How to Effectively Destroy Motivation to Achieve a Goal

By Dr. Ethan CaldwellNLP Training

How to Effectively Destroy Motivation to Achieve a Goal

If you want to undermine your motivation to achieve a goal, here are some proven strategies:

1. Reframe the Goal Negatively, in Terms of Avoidance

  • Focus on what you want to avoid by taking action, not on what you want to achieve.
  • Use words that imply negation: “not,” “stop,” “remove,” “without,” “so as not to,” “avoid,” and so on.

2. Make the Goal Uncontrollable

  • Ask yourself: What can’t you do to achieve this? Reflect on it…
  • Concentrate on what you can’t do, and highlight why you can’t be responsible for starting or maintaining progress.
  • Focus on the fact that you don’t control any of the circumstances. Emphasize that NO ONE can control them.
  • Include other people in your goal statement, especially noting that you can’t control their actions or your own behavior toward them.

3. Make the Goal Unverifiable Through Sensory Experience

  • How will you know you’ve achieved your goal? Question the criteria and sensory evidence for success.
  • Focus on the lack or non-sensory nature of evidence for achieving the goal—this blocks the necessary feedback for progress.
  • Dissociate yourself from the goal as much as possible. This is demotivating.

4. Rigidly Fix the Goal in Context

  • Where, when, with whom, and by what deadline MUST you achieve your goal? What will happen when you do?
  • Make sure the goal is described in a time and place that are unsuitable for its realization.
  • Let the goal be indistinguishable from a dream, since it’s unclear when or how to achieve it.

5. The Goal Doesn’t Satisfy Initial Positive Side Effects or Preserve Secondary Gains

  • What are the consequences of achieving the goal for the LARGER system? How might the process negatively affect you, your life, your colleagues (work), or your loved ones (family)?
  • What might you lose in the future (what could be disrupted or lost) by achieving the goal? What’s beneficial about the current situation where the goal isn’t achieved?
  • Carefully check if all the benefits of the current state (positive side effects) will really be lost in the future.
  • Pay attention to negative side effects. Identify at least five negative side effects.

6. Achieving the Goal Doesn’t Depend on Access to Resources

  • What resources do you lack to achieve the goal? Find convincing reasons why you can’t access them.
  • Identify which specific skills, abilities, money, time, etc., you don’t have.

7. FIRST STEP. It’s Impossible to Determine the First Steps Toward the Goal

  • Find a convincing reason why the first step (or choosing it) doesn’t depend on you.
  • Question the connection between the steps and achieving the goal.

8. SCALE. Is the Goal the Right Size?

a. Making It Too Small

  • Is it even worth achieving the goal for such a trivial result?
  • Find consequences of the goal that are too minor to motivate you. Let this discourage you.

b. Making It Too Big

  • Explore possible obstacles to achieving the goal.
  • What’s stopping you from starting the process right now? What obstacles might you encounter? Become aware of them, immerse yourself in them…
  • Make the goal so large that it’s impossible to achieve or be motivated by. Let this demotivate you.

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