A goal trauma typically occurs after you want something very badly but it falls apart after you did everything you could to make it happen. -Margaret M. Lynch (Tapping into Wealth)

Why Do Some People Achieve Their Goals While Others Give Up?

Do you suffer from Goal Trauma?

Seriously, have you worked at a goal only to be disappointed because it didn’t happen?

I certainly have. But until I read about Goal Trauma in Margaret Lynch’s book Tapping Into Wealth, I didn’t really think much about it. And then I did her exercise. She’s really clear that those disappointments from the past can really influence our ability to go after a goal in the present.

Goal trauma occurs when you’ve set you mind on something you really want, follow your dream but you end up feeling like a failure, full of loss and pain, disappointment, disillusionment and self-criticism.

For the goal trauma exercise, I picked my music career as the potential goal trauma to work on.

Here is it:

When I was 16, I left high school to be a musician. I worked at it until I was 33 years old with varying success.

I performed in clubs with a band for a while at first. We had a recording contract and had released a minor hit in Canada. I enjoyed the band until one night I had a panic attack on stage. I quit the band the next day. They never knew why.

Still, the record company liked me so they released another single of a song I had recorded solo style. Again it was a minor hit. But I didn’t have a band and didn’t know what to do.

The record executive, who was the nicest one ever, took me out and bought me a guitar. I learned 5 chords, and three songs and auditioned at a bar for the after work solo spot. I got it. So I learned 30 songs so I could fill the three sets.

But then the record company didn’t renew my contract. My producer moved on and my boyfriend became my producer/manager. Not a great idea.

But I worked a lot and almost made a living. 🙂 Played lots of bars and folk clubs and festivals, opened for better known artists at concerts, even played for 10K people at a Camp Fortune concert and TV Show. I was interviewed on daytime  TV, afternoon TV and 90 Minutes Live, late night TV. I did radio interviews too. Again, some record companies in the USA showed interest. But they didn’t want my boyfriend. I turned down the deals.

Years later I moved to NYC on my own and ended up again with record interest, manager interest, producer interest. There were huge ups and then always a down. I was signed to a writer’s contract with Screen Gems, but only one person actually recorded one of my songs. They dropped me too.

I moved again to LA where the man who was going to manage me literally disappeared when I arrived. I mean literally.

I found out later he ended up in a cocaine addiction rehab. But I never heard from him again. Never. The record company who had me on a development deal that he set up, kept me on and tried some developing. Elektra, it was a lovely company, but they set me up with producers who didn’t really work for me. A year later, they dropped me.

By the end of my three years in LA, I couldn’t pay my rent, my standard car had 2 of 4 working gears, and I didn’t have money for food.

I borrowed airfare from a friend and came home to Toronto….where… a record company in NYC showed interest and then dropped me and the band.

I was done. I quit my music career, let go of the dream and enrolled in the University of Toronto.

I tell you this story because I never really thought of it as Trauma, until I visualized it all while doing the Goal Trauma exercise.

And as I write it out for you, I am totally re-traumatized by my own trauma.

😱

Goal Trauma leaves a trail.

It leaves you trusting yourself less, trusting other people and the universe less, and being truly skeptical of the propaganda that “anything is possible.” Just believe and you can achieve…ouch.

Recalling my goal trauma story made me very sad.

So will your goal trauma.

Unfortunately,  our past goal trauma causes us to approach new goals with a lot of hesitation and doubt. We find ourselves procrastinating or being indecisive. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Achieving a goal takes energy, enthusiasm and faith. Past goal trauma’s just suck the life out of us. And we don’t even realize it.

So…

Like all trauma. We need to find a way to clear it.

If you’ve been enjoying the blog,  join my community by tapping on this link. You will get a lovely free PDF about 30 Journal Prompts to Live Life Fully.

It always starts with self awareness. We need to be honest about how failures in our past may still be lingering in our inner energy system and mind today!

We really need to recognize the pain and have compassion for ourselves. I think Inner Child work can be very helpful with that. So can forgiveness work.

As we work at releasing the pain from the past, we will be more open to seeing it differently. Being able to reframe it is the ability to see it from different perspectives. For example, we might ask: What did I learn? How strong did you become? Really, I lived through all that and here I am? Wow! What can make it better next time. Where have I done better since that did work? How did I achieve that?

Just remember, this reframe doesn’t really work if you haven’t acknowledged the pain of the goal trauma first and really let yourself feel it enough to release it and heal it.

So, if you’re wondering why some people just go after their goals and achieve them, while some of us give up… look into your past for some Goal Trauma’s that might be holding you back.

Freeing yourself from that trauma will release you to be able to achieve so much more going forward.

If you need some help with the healing and achieving associated with Goal Trauma, come and join my Monday Night Momentum Coaching group. We meet monthly and deal with exactly this, move past what is getting in our way so we can live the dream baby!!!!

LEARN MORE & REGISTER HERE!

Thanks for reading. ❤️