Have all of you wondered as to how our actual reactions are on achieving a milestone when compared to our perceived reactions on achieving a target.  Have a look at some examples.

Example 1 Winning an election:- You challenge a person saying that you will defeat him in election.  You are always visualizing of showing your emotions after winning the election.  The usual sort of visualization could be by something like this:-

Possible reaction no.1:- Pumping your fists in front of everybody after winning the election

Possible reaction no.2:-  go in front of the person and talk loudly in a excited tone saying that you have kept your word of thrashing say and also warn him to never ever challenge you.

While the points mentioned above could be your perceived emotions prior to winning an election, your actual emotion would be different.  You would actually just feel that you have just won an election and what is the big thing in winning an election as many others do win elections.  You simply get on to your task of fulfilling your duties as elected person.

Example 2 Qualifying for a sporting event:- You are not good sports and always visualize of qualifying for a event at your workplace or in your locality.  You visualize day in and day out of pumping your fists in the air after winning the event or distribute sweets to everybody or call up everybody and tell them you have qualified for the event.  Yet after qualifying for the event, you hardly react as you tend to think what is the big deal you have achieved, for many people have qualified and you would actually think on different lines thinking that winning a prize in a event is more remarkable achievement than mere qualifying.  Your focus shifts form the achievement of qualification to putting another mental target for yourself i.e. winning a prize in the event.

If you look at the above examples lack of the expected reactions on achieving our goal is due to the fact that once we achieve the target, the target we had set for ourselves looks smaller because of lack of satisfaction in us and automatically our mind creates another target.  While lack of satisfaction is a cause for worry in general, sometimes it works in our favour and helps us to achieve more than our capacity.

Regards

Satish

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