Have you ever read a book or seen a movie that featured
medieval punishment where offender had each of their arms and legs roped to a horse and then horses were whipped to a frenzy, pulling in opposite directions until offender was ripped into pieces?Not nice.
But that's pretty much what we do to ourselves when we use a traditional goal setting program.
Of course results aren't quite as bloody but they are as grisly: failure, stress, let down, headaches, insomnia, etc.
Instead of four horses pulling frantically in four different directions, we usually have four major parts of our brains doing same thing.
Those four parts are:
- left brain - right brain - midbrain - brainstem.
And each of these parts controls a major aspect of us.
The left brain is responsible for our conscious awareness and our thoughts.
The right brain is responsible for our creativity, all sorts of rhythmic behavior, putting together memory into useable chunks, etc. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.
The midbrain is responsible for our emotional energy - energy that powers us in getting things done and in creating memories. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.
The brainstem is responsible for physical stimulus-response, for jerking our hand away from a hot stove, for hitting tennis ball, for jerking our car away from an intruding other driver. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.
When these four parts aren't in agreement on an objective and how to achieve it, failure is almost certain.
And that's case with traditional goal setting systems because they deal with only one of those parts, conscious mind.
It's something like asking someone who speaks only English, another only French, another only Japanese and another only Russian to perform a job that requires a high level of coordination among four of them to be successful.
The result is chaos, something like old silent movies.
Or like a football team where each player is running a different play.
