Dissonance is defined as tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements. It looks, sounds and feels like many things, but in the realm of training and performance coaching it is simply unattained potential; which itself sounds like self-doubt and low confidence, feels like failure and looks like sadness, obesity and a lack of life optimization that leaves a human being in a depressed like state.
The solution is very simple, eliminate the unsuitable elements as quickly as possible to restore the harmonious synchronous actions, thoughts and feelings. Doing this will get someone moving forward again in a hurry. This is a skill and it may take time to cultivate, but it is very easy to do and just requires effort and sacrifice.
But why is does this seem like a challenge to so many people? Well, because most have never been taught how to match thoughts to goals and instead allow their goals to become matched to their thoughts.
Make no mistake about it, those two statements are not the same. Linguistically and mathematically they look very similar in to each other, but when the direction of causation is considered it is evident that goals that are based on thoughts and feelings have more to do with recreating the past or keeping things as they are than anything else while thoughts and feelings that are based on goals are about creating a future that is based on something unreasonable and completely new.
Think about it for a minute – if you let your thoughts and therefore your feelings dictate your goals how are they going to be extraordinary? How are they going to be anything other than based on your past or the present moment given that you think what you think and this causes you to feel what you feel? It just doesn’t work like that. If, on the other hand, you take the time to clear your mind and let your emotional state settle, you will create a blank stillness from which to create goals. This affords you the freedom from self-doubt, low confidence, a sense of failure, sadness, obesity and depression. Avoidance or escape will NOT be the primary objective for your goals so you will be free to create ANYTHING you want as a future possibility.
We do a lot of goal setting with our clients and one of the key things we do is try to get our clients to free their minds before we begin to shape things. Without clearing away the existing thoughts (the ones that got them to be sitting down in front of us) we cannot establish the groundwork for the powerful collaborative partnership that yields the highest level of success. Put another way, an average mind creates average goals and average goals create an average life.
During a goal setting session, we encourage the client to create the impossible dream by getting them to let go of the past and the present and project themselves into the future, to a time when ANYTHING is possible. Once we get them into a peak emotional state, what they want for their best life starts to flow out of them and the goals quickly create themselves. There will be some further refinement to establish dates and action items but the tough part of becoming the possibility is over. We anchor the peak emotional state to their goals through the mental linking of success action items to ensure that they are able to return to this place of possibilities at will, but rarely do they ever need more than a few coaching words to keep them on track. When you create goals without referencing that which already is, your brain is free to create thoughts that bring forth a new reality.