{"id":31411,"date":"2017-12-15T08:26:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T14:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lovinsoap.com\/?p=31411"},"modified":"2017-12-15T08:26:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T14:26:35","slug":"goal-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovinsoap.com\/2017\/12\/goal-setting\/","title":{"rendered":"Goal Setting"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following post was taken directly from Chapter 1 of my book, Pricing Handmade Soap for Profit, which can be found on Amazon by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Obtaining what you want in life and business shouldn\u2019t be left to chance. Unfortunately, most people live their lives this way. They leave their deepest dreams to accident or grace. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard a lot of people in your life (you may be one of them) who start sentences with, \u201cSomeday I\u2019m going to\u2026\u201d or \u201cI hope I can\u2026\u201d or \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be awesome if\u2026\u201d And what follows is their true heart\u2019s longing. But if you re-read these three examples you will find that the language is weak, and they have left their deepest desires to chance. They will leave their true heart\u2019s desire unattended and eventually just let it go completely because they never actually made a goal of achieving it. Then they see other people achieving their big dreams and say, \u201cWell aren\u2019t they lucky.\u201d Nope. Luck has nothing to do with it. People out there achieving big dreams have set clear intentions and then worked their ass off to achieve them. The most successful people in the world set goals.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n If you set the thermostat in your home to 70\u00ba and the outside air is cold enough to bring the temperature in your house down, your furnace will kick on to adjust back to the 70\u00ba range. If, in the hot summer, you set your thermostat to 65\u00ba and the outside environment is hot enough to raise the temperature in your house, your air conditioning will kick on to adjust back down to 65\u00ba. Therefore, you create a \u201czone of comfort\u201d within your home, with the obvious intention of keeping you from feeling uncomfortable.<\/p>\n Your current level of achievement in any endeavor is just like the thermostat in your home. People get used to a certain level of success, and it becomes their comfort zone. If they slip up a few times here and there at work, or make a mistake, their internal \u201cgauge\u201d kicks into gear, expressing to the conscious mind that it needs to refocus and get back to the level of accomplishment that it is used to. Your subconscious can readily send you alerts to help you refocus and concentrate for the betterment of yourself.<\/p>\n However\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Oddly enough, your internal gauge works the opposite way as well. Let me explain. The more success you want in life and business will require taking risks. If it was easy to start and manage a successful, profitable business, more people would be doing it. There is an enormous amount of time, emotion, energy and sometimes financial-resource investment into starting and maintaining a business. So, usually folks stop before they start. However, if you do<\/em> go down the entrepreneurial path, you will inherently encounter risks. Your zone of comfort will be inevitably be breached. And, when you meet the challenge, face the risk and come out victorious, guess what happens?<\/p>\n Your internal gauge kicks into gear, expressing to the conscious mind that it needs to adjust back down<\/em> to its current zone of comfort.<\/p>\n Wait, what?! Why the hell would it do that?! <\/em><\/p>\n You see, your mind is assuming that your current level of comfort is where you want to stay, even when you breach your comfort zone by means of a positive endeavor. I believe this concept is the single biggest deterrent of most people\u2019s success<\/strong>. Most people have not engaged and developed a personal relationship with their mind and feelings enough to know that sometimes their internal gauge is opposed to what they are consciously doing, even when the thing they are doing is ultimately for the betterment of themselves. Crazy, right?<\/p>\n When you breach your comfort zone, shit gets real. You realize you did it, and are in this new \u201cspace.\u201d And, even though you really wanted to get to this new space of success\u2014as you did so by facing down your fear\u2014the feelings of achievement can actually feel uncomfortable or even downright scary.<\/p>\n At this point, your subconscious will begin to devise a way to get you back into your current level of comfort. You will get sick. You will forget to set your alarm clock and miss a meeting. You will forget to charge your phone and miss an important opportunity. If you are new to the concept of self-sabotage, this may sound extreme, but believe it or not, this is how we operate on a subconscious level. And before you go berating your subconscious, consider that it is just trying to protect you. Your subconscious is completely neutral; it doesn\u2019t really understand \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d like our conscious mind does. It is merely downloading your current status and then making adjustments to fit what it perceives to be your current level of comfort, i.e. your comfort zone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do you see how this process can hinder your success? Your biology is literally constructed to avoid risk at all costs, which was an awesome little ditty when we were running from saber tooth tigers and foraging for food. But our fight-or-flight response kicks in the exact same way when facing a scary business challenge. <\/em>Even though our lives are nowhere near being at peril, our stress levels shoot up, our heart rate gets faster and our deeply primal instinct is to brawl or run. And when it comes to breaching the comfort zone by means of taking risks and attempting to achieve more, 97% of people run back to safety. They don\u2019t rise to the occasion. They don\u2019t take the risk.<\/p>\n This, my friends, is why most people talk about their dreams in the way I described earlier. Because it is safe. It is easy and safe to say things like, \u201cMaybe someday I\u2019ll get to go\u2026\u201d because then they don\u2019t have to face up to the risks involved. As mentioned, 97 percent of people go through life this way, staying in their current comfort zone.<\/p>\n The folks who talk in the forms of maybe-someday<\/em>\u2026, or I-hope-to-one-day<\/em>\u2026, or wouldn\u2019t-it-be-great-if<\/em>\u2026 might be the same folks who eventually join what I call the \u201cI WOULD, BUT I CAN\u2019T CLUB.\u201d<\/p>\n A few years ago, I struck up a casual conversation with a perfect stranger on a plane, a woman in her mid-fifties named Pat. She was a photographer. She had just finished photographing a wedding. I thought that was great, and cordially applauded her for her work. She politely shook off the compliment and went on to say that she just freelanced, and that she doesn\u2019t really enjoy working weddings. I responded with something like, \u201cOh, I see.\u201d I was now chomping at the bit. You see, even during casual conversations with strangers, the coach in me comes out<\/a>. I inevitably asked her what she wanted to do if not what she was already doing. She scoffed and laughed off the question, looking at me as if I asked her what kind of underwear she had on. But, being a coach of motivation through positive persistence, I inevitably asked the question again! She looked a bit dejected after I asked a second time. She responded, \u201cWell, I would go back to school to get my degree and become a wildlife and nature photographer.\u201d She went on to tell me her hero was Gene Stratton-Porter, an author, naturalist and nature photographer. She loved the lore and life of John Muir, often referred to as America\u2019s first naturalist. Her eyes grew big and her face softened as she told me her passion.<\/p>\n I pleasantly responded with just one word, \u201cBut\u2026\u201d She looked at me, puzzled. I said, \u201cPat, you told me that you would<\/em> go back to school to get your degree and become a wildlife and nature photographer. You haven\u2019t told me why you can\u2019t.\u201d Her shoulders sunk. The look on her face went from happy to sad in an instant. In the middle of the flight, tens of thousands of feet in the air, it appeared that I had broken this woman. I felt as if I had asked too many questions. I then apologized to her, and told her that it was none of my business.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s not that,\u201d she responded. She nervously laughed and said, \u201cIn five years, I\u2019ll be sixty years old. I can\u2019t go back to school to get my degree.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, I can\u2019t help myself. The coach in me came back out. I said, \u201cPat, I have some bad news for you. Whether you get that degree or not, you are still going to be sixty in five years.\u201d<\/p>\n She erupted with laughter. \u201cYou know, you\u2019re right!\u201d<\/p>\n We continued our pleasant conversation for the rest of the flight, focusing on her ambitions. When we parted ways, it felt like she was still tens of thousands of feet in the air, imagining all the possibilities she still had in life. Before our conversation, Pat felt that she was too old to start a new project. This was her excuse, which became her crutch, which became her life\u2019s mandate. For several years\u2014probably daily\u2014she would consciously or unconsciously state (either to herself or others), \u201cI would<\/em>, but I can\u2019t<\/em>.\u201d She joined the club of folks who live out the clear majority of their lives this same, unfortunate way. Why?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You see how easy it is to join the \u201cI WOULD, BUT I CAN\u2019T CLUB?\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve all done it, myself included. Saying I would, but I can\u2019t<\/em>\u2026, and then giving your reason as to why you can\u2019t, is not only safe, it actually sounds<\/em> compelling. But your compelling reason for not achieving more in life is most likely just an excuse, and excuses are usually bullshit.<\/p>\n What\u2019s worse, the \u201cI WOULD, BUT I CAN\u2019T CLUB\u201d is not<\/em> exclusive, it is very<\/em> comfortable and entirely<\/em> addicting! It\u2019s a huge club, where members hang out with fellow members, all of whom are incredible at seeking out other people to join. The great Jim Rohn once said, \u201cYou are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.\u201d If even one<\/em> of those five people are in the club, you are at great risk of joining yourself.<\/p>\n Drop your excuses. They are lies you\u2019ve told yourself and others so many times that you believe they are a part of what makes you, which is completely false. <\/em><\/p>\n Remember, inherent in your entrepreneurial endeavors is risk. The probability of things not working out, or receiving the proverbial \u201cno\u201d is high. When failing, and you will fail, your subconscious will pick up on the failure and relay messages that prove you shouldn\u2019t try to do things outside your comfort zone. That\u2019s when the attitude of, \u201cWhy bother?\u201d might come into play. We see this all the time in business and in life. One or two failures, and people quit. Consciously, they might not want to quit, but the internal messages and security of the comfort zone are so strong that they end up relinquishing their bold behaviors and slink back to the comfort zone. The pull of the comfort zone is immensely strong.<\/p>\n Whatever your comfort zone consists of, you pay a huge price for it. Your life and your business can provide incredible possibilities, but you can\u2019t take advantage of them without facing some failures. If you can\u2019t tolerate failure, you can\u2019t be fully alive. If, for example, you\u2019re shy and avoid people, you lose the vitality that comes with a sense of community. Or maybe you\u2019re creative but can\u2019t tolerate criticism, so you\u2019ll never reach out to people who could appreciate and help you with your work. Or you could be a leader of people, but can\u2019t confront or set limits, so no one will truly follow you. You must constantly push yourself to breach your current zone of comfort. By staying in the comfort zone, you end up relinquishing your most cherished dreams and aspirations.<\/p>\n Thus, our job as entrepreneurs is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable<\/strong>. We do this through awareness. We become aware of our thoughts and feelings on a deeper level, especially after either a win or a loss in business or life. Whatever feelings and thoughts are evoked\u2014whether you\u2019ve overcome an obstacle, or perhaps when you\u2019ve hit a roadblock\u2014become immensely aware of your thoughts. Understand on a deeper level what it means to literally be pulled back into your zone of comfort. You can feel<\/em> it happening. Maybe you are a stress eater, and after a bad day you decide to indulge in your favorite comfort foods. Or maybe you feel like your wheels are spinning, and you don\u2019t know the next step to take, so you surf the internet for hours on end. Or maybe you gamble, over-shop, watch hours of pornography or take drugs. These actions are to escape the pain of failure and to seek comfort. Personally, I believe most people\u2019s zone of comfort is over-watching television. According to the \u201cNew York Daily News,\u201d the average American watches more than five hours of television every day, which is 35 hours in a week, 140 hours a month and 1,680 hours in a year. If you fall in line with the average TV consumer in America, you are spending 20 percent of your year in the television comfort zone. And remember, roughly 30 percent of your year is spent sleeping. So, between television and sleeping, half of your year is taken up by unconscious activity. Do you really think the most successful people out there spend literally half<\/em> of their life this way? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n Drop your excuses and challenge yourself. YOU get in the way more than anyone or anything.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m shy and introverted. I can\u2019t possibly be good at selling.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n This is a lie. First, statistical data suggests you are far more likely to be an \u201cambivert,\u201d which is a mix between an introvert and extrovert (It is a complex, sliding scale and very<\/em> few are solidly one of the extremes). Second, in the scholarly report from \u201cSage Journal,\u201d Adam M. Grant concludes that despite the widespread assumption that extroverts are the most productive salespeople, research has shown weak and conflicting relationships between extroversion and sales performance. You can find countless pools of data indicating that introverts and ambiverts are just as effective as extroverts in the field of sales.<\/p>\n This is the type of excuse that stems from the much larger excuse, \u201cThis is just the way I am.\u201d No, it\u2019s not. It is a story you tell yourself to keep you where you are.<\/p>\nGOAL SETTING<\/h1>\n
YOUR INTERNAL THERMOSTAT<\/h2>\n
THE \u201cI WOULD, BUT I CAN\u2019T\u201d CLUB<\/h2>\n
\u2026Because it is safe.<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
YOUR BIGGEST OBSTACLE WILL ALWAYS BE YOU<\/h2>\n
HOW DO WE GET OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE?<\/h2>\n