New Year's Resolutions.  Goals.

Tis the season to make 'em and break 'em.

As I was working on my intentions for 2006, it got me to thinking about the dark side of goal setting.  At this week's BNI meeting, I stood up and made a confession. I don't believe in Goals.

There's nothing wrong with goals, per se.  I just don't believe in taking goals at face value. Through my experience coaching 100's of business people, there is a Tipping Point when goals become a source of scarcity.  This week, I'm going to share some insights I've had on just how goals can be the feeder of Illusions.

How many of you have at least one goal you've not met for at least 2 years? (It's ok, you can raise your hand - this is a blog and no one can see you.)  Having an ongoing goal is not necessarily a bad thing - it's when we keep recycling the same old goals year after year, with no focused, intentional action to go along with it, that we run into problems.

When Goal Recycling happens, it can quickly become a sign that the Illusion of Hope is at play.  One of the sources of Scarcity thinking, the Illusion of Hope is what causes us to put our Greatness on hold by waiting for someone or something else to solve our uneasiness of who we are.

The Illusion of Hope is characterized by expectation, powerlessness, and assumption.  How do these conditioned patterns keep us from reaching our goals?  When we expect life (and people) to be a certain way, we make assumptions about what will happen.  If I assume that I will train 100 people this year because I believe I have such a great program, I may expect that I will make over 6 figures as my goal.  However, if underneath this goal, I have a deep rooted fear that I'm really not that great of a trainer, or my program has a lot of kinks in it, or I hate flying (and my training success requires a lot of travel) any one of these fears can be a sign of powerlessness.  And if that keeps me from doing what I can do - marketing my program, networking with prospects, etc. I'm stuck in the Illusion of Hope and recycling my goals.

What goals have you been recycling?