Spoiler alert – there is a very scary picture of me at the end of this blog!
How many times have you set a goal for yourself and been really motivated to start working towards it and then just never got there? It might be a weight loss goal, or stopping smoking or reducing alcohol or getting more exercise or something else, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you really wanted to do it and then it just didn’t happen.
There’s lots of coaching tips that I could give you about this but the most powerful one that I have experienced recently is the ‘arrow breaking technique’. Let me explain.
Often the biggest obstacle to achieving a goal is the thoughts and beliefs that you have about it. Beliefs are tricky things because they are not necessarily true but you act as if they are and then look for the evidence to back up your belief.
For example if you want to lose weight but you believe you have no will power you will notice all the times you do not have willpower , when you had a biscuit, drank a hot chocolate or ate some chips. You then decide that you can’t trust yourself so you might as well not bother trying. Successful slimmers believe they can trust themselves and they see those times when they ate something sweet or fatty as minor transgressions and that means they can carry on.
What’s all this got to do with arrows? At two excellent coaching seminars that I have been to recently, the coaches have urged participants to notice their unhelpful beliefs, recognise them as obstacles and get over them. In the arrow exercise, the goal is represented by the wall and the arrow (a real steel-tipped arrow placed against your throat!) is the obstacle. If you want to reach your goal you have to believe that you can break the arrow by just moving forward.
The first time I tried this exercise, I couldn’t break the arrow because all I could see and feel was the arrow. The second time I focussed on the wall and the arrow broke. I did it again last week and the arrow broke so quickly it was too fast to video.
Henry Ford said, “Obstacles are the ugly things you see when you stop focusing on your goal.” So what are your arrows, your obstacles? What do you need to believe to overcome then?
Arrow Breaking Exercise at Ultimate Author Bootcamp, London
