The Case Against Long-Term Goals

Here is a pretty basic question: Have you ever set a long-term goal and then not achieved it? If so, you're right up there with 99.99% of the entire human population. One of the problems with long-term goals is that they're incredibly difficult to achieve, and for the most part, we end up giving up on them and then feeling like failures.

One of my all-time favourite productivity authors is Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. He has this excellent idea about setting New Year's goals, which is: don't do it. At least not until you've taken stock of everything that happened over the last year. He has a process that he calls the "Sacred Bow" (rhymes with cow) - which is to look at each month over the last year and simply note the major events that occurred. Then look at all of the lessons you learned and all of the accomplishments that you achieved over the last year.  

"Give yourself a rest from managing! When Someone Else is doing it for you, don't start doing it for yourself!  Your striving for what is absolutely guaranteed to you and your laxness in what is required of you are evidence that your inner eye is dull." Here's my take on this gem of ancient wisdom...  

I have a confession to make:  I always used to be pretty terrible at reaching goals.  Yikes! Sounds like I might be in the wrong profession as a life-coach, right? Or maybe that's exactly the reason I'm good at my job. I've had to learn to deal with my own under-achieving tendencies and failures and get over it in order to get anywhere in life.

It's 2026 and I gotta tell ya… I've got a good feeling about this year.  Over the winter break, I had a lot of much-needed down time and made some big decisions - mostly about… you! I noticed that in previous years, when it comes to my daily blog articles and podcasts, I've always been a bit on-and-off about it. When I have a big new exciting event or product to promote, I send you an email almost every day.  And when things are 'quiet' or when I'm busy delivering that program, I've tended to slow down on sending messages to the rest of my subscribers.  Not any more...  

If your wife's been acting a little strange and moody today, it's because… You forgot! Today is "Yawm al Hubb", as my wife likes to call it, ie Valentine's Day.  Now there are a lot of people in the world who will try to convince you that Valentine's Day is a bidah, an innovation in the religion of Islam and that in Islam, there are two days of celebration, the two Eids.

I have full confidence that Indiana Jones himself, the character played by the legendary Harrison Ford, would definitely search for, find and flip "The Spiritual Switch". Here's why… Did you ever see the absolutely brilliant movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"? It's the one where Indiana's father, played by the late great Sir Sean Connery, joined Indi on an adventure to find the Holy Grail.

A question came in the other day, from a client who scheduled in a "Personal Breakthrough Session" with me and they were a little bit perturbed. They were going through my online programs like "The Psychological Switch" and "Meet and Marry the One", but there was something about what they were learning that really turned them off.

A few years ago, I was generously gifted a free ticket to a Tony Robbins "Unleash the Power Within" event. And it was a delightful experience. I went to the event a couple of years after discovering "The Spiritual Switch" (aka. The Psychological Switch) so during the event, I had a deep understanding of where my feelings truly come from – and of the fact that I don't actually need any "ninja" NLP mindset techniques to feel better.

One morning, a couple of years ago, I was getting my twin boys ready to go to nursery and the older twin who is a whopping three minutes older than his brother was a little bit on the grumpy side. He hadn't slept through the night and woke me up a couple of times. So he wasn't in a particularly great mood and to be honest… neither was I.