How To Reach Your Goals Using Mindfulness

Amazon lists more than 2,100 book titles for the keyword, Google Germany more than 732,000 hits. “The topic is very hyped,” confirms psychologist Lisa Lyssenko, managing director of the Institute for Scientific Psychological Prevention in Freiburg. But the more popular a topic, the more abbreviated it is often presented. “Mindfulness doesn’t just mean sitting on the sofa and saying ‘Om’,” says Ulrike Bergmann. For more than two decades she has been helping people to achieve their goals and make their dreams come true .If it helps, you can of course close your eyes during a mindfulness exercise. “But don’t close your mind to the fact that we can become active and change something in our lives,” the expert clarifies. “Without plans, without goals, our emotional comfort zone shrinks and we trust ourselves less and less.”

The more we perceive our life as a hamster wheel, the more intensively we should try to act (more) mindfully. But: “If I direct my attention more consciously to what I’m doing at the moment, I can of course make plans or set myself new goals at that moment,” explains Lisa Lyssenko. “The one does not exclude the other. What’s more, if I don’t know where I want to go, I’ll never get there and I’ll get stuck in the hamster wheel.” So for feel-good happiness we need both, looking at the present and looking to the future. Together, they help us keep track of our chosen path in life.
It often begins with a feeling without contours. We feel “foreign” in our own lives. Accomplish a lot, but do little for ourselves. We suspect that we are disregarding an important part of our personality. “It’s not easy to allow this dissatisfaction,” says Lisa Lyssenko. “Especially since in our culture we tend to ignore negative feelings. Mindfulness helps to accept them and not to reshape them.” This remains important until the home stretch. Because we have to cope with setbacks, overcome our weaker self and fears, endure negative reactions from our environment.

“Especially in phases like this, it’s important to stop and ask yourself: Am I following these negative thoughts and feelings or not?” explains Lisa Lyssenko. “For example, I could say to myself, ‘Ah, I’m thinking I’ll never make it…’ This creates distance from thoughts that feel real but aren’t reality.” We can let them pull away in our imaginations like a cloud in the sky. The same applies to negative feelings: “If I’m afraid of making a fool of myself before the first yoga class, a mindful attitude can make it clear to me that there is an automatic reaction of my brain behind it, which may feel reminded of the hated physical education class at school. So I don’t have to follow her.”
Most of the time, however, we let go of plans because they lose their attraction. “That’s why goals should be smart,” advises Lisa Lyssenko. Intelligent, that means in German – and at the same time represents an abbreviation: What we want to achieve should be specific, measurable, attractive, realistic and time-related. “In other words: Each goal should be achievable within three months and should correspond to what is important to you personally,” explains Lisa Lyssenko. Large international studies have shown that everyone in the world has very similar ideas in this regard. These can be bundled into 18 universal values. Our test at www.Tolfioow.com/mein_Werteprofil shows you what your personal “value profile” looks like . “Also, connect with your personal vision of the future once a day,” advises Ulrike Bergmann. In her seminars, she likes to explain what is happening at this moment with a gum that she stretches between the middle fingers of a participant. “One finger represents the present: How am I doing today? The other symbolizes the future: where do I want to go? A creative tension arises between these two poles. This irritates the subconscious, which then develops ideas. If I didn’t pause, I wouldn’t notice these impulses at all.” This shows once again how powerfully looking at the present can be combined with looking to the future.

Speaking of the subconscious, these parts of the brain not only reward us with special messenger substances if everything stays the way it is. They also expect (too) quick results. “We automatically do more of what feels good,” says Lisa Lyssenko. “But for most goals, it takes me a while to achieve this effect. For example, if I want to do more sport, the first few laps don’t feel so great.” The inner weaker self starts to growl. But we can put him on the chain by becoming aware of the subconscious processes in the brain that woke him up – with mindfulness. Danger recognized, danger averted: Instead of slamming our running shoes into the corner, we crack the five-kilometer mark faster than expected. “And then we can give each other a quiet pat on the back,” says Lisa Lysenko. “It has nothing to do with conceit. We should savor good feelings like a pleasant bubble bath.”
We Germans secretly envy southern Europeans for precisely this ability, Ulrike Bergmann suspects. “For us, goals are always so important,” she says. “Goals are carved in stone and written in blood. In order to reach them we must make decisions like felling trees and make a choice like a bull’s-eye. If we don’t hit the bull’s eye the first time, we’ll end up on the pyre.” It’s not just the brain that puts stumbling blocks in our way, but also the culture. “In French, for example, it means: prendre une décision, to take a decision,” says Ulrike Bergmann. “That’s how we should think too. Then there is more lightness.”

But our culture can also be useful in planning. “Meet every 14 days with two to six people who may have different plans, but who are also as concrete as possible,” advises Ulrike Bergmann. “This creates an additional obligation. I must regularly give an account to myself and others of what I have done towards my goal since the last meeting. This separates the wheat from the chaff.” Whether a plan really suits us – or not (yet) – is often best recognized when we talk to others. And among like-minded people, defeat doesn’t hurt that much. “It’s not a defeat,” Ulrike Bergmann clarifies, “but an important insight. All successful people have made mistakes. At such a moment I can ask myself: What have I learned along the route covered? That, too, has something to do with mindfulness.” Accepting things as they are, “don’t pretend they’re good,” emphasizes Lisa Lyssenko. “It’s about allowing yourself to step backwards.”
Plans can be changed, adjusted. There is never just one path to the goal. If we give up at the first obstacle, we become the plaything of our thoughts and feelings again, perhaps trying to meet social expectations that we never intended to serve. “It strengthens people when they start to plan their existence and their everyday life carefully,” says Lisa Lyssenko. “They experience their actions as meaningful, meaningful and feel a deep satisfaction because they lead a life that suits them much better.”