How to Easily Beat the Three Greatest Enemies To Conquering Your Goals

And ensure you don’t fall short of your potential

6 min readJun 5, 2022

Yesterday, I was reading the intake forms of three new clients. As I read them, it was like winning a game of snap. I kept seeing the same problems appear. Seemingly insurmountable hurdles to conquering goals and bringing their visions into reality. Moreover, I see these same problems with around 90% of all clients. While there are reasons for this, and, indeed, deeper level core problems, it is important you avoid these three enemies of success.

These three enemies are :-

Procrastination
Distraction
Impatience

If you don’t beat the three enemies; procrastination, distraction and impatience, I guarantee you will fall short of your full potential. Perhaps you can relate to some of the below statements?

‘I procrastinate and find myself distracted. It’s hard to keep focused. I don’t stick to my goals. Somehow, I feel like I have huge potential, but it’s locked away inside, and I can’t access it.’
‘I know what I should do to move forward, but am still not taking the action to achieve my goals. Clarity? I don’t have clarity. My confidence has eroded in the last two years.’
‘Why do I always get distracted even though I know what I need to do? ‘ ‘I know what I need to do, but I just don’t do it, so I tend to procrastinate and get distracted and waste so much time.’

If you are committed, here is the easy way to conquering your goals

The shortcut to overcoming these three enemies and conquering your goals are :-

Have a compelling vision fuelled by a driving emotion
Create a habit of always taking intentional action
Cultivate the skill of patience and make delaying gratification your friend

Even then, you still have the hurdles of overcoming your hidden patterns, limiting beliefs, aligning your values and overcoming your biases. Additionally, conquering goals takes other ingredients, including determination, curiosity, support and working on your mindset. Furthermore, maintaining a calm and focused energy without being attached to the rush of endorphins resulting from instant rewards. Topics I cover in other blogs.

Why the tortoise usually beats the hare

One of the main keys to success is being okay with doing some repetitive tasks over and over. Tasks that are often boring, unexciting or tedious. Consequently, they feel of less value and offer less meaning. However, over the long term they are often vital foundations for future growth and success. Furthermore, we need to focus on slow but steady progress instead of fun, fast and exciting things. If we don’t, we lose interest, and due to a lack of instant reward, our innate tendency is to move away from this task and find something that is less arduous. A task that brings instant gratification.

Importantly, this is where the enemies of distraction and procrastination come in. However, procrastinating isn’t doing nothing. It’s simply doing mundane, easy, fun or more pleasurable things than the important and crucial tasks.

Finally, our brains are adept at scanning the environment for danger. Consequently, we are highly attuned to visual distractions. It’s not surprising that with the amount of technological noise around us 24/7 that without clear boundaries, we succumb to distractions.

Monotasking beats multitasking and is key to conquering goals

When we get distracted by an interesting post on social media, we are merely buying into someone else’s agenda or goals. It therefore costs us two of our most valuable currencies, attention, or focus and time. Yet we crave the feeling of excitement or anticipation as dopamine flows from our brain into our bodies. This seems to lift our spirits and therefore makes it hard to resist.

Multitasking is out and monotasking is in. A Stanford study showed that rather than multitasking, we merely switch back-and-forth between tasks, killing our performance and productivity. Focusing on one task seems daunting, but even five minutes of monotasking can significantly boost productivity and lead you towards conquering your goals.

The solution? First, we must cultivate patience. Second, restrain ourselves from bright shiny objects. Third, maintain focus and energy towards our goals, our vision. Ultimately, the clearer we are with what we want and why we want it, the better choices we make and the less likely we are to suffer from distractions.

Deliberate Purposeful Practice is the key to conquering your goals

In performance psychology, there is a term we call ‘Deliberate, Purposeful Practice.’ Taking one thing, deciding on the intended outcome, fully focusing on it, executing, reviewing, tweaking if required and repeating. There is little glamour in this, only the future glory from achieving the long-term result, after consistent training.

‘Practice not only matters, but determines everything. There is one thing that distinguishes experts, truly the very best in any field, from everyone else. And it isn’t talent, size, strength, agility, or some innate gift. It is the amount of time they spend in deliberate practice. Therefore, the most effective forms of practice are going to modify the structure and function of the brain, increasing your ability to perform a skill. Purposeful practice gets you there.’ Eddie O’Connor — Clinical Sports Psychologist

Doing what is important even if you don’t feel like it, is key

Success entails doing what matters even when you don’t feel like it. Consider athletes. Their commitment to their success means they will get up and train despite feeling tired, rain, cold or other reasons and excuses.

Showing up every day, making good choices and keeping your vision close to your heart is important for conquering your goals

In conclusion, winning requires us to show up every day, do what needs to be done whether we feel like it or not. Furthermore, it’s about making better choices, and keeping your focus where you want it to be. Moreover, doing arduous or unexciting tasks is a normal part of this. In addition, taking time to reflect with an attitude of curiosity. This lens allows us to alter and change what isn’t working as well as strengthening what is. Simple. Yet outside the world of sports, I hesitate to guess what the percentage of people who adhere to these principles is?

Now the question for you is which one will you start to work on first? Developing patience, consistency, focus or intentional action? Or, do you need to back a step and ensure you have a clear vision and goal to shoot for? One that excites you and is compelling enough for you to stay on the path to conquering your goals.

About the Author

Mandy Napier is a Global High Performance Mindset Coach who is dedicated to supporting high achievers fulfil their potential and achieve extraordinary results professionally and personally. Transformations are the norm, and results guaranteed.

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Categories: Habits, Mindset By Mandy Napier May 26, 2022

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