Goals Part 2: What Are You Looking For?

In Goals part I, I talked about “Pencil Your Plan”. In that post, I talked about being open to different possible paths to your goals without being so locked into the one that you think will get you there. Why? Because of your Reticular Activator.

Your brain has this handy little thing called a Reticular Activator. Basically it sorts information and tunes into only what you need. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff out there and if your brain tried to process it all, it would crash faster that Vista! So, you Reticular activator looks for and tunes into information that you have “told it to”. When you tell yourself that you are looking for a red truck, what happens? You see them everywhere! You don’t really notice blue trucks as much, but it seems like there is a red one at ever turn!

This is very useful, but only when you focus on the right things.

Photo Courtesy of Bluemoonistic Images

What do you need to reach your goals? What are you looking for?

Be clear! You might think you know, but do you?

There are red trucks everywhere! There are lots of types, and dealerships, etc. Your brain can’t really tune in to the right thing for you if you are vague.

For years my husband has wanted a new Hunter Green Ford F150 Pickup Truck. He has never been more specific as to when, or that he wants the money to buy one, or whatever. Just that he wants one. A few months ago when we were moving our office, a friend said that he had a truck that we could use as long as we needed to. A few days later I couldn’t help but laugh. There sitting in my driveway was a 20 yr old, beat up barely running HUNTER GREEN FORD F150! When the guy offered to sell it to him, I laughed even harder!  Not because of the truck itself, in fact, he would’ve considered had the guy not asked twice what it was worth.

In any case, that old saying “be careful what you wish for” really does have merit!

Here is another example:

I have a friend who was looking for a house. She found one that she loved, but it was a much higher price than they were looking in. She and her husband settled on another, but she thought to herself over and over how much she wanted to live in that first house. A year later, her husband got a job in another town. They put the house up for sale, and wrote a contract on a new one in the new town that they were moving to. Just prior to closing on either, her husbands boss was laid off and a new one replaced him. They did not like each other at all! In fact, it was so bad that he couldn’t bear the thought of another day. Together they decided that life was too short and that he would resign. They got out of the contract on the new house by forfeiting the deposit, but still had to sell the one that they lived it. So, she quickly searched find a rental to get them by temporarily. A friend mentioned that she knew someone who had been trying to sell his house for over a year, and that she would see if he would rent it short term. He agreed and my friend went off to see it. Imagine her surprise when she pulled up in front of that very house that she had imagined living in night after night! (she imagined living in it, not buying it!)

It even works in your sleep. If you’ve ever had a newborn you know that you could sleep through most anything, but awake at the faintest sound of it’s cry. (That’s why I often tweet or post on facebook to be careful what you go to bed thinking about!)

There are probably many ways to achieve your goals that you haven’t even thought of!

Be open to them and be looking for them!

Tony Robbins says that people fail to achieve not because of lack of resources, but because of lack of resourcefulness.

Are you so focused on ‘needing cash flow’ that you aren’t open to other ways to access the very thing that you need the cash for? Maybe it’s not just cash that you need. Perhaps there is someone out there with the very tools that you need the cash for.

When you focus on the problem the problem gets bigger.

Instead focus on the solution, and you will begin to see them everywhere…just like those red trucks