Whether you're a habitual list maker, make detailed written goals or keep your tasks and goals in your head, almost everyone pursues goals in an ever changing and sometimes chaotic environment. We are very aware of the conscious thinking that helps us achieve those goals (or not), but we rarely consider how the unconscious thinking in our mind contributes to the achievement of those same goals.

Most traditional approaches to goal setting are a deliberate, rational, logical and analytical process, complete with detailed steps. This process, a conscious mind activity, has been promoted by the scientific and
professional community as the best method to set and achieve goals.

Maybe not. 

Recent brain research and psychological studies have pointed to the limitations of the conscious mind in effective decision making, and the importance of the unconscious mind in thinking processes.

Psychologists Baruch Eitam, Ran Hassin and Yaacov Schul at Hebrew University conducted a research study, published in the March, 2008 issue of Psychological Science, which examined the benefit of non-conscious goal pursuit (moving toward a goal without being of doing so), in new environments. Existing theory suggests that unconscious goal pursuit only reproduces formerly learned actions, therefore is ineffective in mastering a new skill. Eitam and colleagues argue the opposite: That unconscious goal pursuit can help people achieve their goals, even in situations where they've had no previous experience.

Eitam designed several experiments with subjects in which the experimental group were given visualized word suggestions for a problem they had never encountered before. The series of experiments demonstrated,
according Eitam and his colleagues, that "powerful, unintentional, mechanisms of implicit learning are related to unconscious wanting and works towards attaining unconscious goals."  They concluded that unconscious processes have both an advantage over conscious processing and an ability to serve a person's goals.

Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell University, conducted research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, that concludes that perspective can influence your interpretation of past events, and looking at your past from a detached, third person perspective, can give you more motivation to keep working on a personal goal. Gilovich pointed out that a third-person perspective accentuated perceived changes when people seeking self-improvement are focused on differences between their present and past selves. But when the test subjects were asked to focus on similarities from the past by visualizing a past event that was positive, such as something they were the third-person perspective tended to promote perceptions of continuity between the present self and the positive past self.

These findings reflect processes and strategies often used by coaches and NLP practitioners, who recognize that the conscious mind often inhibits the attainment of goals because of its nature--being at times over
analytical, containing biases, and often exhibiting restraining forces of risk aversion and judgment. These insights also emphasize the importance of using a detached, third person perspective to give you a better chance of achieving those goals.

Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training,
personal growth and executive coaching services.http://www.successiqu.com, http://www.raywilliamsassociates.com