Why do we so often become distracted before reaching our dreams, aspirations and goals?
What leads to procrastination?
How about “shiny object syndrome?”
It turns out, we are wired (as a factor of evolution) and reinforced (through society) to jump toward pleasure and avoid pain…
This often translates into short-term pleasure chasing at the COST of limiting our attainment of longer term goals whether they be in the areas of health & wellness, career, income, relationships or personal growth.
Success at anything in life involves resisting immediate pleasure in favor of your ultimate goal.
Not something we, as humans, are very good at…which is why more often than not, we fail to achieve our goals.
3 Ways To Prioritize Longer-Term Goals And Avoid Procrastination
Here are 3 ways you can get better at resisting short-term pleasure in favor of sticking to your longer-term goals
- Make sure your longer-term goal is BIG and emotionally important enough. It’s easier to lose weight when you know you will be seeing a very desirable person in 2-weeks on a beach. The trick, of course, is to make sure you continue to line-up BIG, emotionally charged goals so you don’t lose your discipline once the goal is achieved
- Pick a path that is more pleasurable than painful. I see many people setting a BIG financial or business goal only to fail because they hate the job, career or business they choose to reach their goal. The idea is to make the PATH toward your goal as pleasurable as possible, even if it’s a reach for you. The chance of you sticking with it are MUCH greater.
- Associate MORE pain with giving in to your short-term desires than to sticking with the path to your ultimate objective. We must trick our brains into overloading on the outcome of succumbing to short-term distractions.
What if by choosing pleasure today we lose out on the BIG, emotionally important goal in the future.
By elevating the outcome of your choices TODAY with longer-term outcomes you reverse the negative, short-term distractions that impact tomorrow.
