While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

Maybe you’ve read piles and piles of books and taken course upon course on how to set and achieve goals. While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

The WHY is your motivation. Motivation is the gas to drive you to your goal. Without motivation, there is insufficient fuel to achieve. EVERYTHING you have ever achieved, you achieved for a REASON – a WHY.

You see, objects do not motivate – emotion about an object can. A new car may seem like a great goal, but if you have no place to go, nobody to see, and nothing to do IN the car, you may not have sufficient motivation to achieve it.

Once I asked a Life Skills class what they most wanted – their hearts’ desires. “A million dollars.” “A big new house.” “A new Cadillac.” I then asked, “Why?” Nobody had an answer. Just some, “Er, uh, well because I’d like to have it.” That won’t do it. Sorry. You’ll need to dig deeper and find things like:

*I want to lay out in the sun on the beach with a cool beer and feel totally secure.
*My aged mother is moving in, and we need more space.
*I need transportation I can depend on and have plenty of money to spend wherever I go.
*I want to feel secure and happy.

Goals are often “Have” items – things you will have when you achieve them. In order to have them you will probably have to DO something first – doing requires motivation. Achieving is DOING. Even the simple act of getting up out of your chair requires a REASON or MOTIVATION to do so. Same with goal achievement.

To get your goal achievement facilities working well for you, focus less on the goal (object or “have”) and instead, look for reasons that tickle something deep down in your psyche – solid “why’s.” Shallow reasons won’t motivate enough. They won’t keep you moving for the long haul.

Once you’ve got some reasons why that are deeply meaningful to you, then spend time getting familiar with those reasons. Saturate your mind with them. Do it many times during the day. Sure, focus some attention on the object of your goal – just focus MORE attention on WHY you want it.

What you’re doing here is installing your own BS sniffer. Suddenly, your mind has a yardstick against which it can measure every other “reason why” and excuse that pops up. The trivial gets tossed out. You’ll stop being able to believe those easy, sneaky excuses that used to derail your efforts to grow and change. And, you’ll find it now feels natural to think of yourself in bigger, brighter, more capable terms.

Adapted from an article by Jim Rohn