In my last post I said that knowing why you want to achieve the goal you’ve set for this year can help keep you motivated to keep going when things get tough. And at some point, things will get tough.
Knowing why will help because you pursue goals to feel different from how you feel now.
The root of the word emotion is emovere. The root of the word motivation is movere.
The word movere means “move”
Both emotion and motivation are rooted in movement.
If you’ve ever worked in sales, you’ve heard that “emotions sell”. Even if someone wants all the facts before making a decision, it’s the feeling they get from knowing those facts that moves them to act.
Volvo doesn’t sell the features that make their cars solid – Volvo sells safety. It’s that desire to feel safe that moves people to buy.
You’re going after your goal because of how you want to feel when you achieve it, no matter how altruistic your goal may be.
And here’s how so many of us get it wrong.
You get inspired by an idea, a book, a speaker, or a problem you want to solve. It sparks something inside of you. That spark is the emotion that is your call to action.
And you act, and act and act. You’re determined. You’re motivated. You’re focused.
But as you focus on the goal you’re going to achieve one day, you find yourself living in the GAP – that uncomfortable place between where you are now and where you want to be.
I’ve got no problem with being uncomfortable. Without discomfort, there’s no growth. The problem comes when you’re so focused on accomplishing that goal, that you’ve lost sight of how you want to feel.
I’ve had clients so focused on how great they’ll feel when they reach their ideal weight that they don’t enjoy their body even as they’re dropping sizes. Some are so focused on the great life they’ll create for their family once they’ve “made it” that they’re missing the joy of their kids day to day.
Focusing on the result you want to achieve will keep you in the GAP and you’ll miss much of the good in your life right now. So what can you do instead?
Get back in touch with how achieving that goal will make you feel. Review my last post and keep asking yourself why until you feel the answer that feels like home.
Remember those feelings. Work on your goal in a way that makes you feel them now. Even put your goal aside from time to time when you’ve lost touch with these feelings and do things now that make you feel the way you want to feel.
In my last example I used the goal of doubling revenue to lead to a sense of calm – but if you’re hustling, stressing, losing sleep and sometimes losing it altogether to double your revenue – you’re making the Gap bigger, the goal feels further away, and actually becomes harder to achieve.
Go for your goal in a way that matches how you want to feel when you get there and you’ll close the GAP.