“...I'm Sick of Goal Setting,
I'm a Caveman! ”
There's only one reason anyone is motivated to do anything.
It doesn't matter if you're scoping out your future financial targets, trying to attract a customer to buy from you, or commanding and training an army of distributors--there's only one thing that motivates every single human being.
I was recently speaking with my old friend Mark and I hadn't seen him in almost a year.
"Jim, can you help me out?" he asked.
It would be bad manners to do anything other than say yes, right? His mind had clearly been scrambled with personal development guru-speak but I allowed him to tell his tale anyway and loaned my sympathetic ear.
His story was really a sad one:
At 35 years of age, with $50 to his name, he quit his job, moved in with a friend, and was at risk of overstaying his welcome any day.
"I want to live the life of my dreams, Jim, I'm sick of this," he pleaded with me.
Mark's story is like so many people in the Home Business world who are addicted to Personal Development books, tools, and seminars just like drugs. They build "castles in the clouds" with grand dreams of wealth and success but never get a whiff of its ozone.
I would love if you'd take a minute to go into the back of your mind and dig out the goal that started you on your Home Business adventure. You still remember what your dreams looked like, don't you?
Hopefully you do. Tell me, is that a tangible goal for you? Can you see it, touch it, taste it, smell it, and hear it?
Or is it just a fantasy far in the distance?
*SNAP* - Wake Up!
In the Savannah, primitive man lived a raw life of fighting for his survival. Goals had no meaning beyond staying alive.
Our bodies are surviving machines:
- We CONSUME our energy when we move.
- We INCREASE our energy when we eat.
- We SAVE our energy when we use less of it by taking or creating a shortcut or simply by doing nothing.
Every sub-atomic decision you take in your life is motivated by your survival instinct and categorised by your brain as an Energy Consumer, an Energy Increaser, or an Energy Saver exercise.
When faced by a dangerous enemy in the wild, you have the choice to fight, run, or stand still. Fighting probably uses the most energy, has the least chance of short-term survival (you could be killed in battle), and best chance of long-term survival (you won't have to fight again if you kill this enemy).
To live longer, we're designed to want to save energy.
Energy you save now can be used later to fight off an enemy or to chase down food.
Of course, we don't live in caves any more and we rarely have to fight or chase our food. And that explains why we'd rather bake in the sun at the beach on a summer Sunday instead of calling up leads or studying how to generate them.
There is a time, though, when you'll step up and ignore your urge to SAVE energy and go SPEND it fast..
Fighting for Your Survival
When Mark was done with his story, I asked a question I'd asked many times before: "What do you want, Mark?"
"Man! I want to live in a big house overlooking the ocean, with nothing but the sound of birds chirping around me and waves crashing on the rocks," he replied.
This was the same stuff he was hyped about when he was in USANA and later in ACN. I'm sure your goal sounds more safe than his, right?
Either way, like his instincts, yours will also reject almost all goals.
Finding your own motivation and that of your prospects and downline is a matter of connecting wants to minimal survival needs. I divide the basic needs of any human being into the following three groups:
No matter if you're a king or queen, a super star, or an average fella--Everyone needs:
- Energy (food, water, air)
- Safety (shelter, security, health)
- Relationships (family, partnership, friendship)
You might have already noticed that having a lot of money will relieve at least the top two basic needs. On the other hand, "a lot of money" isn't a minimum. And that's why most goals are rejected by our brains.
Goals are viewed by our caveman instincts as LUXURIES. Where there's a short-cut we take it and keep doing what we've been doing all along because it feels "safe" and "secure".
In fact, coming up with goals will disrupt your pattern and threaten your Safety Survival Need! (Look at the second basic need above).
Any goal that you're surviving without right now is seen by your Caveman Instincts as a luxury.
People often hate their boss even though they have spent their entire lives working for "cruel" bosses. Firing their boss is a luxury, it's not something they need to do. Putting up with it and complaining is a short-cut that fills Basic Need #1 and Basic Need #2.
On the other hand, when their company begins to downsize, the same two needs, their Security and Energy Basic Needs are threatened.
This is the only time they will take active steps to survive.
As long as there's no immediate threat on our survival, goals are desires or dreams that can be put off till another day.
How to Make Your Survival
Dependent on Your Goals
There was a happy ending for my friend Mark.
I probed him with a few revealing questions and discovered what his biggest fear was right then:
"Mark," I said. "Would you stay at the local Mosque again?"
"I would if I had to," he responded. "But I rather not; it's crowded there."
Obviously, he was comfortable staying at his friends' house but didn't like feeling insecure about how long he can stay there. I pressed on anyway, and asked him where he would go if he was kicked out. It was anything BUT the Mosque.
"Would you stay at your friend's if you had $100/week?" I asked.
"Of course not."
"Where would you live then?" I continued.
"At the YHA, man! It's only $90/week."
I said, "Mark, what you need isn't a mansion right now. The way I see it, you need to make $100 a week within the next few weeks or you'll have to move into the Mosque."
Suddenly I saw a change in his face as he realised how painful that would be. And with a fire inside him, he hurriedly thanked me and disappeared.
The survival instinct is a powerful weapon. Find your own motivation first by asking how your survival, your current "safety zone" is affected by NOT achieving your goals. Make sure you link everything back to one of the three basic survival needs I voiced earlier: Energy, Safety, and Relationships.
When you reverse engineer your giant dreams into survival problems in this way, you'll find yourself surprised at how they become desperate, burning thorns in your side that you can't help but rip out fast.
Just three days later, my friend called to tell me he found a job and was moving out to the YHA. He wanted his next step in the grand plan.
There's nothing wrong with having big dreams of mansions and luxury. Just make sure that you break your goal into mini problems that challenge your survival at every stage until your brain feels Safety ONLY in a mansion.
Jim Yaghi, author of 8 Days to Cashflow in MLM, is a professional internet marketer and trainer of Home Business owners. Visit Jim Yaghi's website to connect with him on several social networks.
This article may be copied without changes, while leaving author credit and all links active. Article Source: I'm Sick of Goal Setting, I'm a Caveman!
Comments
Great article, well done. A
Great article, well done. A shift in brain waves. Excellent.
Hell Yeah
Well done, Jim. We are designed for survival. You are all out of the matrix now. Time to start living...
BTW, have you been listening to Tony Robbins again? I thought you were done with those tapes. ;)
-Ferny
Jim, You are certainly a FUN
Jim,
You are certainly a FUN read. Excellent stuff brother.
Nick Hetcher
www.NixTheNews.com (Zany Newscasts for Networkers)
Is that what they look like?
Hmm. Cavemen? Funnily enough Jim, my image of a caveman doesn't seem to fit with yours! Can't help thinking you'd have got more views if you put up an image of Russel Crowe in a loin cloth! (well, you'd have got more views from me anyway)
Great post though. When our survival or that of our loved ones is threatened, the fighting starts in earnest.
San
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The next step
Hey Jim. Great article. Reminds me of another story about sitting on the nail.
Philip.
So true....
Great article Jim.....takes complacency out of the game when one thinks in terms of basic needs.
Bruce Shilander
http://shilander.net
Hmmm......I disagree
I think I'll be in the minority on this one. I think there are some good points in this article but I don't agree with the way they're packaged and delivered.
The basic one being this simple fact: you are not a caveman. Nor does your mind operate on caveman "survival" principles.
There's no question that some people are more motivated by "fear of loss" than "desire for gain". (Some people call them the "stick" and the "carrot"). And when someone understands which one (or which combination of them) creates the most motivation....then they can do some amazing things.
But, I can look back in my life and see all the different transitions that occurred between being a "broke, struggling person" and being someone who's wealthy and successful....and I see no correlation between my experience and what's written here.
Jim, this is my first exposure to your materials so I hope you don't take this as a precedent as I'm sure you and I agree on many things. This concept of being ruled by ancient "survival" instincts just isn't one of them.
Thanks for entertaining a different opinion,
Tony Rush
You make a valid point...
Hey Tony,
You are making a valid point that we're not "cavemen" today. On the otherhand, do you deny that whenever we're placed in a situation our livelihood is threatend we don't step up and do what we gotta do? You've heard of people trapped in caves and in snow storms in mountains and they'd done all kinds they would normally NEVER do just to survive.
The point I wanted to make here in this article is that the strongest motivator for everyone is their survival instinct. To sell to a prospect, we can choose to entice them with big dreams and fantasies of financial freedom--but for it to work, THEY have to translate it into what that means in terms of a problem they are suffering from today.
Now what we can to motivate action is simply to save them the effort of translating. Give them the "carrot" by telling them the great thinsg they can have, but this is only powerful if you precede it by revealing that their livelihood is at stake if they don't take a more immediate action step.
It's really the difference between "long term" and "short term" goals. Both are necessary, not one in isolation. As long as you keep your eye on the carrot long-term goal you can induce panicked action steps toward it with the whip of a short-term goal.
You also just said you were "struggling" and "broke". Moving away from that is a result of your survival instincts fueling you forward.
I hope that's clear, and of course i am not offended that you disagree i only think that I didn't make my point clearly enough to address this issue as it was trimmed down to an article for mass appeal.
Jim
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Shameless Plug..
Hey Jim,
I hope you don't mind a plug for one of my articles, but if you do... I'll buy you a beer sometime.
When I read this I was thinking, either Jim's been reading some of the same books I have or he's one smart mofo for having figured this out...
But there is something missing, which has to do with the conscious choice to defy or go against our 'survival oriented design' as human beings. It's one thing to trick ourselves into believing that we are "surviving", (very effective). It's a whole other thing to completely go against it.
This is why Lao-Tzu said
"One who conquers others is strong;
One who conquers oneself is mighty."
This might help provide my perspective:
http://www.betternetworker.com/articles/view/you-are-not-designed-for-su...
-Ferny
Interesting Read
It is, of course, a different perspective...and each of us are different. What is truly important is that we find what works for us and stick to it. For some, crisis and survival mode works best.
I like your approach...keep up the great work!
Best!
Case History
Jim, this is amazing...
Talk about co-incidences!
Just last week, when I was really down to my last dollar & wondering if my off line "business" should be closed down, (it is my baby & I do so want it to survive), I was considering the mental posture of a person, to be successful in sales, what did they need?.
I had read all the positive thinking/Secret/Attraction etc type books & while I felt I truly believed from my core, in the principles expounded, it just wasn't happening for me!
I am older than I need to be to claim the old age pension & had made a pledge a long time ago that I wouldn't "go on it".
Things were so tough, I had just enough for the current month's bills & that was it!
I had to keep the electricity, phone & internet on, I needed money for rent & food & I had to do something to earn money for the coming month.I had to survive, somehow...
It hit me then, survival income! It was like a bolt of lightening!....one must have basic food, shelter & warmth, it's a survival instinct...I can assure you, it made me realise I needed that "security " if I was to get to the next level on my journey to my own home etc again (after loosing everything recently)
I raced around, inspired (look it up in Websters BIG dictionary), writing it all up on the whiteboard, seeing how it all fitted together, thinking I was the first one to discover this!
Then, as easy as pie, I found I was on my way to the Pension office to apply for the old age pension!
Yes, my very survival was at stake & it over took any remains of pride, dignity or any other value that certainly was not serving me well at this time.
The calm that over came me was enormous; (it needed to be to cope with the 3 inch high pile of forms to fill in), but that next level Jim speaks of, after just survival, can now be contemplated from a platform of basic "survival security".
I see it now as a 5 level staircase..
So, I am very settled in my belief of my future accomplishment of attaining my Wildest Dreams!
I aim to be in the 1.5% of people who earn over $10,000 a month on the internet, so watch my dust!
Survival is underway, then I'll go for a place of my own, then some lifestyle additions, then the big stuff, then later on, I'll achieve the top of my mountain!
How cool you are Jim, You are a confirmation I am on the right track!
Mary
Thank you so much.
Just watch me go when they take my house away!!
Unfortunately people wait until life comes along and slaps them down off that imaginary hill... They have to get up, and get to work or roll under!
Thanks for putting together a great article Jim!
Auzie Rulz!
Great Article from a fair dinkum Australian
Ka Pai (Thanks) Jim
You and Ferny are right on the Spot!
Great article, Jim! Sometimes we do get carried away, and forget our realities to live in the impression that "personal development" will bring food to the table.
And I think Ferny's article just adds to it, because we are not designed for success, we are just built for survival. That's what everybody tries so desperately to do. That's what your friend Mark was most lacking of.
To overcome those Survival instincts, get out of your "just another day in the jungle" mentality, is the jey to building real wealth. You'll never succeed in your comfort zone.
But then again, not everybody wants to succeed.
Great insights, folks! This is a great community!
Hey Leonardo, thanks man.
Hey Leonardo,
thanks man. appreciate your feedback!
I wanted to get your opinion since we're on the topic...Why do you think people get addicted to personal development but don't actually develop themselves with it?
Jim
You're Hired!
Hello Jim,
You definitely know how to grab your reader's attention and keep it. Some good points made although I have to muse on others.
Do you do any freelance article writing? If you do, you're hired! Enjoy the holidays!
John