DFE:
The frustration you experienced is VERY common for people who go overboard making unrealistic and even impossible goals, and then making them MUSTS.
As far as "Massive Action", to me that is not a defense. It actually creates more problems. If we frame it in our mind though, as MASSIVE ACTION, guess what?
STRESS, FRUSTRATION, OVERWHELM, ANXIETY.
If we "waste time" on top of this as well with dozens of Massive Goals that we MUST achieve THIS YEAR, then guess what we get to experience?
"Years of profound, life wrecking frustration".
Also, a person can get into Self-Downing, Self-Loathing, and Depression. What you experienced is VERY COMMON and the Goal-setting Salesman know it, and exploit it. These folks in that kind of emotional state NEED more products and services. Its a ruthless business.
Cognitive Theory states our Emotions, Behaviors, and Somatic effects stem from our Cognitions, which can occur automatically in a tenth of a second, and which assign Meaning to the external and internal events in our lives.
Cognition includes everything from Images, Internal Dialouge, to Automatic Thoughts, Assumptions, Rules, and at the most fundamental level, our Schemas (core Beliefs). So our brain almost instantly assigns meaning to an Event that happens, and then this creates the Emotional response, which creates the Motivation/Inhibition for our Behaviors, which creates the Results we achieve.
We can get into these automatic cognitions, and MODIFY them, by slow, deliberate relearning.
Now this is totally different than the metaphysical idea that our Consciousness creates our Reality by some type of mystical connection to the Universe.
BUT, if one uses those words in the terminology of Cognitive Science, then our consciousness IS creating our internal emotional-behavioral-somatic responses, which is literally our personal reality.
The main difference in these two approaches is the "New-Agey" idea that our Consciousness can somehow "effect" the external world through some type of "mystical" or even Magical connection.
At this point, i have to say i don't think so. I don't see the evidence for that. (big subject!).
I USED to be a big believer in what is called "New Thought" which is partially where Shakti Gawain and others ideas come from.
But after many years of research, i have to say that New Thought is wrong.
There is a grain of truth in it, but there are enormous errors as well.
Anonymous said:
Coz
You have just written a 117 word account of why goal setting did not work for me, (hence my thread "Is goal setting bad for you?").
I remember the first time I read Anthony Robbins. I brainstormed, wrote lists of goals, and visualised like crazy. The result? Years of profound, life wrecking frustration. I had done exactly as I was told, but when I reached out to claim what I truly believed was mine, I found myself doing the same old wrong stuff, and falling flat on my face.
(In his defence, I will acknowledge that Tony Robbins also brought the phrase “massive Action” into my life. But the apparent magical powers of goal setting seemed to imply that he had found a way around the drudgery of massive action. After all, wasn’t this a revolutionary new approach to achieving personal success?)
DFE