[Goal Setting] Exorcize That Goal Breaking Devil Through Awareness

Similar to distractions, but much more insidious, pitfalls have the power to destroy your goal.

Distractions will only nudge you off track for a short period of time, while a pitfall convinces you trying isn’t worth it. You might picture Bugs Bunny with an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Each spirit is trying to convince him to take the opposite action. Pitfalls are all the reasons you should give up.

For instance, if your goal was to lose 20 pounds in the next 3 months (a healthy goal objective), a pitfall might be negative thinking on the second or third week. In the past, you may have said to yourself.

• “This is never going to work.”
• “I will always be fat.”
• “It’s not worth all of this effort for so little weight loss.”
• “A piece of cake and ice cream never hurt anybody.”

So you may put down as a main pitfall Stinkin’ Thinkin’.

Underneath that, you should list the specific thoughts that you’ve had in the past that choked off your enthusiasm for similar goals in the past. There is a lot of benefit from seeing your negativity put on paper. Once you see them on paper and how ridiculous most of them are, you might find yourself laughing at how dumb those thoughts are or you can attack them rationally.

If not, in the next post I’ll go into a great way to manage your pitfalls.

Another example could be for someone trying to save money for retirement, their pitfall might be spur of the moment shopping sprees. You might be addicted to HDDVDs, or fast cars or gambling. Whatever your Achilles heel, it’s a good idea to recognize it in advance so you can deal with it.

The pitfall is your weakness. And the little devil on your shoulder knows just the right things to say to get you to fall.

A quote comes to mind of Pogo from the comic strip of Walt Kelly when he said “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

By taking time in advance to pinpoint the pitfalls you can begin to deal with them sooner rather than later.