How Your Nervous System Impacts Goal Setting and Your Ability to Hit Higher Targets

You are all ready to start the new year with a new set of goals. 

Perhaps you are thinking that this year is going to be different. 

It will be the year where you manage to break new ground, step up or scale your business. 

You are more determined than ever to meet your goals. 

Well, to increase your chances of success, an understanding about your nervous system is going to help.

In fact, if you have not made much headway in previous years, this could be the ONE thing that you are missing in that explains your lack of success. 

It’s not just about your mindset. 

Or about changing your beliefs. 

Rather, it’s about how your nervous system works. 

How Your Nervous System Holds You Back from Setting and Meeting Goals

The role of your nervous system is to protect you from harm. It is a survival mechanism. Your nervous system works to keep you safe. 

Yet, goal setting often means raising the bar, scaling your business or expanding operations; such that you’d be challenged to reach a higher target than the one in the previous year. 

However, if your goal stretches you, your queasy nervous system may just hold you back. 

Either you don’t get started, you give up or you fail to meet what you’ve realistically set at first. 

Your nervous system works in concert with your mind, basing the information it has already embodied from the past and now influencing your behaviour patterns.

What this means is this: if you have internalised that it’s not safe to undertake any “risky” moves or to venture into unknowns that stretches you, you can find it hard to get past your nervous system. 

As soon as you try to edge out of your comfort zone, your body gives you signals that it is becoming unsafe for you.

It may be that you experience a discomforting sensation in the stomach, tension headache, skin itchiness. You get physical signs? – sometimes subtle?- that stop you from stretching more. With the innate tendency to avoid the discomfort and pain, your ability to undertake actions becomes impacted.

Your nervous system is also connected with sabotaging patterns like…

• Overwhelm
• Procrastination
• Perfectionism
• Giving Up Prematurely.

While you would like to achieve your goals, your nervous system alerts you to stay safe. In short, body and mind needs to be in alignment before you can get going on your goals. Where there is no alignment, you are more likely to struggle when working towards your goals. 

Your Nervous System Is Not Concerned with Hitting Goals

Recognise this…

While your nervous system serves a protective purpose, it is NOT helpful as it can limit your potential.

It puts a cap on your capacity to thrive beyond just survival.

Thus, my recommendation is…

It doesn’t mean that you stop setting goals, you still do. Setting goals gives you a direction on what to work on to shift to the next level.

Rather, the best way forward is to calm your nervous system while working towards your goals at every stage. It’s how you can up-level with a lot more ease (instead of struggle).

Achieving goals involve a journey where you are likely to meet blocks Chances are, you are going to encounter internal blocks. It’s hard to move forward with a strategy plan if you are in your own way.

Knowing this fact is key….

To achieve breakthrough goals, it’s not just about changing mindsets, it’s also about calming your nervous system while you edge out of your comfort zone. 

The Better Way Forward with Goal Setting and Up-levelling Your Business

In short, to raise your chances of success, work with an understanding about the nervous system, subconscious beliefs, energy release of the past and somatic awareness.

Admittedly, it can seem quite a lot to process and handle when working towards your goals. 

Fortunately, there is a way of distilling all these into a simple yet effective system that offers a better way forward. Finally, be able to meet your aligned goals with a lot more ease. Hence, if you’ve been feeling stuck and would like to make 2024 a year of growth and transformation, find out more about 3-Step Coaching Alchemy Program by applying for a discovery call. 

Love and Abundance Always,
Evelyn Lim
Transformation Coach for Women Solopreneurs 

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