Jack Canfield: How You Reflect on Your Goals Can Make All the Difference

The next thing I want you to do is to make sure you have the goal review form and to have that in front of you. I'm going to ask you not to answer those questions right now, but to do that on your own time. But I just want to walk through the questions with you to make sure you understand them. And then as part of your year end review, make sure you include this, because I want to focus a little bit now on we know what you did achieve, but we want to focus on what goals did, what didn't you achieve, and what might be going on with that in terms of learning from it and also making sure either to do something different next year or to drop the goal if it's not appropriate. So the first question is, what's a goal that you set for this year that you haven't achieved? What's the goal you set for this year that you haven't achieved? So if there's something that you wanted to achieve that was on your list and it's not achieved, write that down. There may be several. And the second question is, what did you make more important than achieving that goal? What did you make more important than achieving your goal? Was it free time? Was it hanging out with your buddies? Was it something that was literally more important, like spending time with your family? So you really want to look at what did I make more important than losing weight? What did I make more important than doubling my sales income? What did I make more important than remodeling my house, whatever it might have been, and then ask yourself, was that goal a should or was it a want to? You know, what I learned over the years is when I had goals that kept showing up year after year, one of those goals was losing weight. And I realized it was a should. I thought I should look thinner. Here I am, I'm teaching all this stuff. I should look more fit than perhaps I was looking. But the fact is, I didn't really want to stop eating the way I was eating. I. I had a chef, we were eating great foods, salads and soups and main courses and occasionally desserts. And I also like to drink wine. And I really came to the conclusion I'd rather drink wine and enjoy myself than lose 15 pounds. It has not stopped my success. It has not stopped my wife from being physically attracted to me. So that was a should. And I never got around to it because I thought I should do it. But I really, tell the truth, didn't want to. And so if you've got a goal that shows up Year after year after year, and it's never getting accomplished. Ask yourself, is it a should instead of a want to? And you know, the second, the third thing to ask yourself is how have you justified your incompletion or non action? What have you been telling yourself about not doing this goal? You know, have you justified it by saying, well, it's not important. I don't really need to do that, you know, because if you're justifying it rather than, you know, and it might sound like my goal for weight was like I was justifying not losing weight. No, I just really want to. But there's ways we talk about our goals that justify the incompletion or non action. It's really not that important. It would take up too much time, whatever it might be. So you want to start catching yourself. What have I been telling myself about that? The next question is, what limiting beliefs come up for you around that goal? Well, it takes too much time. I'm not smart enough. I don't have the degrees I need. I'd have to work too hard. I'd have to borrow money from my father. I don't like to borrow money. I'm not sure I could pay it back. So whatever the beliefs are, really examine that. And as I'm telling you this, one of the best ways to do this exercise, by the way, is to do it with a partner. Because when there's someone sitting opposite you and they're waiting for an answer and they're looking into your eyes, there's a certain level of honesty and truth that comes up. That's a lot, I think, more powerful than just sitting alone, doing it with yourself. The next question is, how will you overcome these justifications or limiting beliefs in the future? And that might be through the use of affirmations, by getting some counseling or some coaching. It might be by doing a workshop in eft, like the tapping techniques from the emotional freedom techniques. Or maybe it's doing the Sedona method or doing hypnotherapy. But you want to find out if I've got these justifications now these limiting beliefs are stopping me. What's going to be my strategy for making sure I don't let them control me in the future? And then you can ask yourself, what's still important to achieve? Are there things that I didn't achieve that are still important? There may be some you want to drop off. You say, you know, I set too many goals or that's not really that important. I thought I had to have a goal in that area. It's not really that something that I really care about anymore. And then whatever goals you want to carry over into the next year, after you examine them and get rid of the shoulds and really focus on what I want, and you know that you've been stopping yourself with either limiting beliefs or fear or whatever that is, ask yourself, what will I need to do to make that happen? What action steps will I need to take? And you'll see that there's a space at the bottom part of the form where you can list those action steps and put a date by when you're going to do it. And so now you've got an action plan to take you from being stuck into creating success in the next year. So I really want to encourage you to use this form. Feel free to photocopy it, do it with your family, do it with your company. As I said before, if you do this with a partner, like your accountability partner, or a mastermind group or a work group, a study group, it's going to be a lot more powerful. There's a real power in doing something as a team. So I really encourage you to do the exercises and get the results.