Evasiveness is one of the biggest killers in modern day. It has killed millions of dreams and ambitions of people, especially authors, and artists. Today, I will be sharing my experience, and research on how to best defeat this fiend, and save your future.
The reason why achieving your goals is hard is because you evade the goals due to the anxiety and depression induced by their skills and your level of competence.
At least that’s what I and most of the research I’ve done think. If you want more details, then let’s jump into the article
Why Can’t I Achieve My Goals?
The main reason you can’t achieve your life goals is because you suffer from a severe case of evasiveness.
Evasiveness is a pattern of behavior that allows one to evade the things that cause them anxiety or depression.
So, you may create your goal. You want to get A+. However, this means you will have to study everyday, and you will have to stop doing certain things.
The scope of the goal makes you anxious, and nervous. You then decide you will give it a go anyway. You will begin working as soon as you have that text book. But you cannot get your hands on that text book, and the days are going by.
This makes you feel depressed. You start to realize that you will never truly make it. As you sit in your room, you see that it is 3. Which would be a great time to study. This thought hurts you, so you pull out your phone and continue watching some of the funniest videos. You do not even remember any of the ones you’d seen but you already have a number that you have to see. Next thing you know, it is mid year, and the exams are drawing nearer. You are completely unprepared. As you start to prepare, you find your old book, detailing enthusiastically how this year you’d get great marks, and get A+.
You had completely forgotten this goal. How could this have happened?
A simple Formula
Well, it is simply evasiveness. You successfully physically, and mentally evaded the goal. Put in a more scientific way, it looks something like this.
- Goal setting can assist people with anxiety, as discovered by this study.
- However, these goals tend to be more avoidance type goals, shown by this study. Avoidance types goals are harder to deal with the attainment types of goals.
- Goals that are harder tend to lead to an increase in anxiety, which is shown by this here study.
- Finally, high anxiety will then lead to lower levels of motivation. Click here to learn more on that study. This low level of motivation leads to less work being done, and evasiveness takes the wheel.
What is evasiveness?
First, it is important to note what distinguishes evasiveness from other things such as aimlessness, procrastination, and distraction.
The first difference is between evasiveness and aimlessness. Sometimes people do nothing with their life, and have no goals. However, the difference between evasive and aimless people is that aimless people are people who do not even know their talents, or their goals. They have not yet discovered what to make of their life, which you can learn here if you are curious.
The second difference is between procrastination and evasiveness. People who are procrastinating, and evasive are similar in that they both know what they must do. They both have ambitions and goals. However, procrastination specifically refers to when you are supposed to be working at a specific time, but you kick it down the road for some meandering reason. Evasiveness refers to when you completely avoid the task at hand.
It should be noted that one can practice evasiveness through procrastinating. So its like how a rectangle is a square, but a square is not a rectangle.
Finally, the difference between evasiveness and distractions. These are similar in that the subject knows what they must do, but their attention is taken by something else. They turn back to see that time has passed.
How does Evasiveness Manifest?
Evasiveness manifest physically, and mentally.
First, you physically evade what you must do. you do not go where the work is. you do not do the work. Then, it manifest psychologically. You stop thinking about the goal. Then, you stop thinking about the work that it would take. Finally, you completely evade it by forgetting the goal completely.
What To Do When You Can’t Achieve Your Goals? Evasiveness cures
1. Recognizing evasiveness
The first step to fighting evasiveness is learning to recognize it, because this can help you act appropriately.
Carl Jung says that “If you do not make the unconscious conscious, it will continue to rule your life and you will call it fate”.
That’s what happens with evasiveness too.
Evasiveness is fundamentally a cognitive distortion. All cognitive distortions are just improper processing of information and the real world. Therefore, when you recognize this, you automatically start to process information properly, leading you to overcoming the distortion. Also, it leads you to overcome the evasiveness.
An example of this is what used to happen with my writing. In the past, I only wrote in the morning, because I told myself this is when I was most focused. Then, there were days I’d oversleep. This meant I could not write for the day because I am “tired”.
So I just waste the day, and feel justified.
It was not until I had to do a school assignment and I had no choice but to work on it even in the night that I realized how much bull this was. Now, I can work at any time.
So, just by realizing that what you are doing is evasiveness, you will already be able to break it.
2. Look For Hot Moments
The second technique is to create specific time slots where you must do your work.
Now, the problem with cognitive distortions is that it is not always clear when it is a cognitive distortion or a legitimate concern. Are you really experiencing a cognitive distortion or are you genuinely tired? It is not so easy to tell. So, how can you make it easier?
So, we have already gone over how an evasive person usually already knows what they want to do. Maybe you want to be a musician, or an artist. Then, what must a musician or artist do to be the best? They must obviously practice.
So, first you decide what you need to practice. maybe it is line work, or you want to practice the scales of a song. Then, you set apart time in your day to get some studying done.
This is what I call the hot moments. These are the times when you must act to get closer to your goal.
These make discovering cognitive distortions easier.
Your hot moments are times that you select because you suspect you will have energy at the time, and you will be most prepared. For example, I tend to choose the morning after running because that’s when my blood is still flowing. When i sit down to write, and I suddenly feel I am tired, and I could do with some more sleep, I know that is nonsense.
3. Compare Your Reasons For Not Doing It
The third trick is to try and compare your reasons for not doing work with previously experienced cognitive distortions.
Sometimes, you will find that hot moments can become their own cognitive distortion. You need to create a hot moment the night before for it to truly work. However, you could forget to do this, and the next day comes up. Then, you will tell yourself, I have no hot moment, so I can just not work today.
This is not true.
The truth is that whenever you are free is an opportunity for you to continue doing your work or practicing. I even work on my books while driving in the traffic. This is possible for you too, if you learn the trick of storing cognitive distortions and comparing them to your later moments.
Write down all the cognitive distortions you have. All the excuses you use. Then when the time comes later, and you see you have an opportunity to get work on, do the work. When you have a “good” reason to not do the work, pull out your mental list, or physical list of cognitive distortions, and if one of the reasons is on the list, then you know it is bull, and you can get to work.
4. Mark Down The Reason
The fourth thing you could do is try and mark down the reasons, and then actively try to train never experiencing them.
This is a very advanced one, but it is the most rewarding.
Now that you have a list of the reasons why you cannot do the work, and you have a list of your cognitive distortions, you can use theses to your advantage. Test just how true each ever is.
I did this with my sleep reasoning. I always fell asleep after the afternoon. Then one afternoon, I decided to try and not fall asleep. Now only did I stay awake, but I managed to get so much done in that one afternoon. Eventually, I even managed to fall asleep for 15 minutes, and wake up to finish working. Usually after falling asleep, i wake up and feel woozy, then I tell myself I can’t work for the rest of the day. This was proven wrong.
Go through your list of cognitive distortions, and test each of them out. Try and see if they truly stand, or if you can work in spite of that exact distortion. Try working with family in the house. Try working from your phone. Try working from a different room. You could even try working in the middle of the night.
Try these out, and with each failure, you will learn legitimate reasons. but with each success, you will be growing your muscle for fighting evasiveness.
5. Find The Reasons Behind The Reason For The Evasiveness
The fifth technique you could use is to try and discover what the evasiveness is trying to relieve you from, and then deal with that specific problem.
Fundamentally, evasiveness is a relief mechanism.
What does this mean?
People often speak of how addiction is not necessarily the problem, but it is a relief from the problem. People who are addicted to something may have an issue. Maybe they suffer from low self-esteem. So, they start using the substance in order to relieve themselves from that specific issue. They may try to stop using their substance, but then they end up dealing with their initial issue again. So they end up going back to their substance of choice.
This is how evasiveness works.
Usually you have a problem. Maybe your goal is to hard, or your skills are not good enough. So, you start being evasive. You may be able to spot when you are being evasive, but it is entirely pointless if that will only lead you back to the main problem; the scale of your goal, or the lack of your skills.
So, look at your main goal in life. What would it take to reach it? Can you do what it takes? Ask yourself a number of questions like this, and try to see why you’d want to be evasive to these goals.
6. Solve The Reason
The sixth technique you could use is attempting to solve these main reasons.
For others, when they realize that they are being evasive due to a deep psychological reason, it is usually enough to cure them. Again, the unconscious made conscious.
However, for other people it is far more complicated than that.
For other people, their main issue leading to their evasive behavior is actually to psychological taxing. So, these people need to find a way of fixing their issues.
If your goal seems heavy for you, you could just break it down into pieces, and make it smaller. If this does not work (if your goal is too small, you could end up not being productive), then you could just detail how you will go about getting the goal done. Sometimes, breaking a goal into pieces is enough to inspire people to work.
If you do not have the skills for the goal, then you could make the learning process part of your final product. Take time to experiment, and show people the fruits of your experiments.
7. Self Talk
The seventh technique you could try is self talk that targets your subconscious problems.
The technique that could really help is one that I discovered a while back. What I did is I turned on my recording software, then I opened a noun generator. I would press and a word would appear, then I will talk about that word.
The goal is to talk about what that word reminded you about in your childhood. Try to talk about 2 minutes for each word. Do this for about 15 minutes, and when you are done, a certain theme will appear.
You will realize long lost memorize, and recurring sentiments. Maybe there is a specific word that appears, such as failure, or abandonment. The point is that this will tell you the true root of all the evasiveness you feel.
It could be you are scared of taking on this massive problem because you do not want to fail again. Or you were told over and over again that you will amount to nothing, so you are basically living that life out.
Whatever it is, you will discover it with this trick.
8. Combat evasiveness With Physicality
The eight technique you could use is by changing your physical environment to be less accommodating for evasiveness.
On a simple level, this means placing away all the things that you use to be evasive. For example, your phone, or laptop. But even ore so, it refers to the place you spend the most time.
When you are being evasive, you will find that you even avoid the room with the work. This is because that room reminds you of your persisting failure, so you do not like it.
Go where you do not want to go.
Go to those rooms that make you feel bad, and sit there for a while.
9. Perform The Action
The ninth technique is to perform that which you are evading.
One technique that works spectacularly for me is doing the action that I am avoiding. If I am evading drawing, I will do a rough drawing on my hand using my finger. I will practice drawing If you are avoiding practicing writing, you could write something in your mind, and try to work on that sentence.
Eventually, you will find that you want to do it in real life.
This is one of the most important blog posts that I have written. Combined with how to know what to do with your life, you will have a completely clear idea of what to do. I am hoping you will realize you want to be a writer, and you are willing to push through with me, but as long as it helps you discover yourself, I am more than happy. When we finally learn to stop evading your greatness, I am sure we will be on our way to mastering mastery.