You can’t achieve a goal you haven’t set, so the first thing to do, is to decide what you want from life and set some goals around it. Once you’ve done that, it’s time for the Reticular Activation System (RAS) in your brain to get to work, filtering out irrelevant information and presenting you with what you need to achieve your goal. But how do you know you’re giving it everything it needs? Would you be interested to learn that there are ways of supercharging your RAS so that it presents you with the best opportunities to meet your goal quicker and more easily?
If you consider achieving a goal to be like taking a journey, and your RAS like the Satellite Navigation System you use to get there, then it’s easier to see what your RAS might need. The first thing you need when you’re taking a journey is to be really clear on your destination. Imagine you’re going to a restaurant you haven’t been to before. What happens if you put just the name of the city it’s in into your Sat Nav? You might end up in the vicinity of the restaurant, but you’re not going to be enjoying their award-winning cuisine any time soon, are you? It’s the same with your goals. The more specific you are about what it is you want, and the more vividly you can picture that goal as reality, the more likely you are to achieve it. Knowing what good looks like is half the battle when it comes to setting and achieving goals.
Some people pay coaches to help them get really clear on their goals, but it’s just as easy to coach yourself. Here are some great coaching questions to ask yourself so that you set meaningful goals, supercharge your RAS, and make it happen.
Set Meaningful Goals
If you want to set meaningful goals, take a notepad and answer the following.
Describe your perfect world.
- What do you want to achieve in the long term?
- What areas do you want to work on?
- What do you want to achieve in your life?
- What’s important to you right now?
- What will make you feel this time has been well spent?
Once you have your answers, choose one thing you want to achieve or change, and set a goal around it. Now move on to the next set of questions.
Supercharge Your RAS
When you answer these questions in your notepad, write about what you’ll see, hear, and feel as if you’ve achieved your goal already. Write everything that comes to mind, no matter how silly you think it is, or how out of reach. Make the picture really vivid.
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