By Jill MacDonald

I’ve learned about goal setting from several different mentors I’ve worked with over the years. And while they all had their own approach, two key principles came up every single time:

• You need repetition, or

• You need intense positive emotion.

Every time—those two. Over and over again.

Because the truth is: your thoughts matter. What you think and how you feel about your life determines what shows up in it. It’s so important to get clear about how you feel about where you're heading. And if you feel unclear or uninspired, it’s just as important to recognize that, too.

If your thoughts are negative, if you’re weighed down by emotion, it will absolutely impact what you create—or don’t create—in your life. It’s way too easy to let our thoughts run on autopilot and go unchecked. But we can train our thinking and feeling to work in our favor.

When I reflected on my own goals, I realized I was doing pretty well with repetition—I was thinking about them often. But the results weren’t coming very fast. I started to suspect I was missing that emotional spark. I wanted to feel more excited, more lit up, more emotionally connected to what I was working toward... but it just wasn’t happening.

And that started to frustrate me. (Which is kind of ironic, because frustration is definitely an intense emotion—just not the helpful kind!)

You see, when you’re emotionally lit up about a goal—when you feel deep positive emotions around it—it acts like a magnet. It pulls the goal toward you, or pulls you toward the goal. It accelerates the process.

But when your emotions are intensely negative, it’s like flipping the magnet around—it pushes the goal away. It repels what you’re trying to draw in.

One morning, as I was sitting with this puzzle, a simple idea came to me: I’ve already had tons of experiences in life that made me feel intense, joyful, positive emotions. I just needed to tap into one of those memories and feel that feeling again.

For me, that’s easy when I read a love note my husband once wrote me—or when I see a baby picture of one of my kids. Instant feels.

So now, when I want to raise my emotional vibration around a goal, I do this:
I recall one of those heartfelt memories and fully let the emotion of it settle into my body. And then, while I’m still feeling it, I shift my focus to my goal. I look at a picture of it, or think about it in detail.

Because my body is already lit up with that emotion, I begin to associate the goal with those same feelings. And that is when things start to shift.

This little practice has made it so much easier for me to feel emotionally connected to my goals—and as a result, I’m achieving them with more ease and joy than ever before.