When it comes to setting financial goals, most people like to really go for it. They set it way up there and have really good rationalizations for it such as:

- Shoot for the moon because if you miss it, at least you’ll land among the stars.

- If you think you’re going to make x amount, then you’ll think of ways to get x amount, even though x amount is way out there.

- If you’re going to set a goal, might as well set a big one so you don’t shortchange yourself.

So they do set the goal way up there with little to no results to show for it.

Very little action.

Just a lot of thinking about that number.

And again, no results,

But they think all they need to do is think harder, and the answer will come with time.

They don’t want to change the goal because they’ve gone too far with it and don’t want to start from scratch again.

Well if nothing is showing up for some time, what’s there to do?

The answer is to obviously lower it.

But again, people don’t want to do that because they invested so much time and energy into their very high number.

They believe the answer will come in time but it won’t.

Why?

Well, for one thing, it’s not natural. You don’t go from 1 to 10 in one single leap. You don’t jump from the bottom of the stairs to the top in one step. You don’t come out of your mom’s womb and become 16 the next day.

Nature has a system of growth set in place and it applies to anything we do.

Growth in the beginning is small and it accelerates as you grow over time.

But in the beginning, growth is small.

Secondly, here’s the thing. If your financial goal is way out there, and you want to just apply the principle of attrition which is basically constantly thinking of the number in your conscious mind and hopefully that goal will penetrate into your subconscious where it will yield you the answer to meet that financial goal, there’s a small problem with that.

If your conscious mind doesn’t believe it, there’s no way your subconscious will.

Your conscious mind is the gatekeeper – it decides what to let in and if it rejects the idea of your financial goal, it’s not going to go into the subconscious so nothing’s going to happen.

But people point to the principle of attrition – even if you don’t believe it, can’t you force that belief in over time?

Well here’s the thing.

When you were a child, it was really easy for you to believe anything. You had no pre-existing information to play with. If somebody told you when you were 4 that the clouds were made of marshmallows, you would believe it.

But now that you’re older, you have all this information and experience that constitutes what is “reality” for you – information and experience from the people around you, media, friends, family, your own life experience, etc.

And that belief of “reality” eventually sets in stone over time.

Now you can’t force a new belief in UNLESS you break those existing beliefs related to it FIRST.

And that takes time as well.

So you have to break those pre-existing beliefs AND consistently pound in new ones for you to really make any progress.

The typical person doesn’t have the self discipline to do that.

So what do you do then?

Work WITHIN the system to gradually change your beliefs over time.

I know it doesn’t sound all that appealing to lower your financial goal but just try it.

Don’t lower it to the point where it’s too easy that you don’t do anything. Lower it till you find yourself thinking of SOLID plans and find yourself taking actions on those plans consistently – that’s when you hit the magic number.

When the goal was way out there – you had some plans but they were very vague. Maybe you took some action but you weren’t consistent. It wasn’t very solid.

When you lower the number, you’re going to find yourself having SOLID plans and the actions you take to implement those plans will be MECHANICAL. You won’t think about it too much or have so much mind chatter going on preventing you from actually taking action to make things happen.

That’s probably the biggest sign that you’ve chose the right financial goal – when you find yourself thinking of CONCRETE DETAILED PLANS that you CONSISTENTLY TAKE ACTION ON MECHANICALLY with NO MIND CHATTER STOPPING YOU.

When you do that, that’s when you know you’re well on your way to achieving your financial goal.

If the goal is way out there, those CONCRETE DETAILED PLANS will NOT emerge. They will be fuzzy at best and because they are fuzzy, you won’t likely execute them because they’re not detailed enough.

Also, because the goal is way out there, the plans to achieve those goals will be in proportion in size, thereby making it harder for you to actually roll up your sleeves to do it because it’s so big in your mind in the first place.

That just initiates the circular mind chatter which will eventually talk you out of taking any sort of consistent action on your fuzzy plans because it’s just too much. It’s too big. It will take way too much work so your mind talks you out of it to avoid the pain of doing it.

It is SO SO tempting to really pick a high financial goal and rationalize it, and keep on trying to achieve it with little to no results to show for it.

Believable goals move you into action because you stop the circular mind chatter that prevents you from taking any kind of consistent action.

You just do because you know if you just do what you’re doing, you get what you’re aiming for over time.

Each little step you take, each small amount of progress you make fuels the next step and the next and the next and pretty soon you’ve met your goal.

Then you can set a slightly higher one because you have a multitude of things under your belt now – confidence, belief, more resources, more contacts at a higher level, more knowledge, etc., which will help you grow faster than you did before.

It’s tempting to go for all the marbles in the beginning, but resist that temptation.

Lower the bar to the point where you find yourself having CONCRETE DETAILED PLANS THAT YOU CONSISTENTLY TAKE ACTION ON MECHANICALLY with NO CIRCULAR MIND CHATTER STOPPING YOU.

That’s when you’ll know you set a financial goal that you can eventually achieve.

  
     

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