Why You Should Set Goals When You Have ME

As human beings we are naturally goal-driven. Our brain needs to have goals in order that we know how to behave. For example, we wouldn’t get up in the morning and get the bus, if our goal wasn’t to get to work. We wouldn’t eat if our goal wasn’t to relieve our hunger, we wouldn’t clean our shoes if our goal wasn’t to get them clean. There is nothing that you do which isn’t goal-driven. We need goals in order to function as a human being.

When you have ME you may still have many goals that you want to achieve – like going to work, going for a walk, socialising with friends, but you are frustrated because you can’t fulfil this basic function of yours – to obey your brain’s desire to fulfil those goals. There are two things you can do however. You can learn to create smaller goals that you can achieve and that you can succeed at to reduce the frustration and you can do what the world’s most successful people do – make goals for your future.

Only 3% set goals for their life

At Yale University in 1953 a survey showed that only 3% of students set goals for their life. In 1973 when these previous students were reassessed, it was found that these 3% were more successful in every area of their lives than the remaining 97% who had not set goals.

Having ME doesn’t stop you making long-term goals, in fact it is imperative that you do so because a lack of a bright vision of the future is a prerequisite for depression and lethargy. Having a goal will help to chase the blues away, give you something positive to focus on, a future to work towards which creates excitement and a supply of healthy, positive chemicals to the body and it also gives you a reason for carrying on when you are at the lowest ebb of your life. It also makes it far more likely that you will recover from ME because once you have a goal, you naturally behave in a way that will take you towards it.

It is a well known fact that the most successful people in the world, like Richard Branson, several presidents of the United States, Olympic athletes, Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates for example, Andre Agassi, all work towards their own goals, planning them, looking at the options, making decisions and above all ACTING, step by step. This is what you have to do in order to get yourself out of the pit of despair and ill-health. Plan for a healthy future and work towards it.

The saying is that “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”. Did you know that 99% of your thoughts are the same today as they were yesterday? That means that if you continue to have the same thoughts, and it is your thoughts that dictate your actions, you will continue to get the same results. Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Look at your life today and recognise that whatever you are doing and whoever you are doing it with are direct results of the thoughts you have had in the past and the actions you have taken ie what job you did, who you married, what course you did at university etc. In fact, your life now, is the sum of all the thoughts you have ever had in your life up until this moment and the actions you have taken as a result of those thoughts. That is why you need to change your thoughts, which will change your actions, which will ultimately change the result.

Paul Mckenna said that his life changed 10 years ago when he sat down and asked himself – if I continue thinking the way I’ve always thought, doing what I’ve always done, I will continue along the course I am on, and where will I be in 5 years time? This thought was so horrifying to him (and he wasn’t sick) that he sat down and asked himself what was most important to him and what he wanted out of life. He came up with some goals and in order to achieve those goals he had to change his habits of thinking and acting so far in order to achieve them. Once a radio DJ he is now a world famous hypnotist and millionaire.

This is why your brain needs a goal. A part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System is responsible for filtering information from the outside world into your brain. Two million pieces of information per second are hitting the RAS and the RAS can only filter 126 pieces of information per second into the brain. A massive difference. Therefore it has to decide which information to allow in, and in order to do that it needs to know what it is that you want. For example, if you are interested in Ford Fiestas, it will allow all information about Ford Fiestas that it comes across to enter your brain – if you are pregnant it will allow information about pregnancy into your brain. It can’t possibly accept everything. I’m sure you’ve noticed how when you are pregnant all you see are pregnant women everywhere that you never noticed before, or the fact that everyone else seems to be driving a Ford Fiesta all of a sudden! Therefore, there is no such thing as ‘reality’. Reality is actually only your own personal perception of the world depending entirely on what is important to you and what you are focusing on. This means that you have to focus on something in order to get it, otherwise you will miss information and opportunities required in order to get what it is you want.

If you want to get well, you need to focus on good health ... not sickness

Did you know that race drivers when in a skid are taught never to look at the wall they don’t want to crash into, because if they do then the odds are that they will hit it. Which means that if you want to get well you need to focus on good health and not sickness. Remember the saying “Be careful for what you wish for”. This is based in fact – it is science and a law of nature that you attract whatever it is that you focus on the most. The RAS accepts what you concentrate on the most and screens out the rest – that means that if you are concentrating on what is wrong with your life it will allow in anything that it sees as being relevant to being wrong in your life, and screen out any information about what is positive in your life.

What does your life look like right now? Is everything fine? Not if you’ve got M.E. it isn’t. So making a goal for your life is what you need. You have to look ahead and create a vision of a healthy future. You have to write that goal down and keep it in the forefront of your mind so that your RAS knows what you are focusing on and feeds in the information that you need.

"Remember that a 1% change of direction every day, adds up to a massive change of direction over a year.

You then have to think about all the things you can think of, however bizarre, that you could do to take you forwards towards that wonderful goal and you need to choose some actions that you can begin to take straight away – whether it is trying a new therapy, watching a funny video to keep your mood up, reading another book, walking a few paces etc. They have to be achievable actions but not so easy that it doesn’t challenge you to change what you’ve been doing. At the end of each week assess how you’ve been doing, reward yourself if you’ve done well, and decide on actions for the following week. The Dalai Lama said that a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step – and that is what you are embarking on. Just put one foot in front of the other, then again, and again, and again – and you will succeed. Read your goal regularly to keep it alive for the RAS in your brain. Remember that a 1% change of direction every day, adds up to a massive change of direction over a year.

The very act of setting a goal and writing it down will immediately point you in the direction of that goal. It will empower you to know that despite ME you are taking control of your life and it will provide you with a sense of purpose and set you on the journey towards the attainment of your ultimate aspirations. There is always something that you can do to help yourself however severe your ME is, so stop feeling helpless and start taking control.

There is no second cavalry that is going to come over the hill and rescue you – you have to use your own, extremely powerful force, the most amazing weapon that everyone has and few people know how to use to best advantage, and that is your brain. You have to harness the power of your brain to get yourself out of this situation. However sick you are, you are not helpless. You have to tell your brain clearly what it is that you want – in as much detail as possible – and it can then do its job of helping you to achieve it.

Never give up

Good luck with your recovery, and remember that there are many of us out here who have already recovered, so never give up. There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. If you try one thing and it doesn’t work, then try another. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, when asked how he felt about failing to create light for the 700th time said “I haven’t failed, I haven’t failed at all, I have succeeded in finding 700 different ways in which light doesn’t work, so I am 700 ways nearer to my goal of finding out what DOES work”.