Have you ever read a book or seen a movie that featured the medieval punishment where the offender had each of their arms and legs roped to a horse and then the horses were whipped to a frenzy, pulling in opposite directions until the offender was ripped into pieces?

Not nice.

But that's pretty much what we do to ourselves when we use a traditional goal setting program.

Of course the results aren't quite as bloody but they are as grisly: failure, stress, let down, headaches, insomnia, etc.

Instead of four horses pulling frantically in four different directions, we usually have four major parts of our brains doing the same thing.

Those four parts are:

- the left brain - the right brain - the midbrain - the brainstem.

And each of these parts controls a major aspect of us.

The left brain is responsible for our conscious awareness and our thoughts.

The right brain is responsible for our creativity, all sorts of rhythmic behavior, putting together memory into useable chunks, etc. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.

The midbrain is responsible for our emotional energy - the energy that powers us in getting things done and in creating memories. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.

The brainstem is responsible for physical stimulus-response, for jerking our hand away from a hot stove, for hitting the tennis ball, for jerking our car away from an intruding other driver. And it does what it's always done in a particular situation.

When these four parts aren't in agreement on an objective and how to achieve it, failure is almost certain.

And that's the case with traditional goal setting systems because they deal with only one of those parts, the conscious mind.

It's something like asking someone who speaks only English, another only French, another only Japanese and another only Russian to perform a job that requires a high level of coordination among the four of them to be successful.

The result is chaos, something like the old silent movies.

Or like a football team where each player is running a different play.

Well, that's the case with traditional goal setting systems because only the left brain understands words. The right brain understands visualization and pattern, the midbrain understands real or imagined emotions and the brainstem understands real or imagined physical behavior.

That's why failure is so common.

But there is an alternative.

It's this: translate your objective into the different languages each part of the brain can understand.

Once you have translated your written objective and modified it so that all four parts of the brain are in agreement, then you have made major progress toward successfully achieving your goal.

The second step you need to take to successfully achieve an objective revolves around the fact that essentially no one can maintain a conscious focus on anything for more than 5 seconds.

Yet most traditional goal setting systems tell you to keep focused on what you want to achieve. That can't happen. Conscious long-term focus is an impossibility.

But when the unconscious mind is focused on something - such as keeping your heart beating and blood pumping, your body weight reasonably constant or breathing - that something happens. Otherwise, we'd all be dead.

Well, that kind of unconscious focus is required to consistently achieve challenging objectives, too.

The third step to successfully achieve your objective is to level out the unconscious road blocks that, otherwise, make accomplishing things impossible. Since these roadblocks operate without our conscious awareness -- like asthma, headaches, and maintaining a constant body weight when you consciously want to lose weight -- no level of conscious will power can overcome them.

But when properly instructed by the conscious mind, the unconscious will instantly change its programming from opposing a result that you want to support its achievement.

If you accomplish all three of these steps - translation, focus, and removal of road blocks - then you have almost a 100 percent chance of consistently achieving your seemingly impossible objectives.