectively creating solutions in others. We desperately try to change people by criticizing, ordering, threatening, questioning, or advising, for example, but this creates a tension-resolution dynamic to prevent change. You can pain someone into changing, but if they don’t have the underlying structure to change, they will not change. (I strongly encourage you to get my program by clicking here if you are interested in being a charismatic individual that changes people’s minds.)

The Path of Least Resistance

If you have visited Boston, the crazy road structure probably befuddled you. It appears Boston had no planning in their road infrastructure. Rumors say that Boston’s road structure is based on seventeenth-century cow paths. When cows walked the land, they walked on paths that provided the least resistance. Step-by-step the cows walked paths easiest to them.

Dirt paths developed overtime, reaffirming these paths to be the easiest direction of travel for cows. When humans populated the lands and began constructing roads, they followed the cows. Settlers paved over the dirt roads because it was easiest to work with the paths created by the cows rather than construct new paths. Because the cows followed their path of least resistance, rather than strategic paths optimal for human travel, Boston’s roads are meandering structures confusing to its travelers.

William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, says Boston’s road paths were not founded on cow paths. The example, nonetheless, serves its purpose to explain human behavior: energy flows along the path of least resistance.

In physics, objects travel through a system following the path of least resistance. Like water in the Amazon river, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like wind blowing through the Grand Canyon, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like pedestrians walking along a busy New York street, our energy flows along the easiest path.

Laziness is human nature. Our innate desire pushes for easier ways to do activities. Does this mean we secretly desire to sloth in front of the television while eating a bag of Doritos and sipping our favorite beer? Of course not. What it does mean is that we take the easiest path to get where we want to go. Our energy flows along the path that provides the minimal amount of resistance. Fritz says, “You got to where you are in your life right now by moving along the path of least resistance.”

Why Self-Help and the Law of Attraction Sucks

We try to fight the path of least resistance by using techniques like willpower, affirmations, and positive-thinking. We use these self-help techniques to motivate us to change, but our attempts to solve the problem fail to create a solution.

The problem with traditional self-help does not stop there. The messages sent through affirmations, willpower, and positive-thinking create the opposite effect to one’s desired outcome! These techniques create a paradoxical effect of no change. The subtle messages communicated from traditional self-help skills is that “I lie to myself because I find it difficult to change”.

You can see this by analyzing intention manifestation, the law of attraction, metaphysics, and similar principles that publicly took off when the movie The Secret hit Oprah. According to these areas of study, if you continually reaffirm what you want and stay true to the universe, the universe will automatically manifest your dreams.

Believers of “the secret” are bogged in their way of seeing that anything contradictory to their belief system is either frowned upon, overlooked, or manipulated to affirm their beliefs. Sounds a lot like a cult.

The underlying structure of new age fields of thought ironically cause people to not change. If you truly believe something, you do not reaffirm it to yourself. You do not rise in the morning to spend 15 minutes chanting affirmations that the universe will give you want you want if you believe you’ll get it. The unconscious messages sent through willpower and positive-thinking say you will not change or find it difficult to change because you need to use techniques to manipulate your subconscious mind.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics emphasizes that willpower does not create change. Techniques that consume willpower burn energy because we remain stuck in the destructive tension-resolution pattern. The internal friction consumes energy on fruitless efforts. We spin our wheels in a stationary position. Energy is wasted that could otherwise be put into tasks that move us toward our goals. You need to channel valuable willpower and determination into choices and decisions that take you to your desired future.

How to Create a Permanent Solution – The Secret to Lasting Change

A radical shift in choice towards fulfilling what you want leads to permanent change. In terms of managing anger, for example, if you make the fundamental choice that governs your behavior to be a calm person by safely expressing anger, you do not fight your anger by trying to resolve it; rather, you change the structure of your anger to create a new behavior that brings what you want. Situations that test your anger lead you to create results and processes aligned with your fundamental choice and desired outcome.

People subject themselves to their circumstances by living in a respond-react environment. Fritz put it nicely when he said problem solving “subjects you to the whims of circumstances” (seen in situations where people expect things to be a certain way in order to make them happy). In problem solving, you wander (and wonder) through life’s maze where your environment is the walls. Your environment dictates who you are and where you go.

Permanent change in human behavior does not arise from problem solving where you rest at the helm of life’s circumstances. Lasting change comes from a new underlying structure of your being that guides life. Instead of fighting change, you become the change because it is your new path of least resistance. It becomes easier for you to do what you want and move towards your goals than doing otherwise.

Until a fundamental choice of good health is made, one cannot be truly healthy. Individuals in psychotherapy who fail to make an authentic fundamental choice of good health do not change. They stick to old patterns of unhealthy behavior. Some are even addicted to their challenges – without their problems, their identity is void and people give them little attention. They may say they want to change, but deep down they want their challenges because it fulfills a need. They fail to choose the empowering vision or they try to solve a problem instead of changing the underlying structure of their life.

Fritz emphasizes that the real solution to change is knowing your present reality and possessing a clear vision of what you want. This means knowing exactly where you are and where you want to go without delusion. Once you define what you want and understand your present reality, you will feel freedom and be at ease with yourself. A new structure directs your energy to effortlessly create what you want.

The greatest problem people have when defining what they want is they define what they do not want. “I don’t want to be anger”, “I don’t want to blow up at my kids”, “I don’t want to lose my temper”, “I don’t want to be fat”, and “I don’t want to be unhealthy” are a few examples of defining what you do not want. Knowing you do not want to travel to New York for a holiday does not help you go on holidays. How are you suppose to arrive at your destination if it is unknown?

Artists are excellent models to follow because they create a solution and know the end result. An artist stares at a blank canvas ready to start a new project. If he paints without a vision of the end result, he will not know when the painting is complete. He will feel unfilled and demotivated as the painting continues because he responds and reacts to the present moment of painting. On the contrary, if he knows what he wants, he will paint to achieve his vision. He will create a painting that fulfills his desires – and he will know when the painting is complete. He does not seek external validation for his painting because the satisfaction comes internally from knowing the painting matches his vision.

People think artists are spontaneous, but creativity is not always analogous with spontaneity. The best way to create comes through knowing what you want. An awareness of what you want allows your creative mind to compose processes that manifest your desired solution.

Putting It All Together

I will give you a strong example in my life I struggled with that touches on everything discussed in this article. Though I learned communication skills for years and used some of the information, I never fully changed my behavior. I tried so desperately to communicate well by using willpower, positive-thinking, and determination, yet I reverted to old habits. My energy flowed along the path of least resistance of poor communication. It was harder for me to effectively communicate than poorly communicate.

Sometimes I would solve the problem, but I was merely making something go away; I was not creating what I wanted. What I wanted was being ignored in favor of removing what I did not want. Other times, the “change” was temporary. I tried to solve my problem of poor communication instead of changing my underlying structure that would create permanent change.

As I discuss in my communication secrets program, I was resisting what I did not want, which created a persistent problem. There was the tension-resolution dynamic. Sometimes I changed, which decreased the intensity of the problem, but then so did the tension and my effort to communicate well. My willpower was burned so I let problems be – after all, interpersonal problems began to resolve. Tension would eventually increase again as the cycle started over.

I solved this by analyzing my current reality, where I was in my communication, and its affects on me. Next, I developed a crystal clear vision of what I wanted, then I made the choice to have it. When I made the fundamental choice to be true to myself, to communicate effectively (not “to avoid bad communication”), permanent change took place. My identity and life orientation changed to be one who uses effective communication.

Today I do not exert willpower to communicate effectively – though I need to remember my vision and remind myself what I want. I use effective communication with minimal effort. My new structure has changed my life orientation. The processes I engage in effortlessly take me to a life of good communication.

You and I always gravitate to the processes aligned with our fundamental choices. You still need to learn the “how” of what you want, but that comes naturally once you follow this decision path.

I want you to analyze your current reality. Next, think of what you exactly want. Have a pure vision of your desired reality. Write it down on several sheets of paper. You can make what you want clear by writing it in detail on several pages (I have a 10 page document that describes my perfect day). Lastly, make the fundamental choice to get what you want – and mean it. These are the foundations of lasting change.

When you follow this plan to change your structure, you create permanent change. People, information, and other processes will seem to magically drop into place. It becomes easy for you to create what you want. Your energy flows along this new path of least resistance.

You are the creative force in your life. It’s time to live how you want.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
2. Change Your Words to Change People: Persuasive Power Words
3. Just Be Yourself – Why It’s Bad Advice: Being Yourself is the Problem
4. Neuro-Linguistic Programming Presuppositions – 12 Rules to Change Your Reality
5. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated

Most people who do set goals have little to no understanding of goal-setting – and as a result, they fail to become or get what they want. We frequently hear of people’s goals (I should say “targets”) to find a perfect partner, lose weight, or help people in need. Many people have targets and few achieve them. Why is this and what can you do to set yourself apart from the 95 plus percent of people that do not achieve their poorly set personal goals?

Being an expert in setting and achieving personal goals is the greatest skill you can master. It ensures you desire something greater than what you have now and take the necessary steps to attain them. By setting and achieving personal goals you can: communicate effectively, have the partner you want, have the friends and relationship with your family you want, look your best, feel great about yourself, no longer have self-imposed limitations such as poor confidence, and generally become the person you want to be. A personal goal constructs a pathway for self development, but doing it correctly builds a superhighway to success.

Why People Do Not Set Goals

You would think that if goal-setting was the ultimate skill and the secret to success, that everyone would develop their own goals and learn to achieve them. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect.

I know with certainty that everyone will experience a more successful and enjoyable life if they learned to effectively communicate. Anthony Robbins, in my opinion the greatest modern day personal development coach, said, “The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” Effective communication determines the quality of your life with others while self development determines the quality of life with yourself. Self development forms your inner communication and progresses you towards building interpersonal relationships. There are several reasons why people do not set goals, which are similar to why people do not learn effective communication.

The first reason people do not set goals is they fail to see its importance. Like people that avoid developing their communication and other aspects of themselves, they do not see the importance of setting goals. I have met people unbelievably resistant to developing their communication. They have actually been insulted to hear they need to improve their communication! Every person can always communicate more effectively to improve their life.

The second reason people do not set goals is they fear criticism. People criticize for many reasons. In the first chapter on criticism in my Communication Secrets of Powerful People, I mention the most common reason for criticism is a desire to improve people. Other reasons include a habitual perception of faults in people, anger, a belief that greatness cannot be achieved, and a hidden agenda to hold people back from reaching their goals. Average people do not want others to go beyond average.

A person can fear setting goals because each time they have set goals in the past, others have criticized them for dreaming big. Others impose their self-limiting beliefs through criticism instilling fear within the person. Think of receiving criticism as a poisonous needle injected into your body. It slowly controls and destroys what you want. The destructive thought of fear controls the person from achieving anything remarkable.

To overcome the fear of criticism, put bluntly, screw what people think. Do not allow people to destroy your life with their beliefs. You would not tie a one tonne boulder to your leg when swimming so stop tying people’s limiting words to your mind. Society is filled with endless garbage to prevent you from achieving your goals. If you want something, go and get it by setting and achieving personal goals with the directions given in this article.

The third reason people do not set goals is a fear of failure. These people might think success is the absence of failure. The opposite is true. Success comes from failing a lot and failing fast. “I haven’t failed,” said famous inventor Thomas Edison. “I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Being an inventor, Edison knew that failure was the nuts and bolts that constructed his success.

To be powerful beings, we must remove the traditional meaning of failure from our reality by changing its meaning. You do this by breaking down what failure means to you. How do you know that what you feel is failure? You are most probably frustrated with not getting what you want. You mistake frustration for failure.

A failed attempt shows you took action. You overcame stagnation by stepping towards your goal. Knowing this helps you enjoy failure. That’s right! Enjoy failure!

The fourth reason people do not set goals is a fear success. People who fear success believe success is bad. The fear is common in wealth and wanting an attractive partner because the fearful individual is afraid of negative results if one gets what he or she wants. Wealth becomes evil or a certain type of partner is categorized as unfaithful. The fear does not let them achieve what they want.

The fifth reason people do not set goals is they do not know how. This reason relates to a fear of failure where the person has set goals in the past, but has not achieved them. The failure discourages further attempts. These people become disheartened from failure and think failure is imminent. They do not learn from past mistakes and move towards personal growth.

The classic example of this is weight loss as a new year’s resolution. A temporary motivation inspires the person to lose weight in January, but no further progression is made with the goal. They bounce back to their initial state as their behavior follows the path of least resistance. If you do not set and work towards a goal now, what makes you think you will achieve it as a New Year’s resolution? There are techniques such as SMART goal-setting, which I will discuss below, that you can use to set and achieve goals rather than wishing a result based on temporary motivation too common around New Years.

The sixth reason people do not set goals is they lack deep desire to want something greater than their present circumstances. For them, the ordinary or even sub-ordinary is sufficient. These people do not believe they can reach or deserve success because society has conditioned them to think they are ordinary people and therefore must do ordinary things. A lack of desire can also be aroused by failure, criticism, and other reasons that explain why people do not set goals.

Common Goal-Setting Problems

Once you have identified any common reasons you fail to set goals, you need to identify common problems in setting goals. There are four common problems people make in goal-setting. These mistakes are dangerous enough to prevent you from accomplishing what you set out to achieve:

#1 Too vague. A vague goal is general and contains uncertainties. Set a specific goal. The more specific a goal is made, the more likely you will achieve it. What exactly do you want to achieve? Maybe it is an intimate relationship with your partner. Saying, “My goal is to have more intimacy with my partner” is too vague. Convert it to a specific goal such as: “In 30 days, I will able to come home from work then talk and cuddle with my partner for 30 minutes everyday”. This is a great goal as it is specific and measurable. You need to be specific and define exactly what you want. (I’ve written a complete article I recommend you read to truly define what you want.)

#2 Get personal. A great leader knows he must inspire his team to take on an organization’s goals as if the goals were the team’s own. This is easy to achieve if the team has goals congruent with the organization. You are more likely to reach a goal that is personal instead of it being someone else’s desire.

#3 Determining the level of difficulty. It can be hard to set the correct level of a goal’s difficulty. If a goal is too hard, you will not achieve it. If it is too easy, the goal is unchallenging, your journey to success will be slow, and you will lack a significant feeling of accomplishment. The correct level of difficulty is one that is challenging yet achievable. It energizes you because you know it is reachable.

#4 Going public. You can avoid several reasons why people do not set goals by keeping your goals publicly hidden. While it can be good to let others know of your goals, if they could knock you off your pedestal through criticism, keep your goal quiet. Let a coworker know you aim to double your income within one year, and your goal could be shot down with criticism about the company, the lack of opportunity in society, or the impossibility of increasing your income. However, let the right person know of your goal to help you stay motivated. If you aim to build more intimacy with your partner, tell your partner the goal and work towards it together. The right person can redirect you on the path of success.

SMART Goal-Setting

“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, learn about them, or even seriously consider them as believable or achievable,” said motivational speaker and productivity expert Denis Waitley. “Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.”

There are several techniques to set and achieve goals that complement each other so you can use multiple techniques to increase the likelihood of achieving your goal, but one goal-setting technique that has been effective for me is SMART goals. SMART is an acronym with minor variations:

Specific. As discussed earlier, a good goal is specific. Make a goal as specific as possible so expectations are developed, clarity is formed, and the path towards success is evident. A specific goal gives you excellent awareness and understanding of the requirements to achieve it. Develop an exact long-term goal, then break it down into goals for one year, one month, one week, and day-to-day activities.

Measurable. Another common problem discussed earlier is people do not set measurable goals. How can your progress be tracked so you achieve the goal in a set time period? Do your best to quantify your goal. Let’s say your goal is to overcome shyness. Set a measurable goal where you aim to meet and briefly converse with 10 new people next week. The number “10” within 1 week makes this goal measurable and specific. This makes it easy for you to track your progress in becoming a socially confident person.

Attainable. An attainable goal is one that you have or can develop the necessary skills to achieve. You have no doubt heard the saying: “You can achieve anything you want if you set your mind to it.” In other words, if you align your attitude, ability, thoughts, and emotions towards your goal, then it is attainable. An attainable goal is within your potential.

Realistic. A realistic goal is one you believe is reachable. It is related to “Attainable”. An example of a realistic goal is one reached by someone. It is realistic if you have the time and chances to gather the resources to achieve it. (Do not underestimate your ability to gather required resources.) Realism will lead to belief, motivation, and action.

Tangible. Too often goals float around in our minds. Create as many tangible forms of your goal then witness this amazing affect as your goal manifests itself. Write your goals on paper to create tangibility. Hear, see, feel, taste, or smell your goal. Use your five senses to stir a powerful, inner desire to hunt down your goals. Your emotions will intensify with tangible goals. Also, track your progress not based on an uncertain feeling of development, but on tangible changes. Look for solid evidence that you are progressing towards your goals.

When you set a SMART goal, you create a map for success. You give yourself a challenging yet achievable goal. Master SMART goal-setting and you will have the ultimate skill to get what you want.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. On Achieving Goals – Part 1: Defining What You Truly Want
2. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated
3. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
4. Inferiority Complex and the Self-Image
5. 10 Almost Guaranteed Ways to Fail in Life