Hey all
Every day I get emails from guys all over the world telling me about their pick up and confidence goals. Unfortunately most people in pick up have read a lot of self help crap, so the emails I get are usually a load of “positive” and ambiguous nonsense.
Here is a selection of goals that people have sent me over the last few days;
“I want to be able to approach any girl I want and feel invincible”
“I want to be more confident”
“I want more self-esteem”
“To smash my limits”
“I want to have abundance in my life”
“I want to feel empowered”
“To be able to live my life without fear”
“To have freedom in life”
“Once I get a girlfriend I will be happy”
“To become irresistible to girls”
“To feel happy and confident all day”
“I want to project a positive image”
“I want to have empowering self beliefs”
“I want people to like me for who I am”
“I want to believe in myself”
These are some examples of the less crazy goals I get sent. Whenever I work with a new client I get them to fill out 5 things they want to achieve or do. With every single client I have to send back their form and explain why it is a poor goal. Until someone starts being realistic and making tangible goals, there is little I can help them with.
Let’s go through some of the above goals and understand why they will never work.
“I want to be more confident”
This is probably the most common thing I get sent. The aim to be more confident, however how do you measure confidence? How do you know if you are more or less confident than you are now? With this goal I send it back and ask “if you were more confident, what would you be able to do that you can not do now?”
People seem to believe that confidence is some sort of magic fluid that flows though our veins. It isn’t, therefore it can not be measured. All that can be measured is real world actions, results are based on what you do not how you feel. I am a firm believer that confidence comes from competence. A friend of mine said to me yesterday “would you prefer the person flying your plane to be competent or confident?”
As confidence is not something that can be measured, it is a pointless goal. You are trying to achieve something that doesn’t actually exist. This in itself causes a lot of frustration as how can you tell how far you have come? What is the actual end point? How do you know when you have arrived? When you have arrived, then what?
Here is a conversation I had with a client earlier this week;
Me: How can I help you?
Client: I want to be more confident.
Me: OK, if you were more confident what would you be able to do that you can’t do now?
Client: If I was more confident I would enjoy life more.
Me: OK, back to the question I asked.
Client: what do you mean?
Me: well what would you actually be able to do in the real world that you can not do now?
Client: I would have more confidence to do things.
Me: specifically what things?
Client: like meeting new people
Me: Ok, what people, when and where?
Client: I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.
And there is the problem. People want to achieve this magic feeling of confidence but without any idea of what they want to be able to do. Instead of making real world logical steps, we instead create fantasies that have little basis in reality.
Instead of setting a goal around a feeling, set it around real world actions. Be specific as you can, “meeting new people” is not a goal, it is just a fantasy. Going to a new social group on Wednesday at 7pm and speaking to 5 new people, now that is a goal! That is something I can actually help people with. Wanting to “meet new people” is far too vague and ambiguous to actually do anything with.
“I want to have empowering self beliefs”
I HATE the words “empowering” and “beliefs”. They are the core of a lot of dangerous self help nonsense, and again, they do not exist. I usually find that people who want to adopt empowering beliefs have a poor self image and want to over compensate by feeling better about themselves. Trying to change how you feel about yourself is stupid, you can only change your actions! Your beliefs are formed because of what you do, your actions are not governed by a magical belief you either do or do not have!
I was working with a client last week who 32, he is 5 stone overweigh, wears really old crap clothes, lives at home with his parents, is currently unemployed and has really poor personal hygiene. He wanted me to help install some new empowering beliefs. He had been to a “success” seminar a few weeks earlier and felt great, but now his problems had returned. He now wanted me to help install some empowering beliefs so he can “smash his limits”, or whatever crap they were peddling at the event.
When I asked him what he thought about himself, he replied that he hated himself and thought he was a useless loser. He wanted me to help install empowering beliefs so he could feel better about himself and be more positive. He did not want to change his actions, he wanted to change how he felt about himself. I informed him that I can not help him do this, as he wants to feel better about how he is living his life now. His goals should be about real world changes, not just how he feels about himself.
More and more people are taking antidepressants to deal with the stresses of modern day life. One of the main effects of antidepressants is to help people get by; they do this by allowing people to feel OK about their problems. If not antidepressants, then people often drink or do drugs to get to a point where they like themselves. Wanting to feel empowered is the same thing, it isn’t changing what you do, it is wanting to feel OK about what you are doing now. This is not going to help you change, if anything it keeps you stuck.
Self help books and courses have what I like to call the “sun tan effect”. You feel great when you are there or reading about it, and for a few days afterwards. However once all the warm fuzzy feelings fade away you are left with your old problems. This is why people attend “success” seminars every year and read self help book after self book. It allows people to temporally escape their problems and believe they are actually making progress in their life. It is the same as overweight people reading diet books, it might feel like you are doing something but little will actually change, especially in the long term.
When I work with clients for inner game issues, I always ask what they are looking forward to. The usual answer is nothing, or they don’t know. We all have fantasy goals like being rich, moving away to live on an island or finding the perfect girlfriend, but they are just fantasies. Most people kind of know what they want, but they have no solid plans on how to get there. Or if they do have plans, they want to feel confident before taking the first step.
When you have nothing to look forward to in life, it usually causes depression. When you are depressed you tend to think that by achieving something major, like getting a girlfriend, becoming slim or winning the lottery will make you happy. If you have a crap life before the big change, then it is likely to be crap a short while after too, after the warm and fuzzy feeling fade. We are sold on the idea of instant happiness and getting overnight results. The faster you change something, the faster it will revert back.
When I work with clients I help them to achieve real world goals in a methodical and logical way. I firmly believe that what you do in life is much more important than how you feel. If you are trying to chase a feeling, then it will elude you. A client yesterday told me that he is depressed and doesn’t have a social life so he spends most of his time playing games consoles at home. I had to explain to him that he is depressed and without a social life because he spends all day on the games console. Your feelings are a result of your actions.
So here are some basic steps you can take to make real world goals.
1. Pick a direction, not a destination. Some good examples are; to have a good social life, to become healthier and to live a more exciting life.
2. Pick a tangible and measurable goal. If your goal is to have a good social life, when what does this mean to you? Does it mean going out 3-4 times a week, having friends over to watch the football, going out for meals etc?
3. Now we have a solid goal, we can reverse engineer it into small milestones. Write down everything that has to happen for you to achieve this tangible goal. This process usually throws out a lot of information you didn’t originally take into consideration.
4. Make 4 – 6 milestones with all the information from the previous step. This now creates a 4-6 step process on how to achieve your goal.
5. Finally start putting some dates next to these small milestones and also allocate some rewards for achieving them. If your goal is weight loss, then if you lose 6 lbs, buy yourself a new watch etc.
6. Once you start to come close to achieving the first major milestone, repeat the above process but for the next goal. If you arrive at your goal without a direction, then we often go back the way we came. We often don’t make big changes in our life because we just don’t know how to. We perceive the first step to be a massive one, so we are reluctant to take it. We want to feel 100% confident or empowered before we embark on such a mission. We don’t want to ruin the fantasy of whatever the goal is, so this prevents us from ever taking the first step. There is always another book, course or seminar we have to take before we actually feel confident enough to execute our plans.
By wanting to feel confident before we do the real world physical action, is the same as wanting all the lights to be green before we set off on a journey.
So in conclusion, work out what you want to do, make a plan and then get to work. Do the things that make you feel empowered and confident, don’t try to chase the feeling itself. The feeling is always the result of the real world physical actions.
If you want help planning and achieving your goals, please drop me an email at hypnomatt@puatraining.com
Hypnomatt
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