In today’s consulting industry they have taken on a leading role. In our business world we cannot seem to live without them.

Who does not have them, cannot achieve anything – is worthless.

Goals.

Unfortunately, the “goal propaganda” preachers act in total unawareness of the true side effects of “goal thinking”, thus sending a great number of people into very difficult situations.

Take a look at the exact process that “goal setting” ignites:

If you set a goal then this is nothing else then expressing your will to transform a “given” situation into a “desired” situation.

It now is like “this” but you would rather have it like “that”

Problem: as known for a long time and proven in endless studies, every conscious thought ignites a subconscious programming sequence. Now, setting a goal really is saying, that you do not have that which you desire! Otherwise you would not set the goal to achieve or obtain something in the first place.

So what really happens is that the resulting subconscious programming will translate this “goal message” into “becoming aware” of a specific lack. Instead of strengthening your mental system or thought patterns, you are actually weakening them, by in reality programming the emotion of lack underneath your conscious thought of “positive thinking”.

Bluntly said: by setting a goal you are subconsciously making yourself aware of the fact that you do not have what you want.

You set the goal to be rich, so you program your subconsciousness that you are not.

You set the goal to quit smoking, so you program your subconsciousness that you cannot stop it.

You set the goal to loose weight, so you program your subconsciousness that you are overweight.

Etc.

So the core problem is that by subconsciously recognizing the lack through setting of a specific goal the entire organism is weakened on the bio-chemical level.

We all no this: we notice consciously, that we “do not have something we desire” and we suddenly feel down, low or weakened. The only difference is that in this case we consciously feel the “negative effect” of this thought.

While setting a goal, we do not consciously notice the negative effect, as the information is processed unconsciously, so we are aware of the consequences.

This process of weakening the “system” can be exactly monitored, as this weakening is nothing else than the substantial reduction of your entire cell compound energy level.

This is not philosophy or religion. It is a proven fact that can be monitored with scientific hardware. Cell energy is expressed by photon light emission that can very well be measured.

For example: recent studies have shown that athletes who mentally programmed themselves to reach a certain goal or performance disposed up to 30 % lower energy levels than these exact same athletes, if they were to simply carry out the same activity for “the fun of it”.

A reason why athletes often report to do better in practice than in competition.

Athletes who participated in an event for money, pride or some accolade showed substantially lower overall cellular energy levels that those athletes, who participated for the love of the sport, or dedicated their performance to a loved one or a higher goal such as their country or the enjoyment of the spectators.

This is totally against all common training and preparation practices we know today, but it is evenly a scientific fact that has been proven again and again in thousands of studies.

So it is really up side down. The more goals you have, the more you fight, the less energy you have to actually reach them.

The source for one big epidemic of our time: Burn Out Syndrome.

As said, this is a proven fact. Unfortunately, this “goal free” philosophy, which is more a fact, does not blend in well with a society that is based and driven by success, goals and performance in just about everything we do.

Goals have another aspect to them. In the coaching practice we notice that the majority of classical “management coaching” clients with severe psychological problems are nearly always (+90 %) people of the “doer” type. The type that gets things done, that makes it happen, the active type who controls all ends.

“Doers” have goals. Lots of them. Goals are just another form of control – you wish to control a future outcome. Doers love control, the do not leave anything to chance.

The problem: Control is always a subconscious expression of fear. If you do not fear, you do not need to control. You trust. That’s the difference to control. To trust. To know.

But this is just too philosophical for a “doer”.

Nevertheless, you cannot evade the fact that subconsciously the need to control always comes from fear. So if you need to control, you are (A.) programming your system with fear and (B.) reacting to the fear previously programmed in your subconsciousness.

The process immediately leads into a spiral effect.

Consciously your ego is suggesting that you are in control of things, but subconsciously – and this is where it counts – you are programming your entire cell system with fear.

Because one thing must be clear: you can never be in control of things. This would imply knowledge of all the possible events, influences, circumstances and developments that will occur in the next moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years.

Impossible. So control is always an illusion. It exists only by reaction to a subconsciously inherent fear.

Interestingly, studies have shown, that a body can only entertain the notion or emotion of fear – especially subconscious fear – for a period of 4-6 years before first signs of psychological disturbances occur – soon followed by physical disturbances.

We live in times where the goal thinking culture has saturated our society on all levels. Goals and performance are the main pillars of our economic culture. Anyone without goals is a “loser” and those who have them, but fail to reach them are even worse off.

That’s where we get to the next problem with goals:

In the instant we set a goal, we – again subconsciously – nourish the fear that we might fail to reach it. In addition to the “first” fear we implanted with our goal setting, we add another psychologically toxic pollutant – fear of failure.

Consciously setting one goal subconsciously sparks two fundamental fears:

The fear of lack and the fear of failure.

So it is easy and obvious to recognize that goals rather represent a shortcut to fear than a support to achieve happiness and fulfillment.

A recent study of Harvard University foresees that by 2020 every 2. American will suffer from a form of psychological disturbance. Sources linked to this development are clearly identified in the goal thinking and performance pressure of our modern society.

Performance pressure only comes from goal setting.

So instead of getting a successful and happy goal reaching society we are getting a society totally infected by the destructive, cancer like consequences of goals = fear.

Another difficult aspect with goals: they are very limiting.

Why?

If you set a goal, you usually set the ways, how you will achieve it (control!). We think we know the way to our goal. Thus ruling out all the ways we do not know.

Problem: Actively “manipulating” our selective awareness, the one most important “tool” for our awareness of anything, above all life, we willingly limit the ways by which that which we desire may be achieved. We limit our awareness and become unaware of other opportunities that may lead to the reaching of our goal.

Plainly spoken: if we decide to work 12 hours a day for the next 25 years in order to save up 1 Million we consequently take our awareness off any other way we could accumulate such a fortune – or more! – we rule out all the other options that are available to us, as we simply programmed our selective awareness to not see them – we stick to our plan – control!

Brocken down this is a quite simple process: the selective awareness is a tool that filters the approx. 600 billion information fractals that “enter” our system every day via our senses. It does this, because we can consciously only process a maximum of 20 billion information fractals a day.

What the selective awareness will do for us is filter out those information fractals that have a relevance to our predominant thinking, view of things or interests and forward only this filtered information to our conscious thinking.

It filters information that supports and confirms our predominant thoughts.

Naturally, all of this happens unconsciously.

To give a simple example: we all know this. We are in the market for a new car. So we have chosen it to be a Mini. Suddenly, out of nowhere we start noticing Minis on each and every corner. They were there before – we just did not notice them, as our selective awareness was not programmed to give us information about Minis.

Very simple, yet with dramatic impact on our lives.

We programmed our predominant thought system and with that our selective awareness that we will work 12 hours a day for 25 years to then accumulate 1 Million. Doing so we program our selective awareness to forward all incoming information that supports and confirms this assumption or goal and at the same time block out all information that seams contradictory.

This “contradictory information” could be an opportunity right in front of us to make the desired 1 Million in 2 months. But we programmed our system that this information has no relevance. Although it has!

The selective awareness is the one most important guidance humans have. Tragically, most of us do not even know about its existence, leave alone how to use it.

What is really tragic is that we do not understand how goal setting undermines the selective awareness.

What this means?

You set a goal to loose weight. So in “reality” you programmed your self that you are overweight. Simultaneously, you programmed your selective awareness to filter incoming information and forward – to your conscious thinking – only such fractals that confirm this assumption – that you are overweight.

How do you feel this in everyday life?

For example this may happen while you walk through a mall and notice some people in a corner looking at you and laughing. Your immediate interpretation – forced by the selective awareness – “they are laughing at me! Because I am so overweight!”.

The reality is, the people were only looking in your direction, past you, but not at you! And, they were laughing about something taking place behind you!

But your programmed selective awareness “allows” you to only notice what you “want” to see, as you receive incoming information filtered by it. It interprets and modifies all incoming information so that it confirms your predominant thought.

So you see the world and every thing in it with your eyes. This is not reality – it is only your personal interpretation of it – or more exactly the interpretation of your selective awareness, modified in a way to best suit your predominant thoughts.

The selective awareness is what makes you go right instead of left, it makes you avoid people or situations instead of actively welcoming them, it is what makes you stay home instead of going out, it is what keeps you in your limited view of life or personal chances and opportunities instead of recognizing what is possible.

So we understand that goals can be tricky, but what gets us in to trouble with the same pace are the derivates of “goal setting”.

One example: Visualization.

After all, visualization is nothing else than goal setting. Usually people try to visualize something that is not there. Something they wish to achieve or acquire.

The same process as with goals is ignited. You visualize, hence you notice “it is not so” with all the known negative programming effects.

The trouble with visualizing as often taught today is that most recommend to practice it on a daily basis. So you end up subconsciously reminding your self of a specific lack, thus time after time reprogramming your entire cell system and above all selective awareness to the notion and emotion of lack and of course fear.

So the next time we set a goal or hear about the fabulous goals of someone, we should think twice before embarking on a ship that will not take us to the harbor happiness and fulfillment.

Practice in the mental training and coaching has shown, that eliminating goals and goal thinking from the individual motivation system always leads to an immediate and total relief from the psychological disturbances this form of thinking causes.

As in advanced psychology – in contrary to traditional psychology – the active nourishing of mental fear is widely recognized as the main source for psychological disturbances. It is very obvious – besides being bio-chemically measurable – that the permanent entertaining of “goal thinking” is a most toxic and adverse thought pattern.

In the past 20 years goal and performance thinking has completely saturated our social and economical environment. One could think that there may be a link to the extreme increase of psychological illnesses during this past two decades.

Especially when we acknowledge the fact, that more than 80 % of all psychological illnesses are related to fear.

When we speak about goals we must always differentiate “subconsciously highly active goals” from “ subconsciously less active goals.”

You may have the goal to eat a pizza this evening, to meet a friend next week, to make a vacation, or to buy a new suit next time you are in town. All these actions are goal setting too, but on another mental level and without impact on our life –simply because they are not as meaningful as the goal to loose weight or become rich. The non-achievement of such “less meaningful” goals does not perpetuate the amount of subconscious fear, as “existential goals” do.

As with many things, there is no black and white…