Are you working hard on your determination by setting your goals and doing everything you can to create something different in your life? How is it working for you?

If you are an aware individual who is interested in creating more in your life, then using motivation and goals might not necessarily be your best choice.

These self-improvement tools actually have some rather significant drawbacks, which could explain the many people who have had difficulty in getting them to work for them.

“Does motivation really work?” asks Gary Douglas, Founder of Access Consciousness. Motivation is essentially a lie, he states. “It is a lie that you would need any outside source to motivate you. The lie is that you would ever choose to do nothing. Have you ever been in the hospital or sick where you had nothing to do but watch television for 3 days? You were bored after 3 minutes. You were ready to get well just to escape the boredom of doing nothing!”

Motivation is the myth that we require an outside source to motivate us to do something, rather than recognizing the infinite creative capacity we have as infinite beings, says Douglas.

A far better “motivating factor” is choice, he says. “What if you would choose what you were interested in, instead of having to find an outside source as motivation?” A great way to discover what choices you have is to ask questions. Some of these questions include, “What choice do I have here?” “What else is possible?” “What other questions can I ask?” “What contribution can I be or receive?”

For most creative people, which probably includes you if you’ve read this far into this article, the danger is in doing too little, not doing too much. We run the danger of becoming OCCC, says Douglas. “OCCC” is his take on obsessive compulsive creative folks, who when they don’t have enough to do become obsessive compulsive creators of crap, also known as disasters in their lives used to keep them entertained.

The way out of the trap of becoming OCCC is to regularly ask the question, “What else can I add to my life today that will generate money now and in the future?” This question neatly invites more possibilities for generating income from places you didn’t image or expect, as well as preventing the idleness that breeds disasters in your life.

Now that you’ve discovered that what’s required is questions and creativity rather than motivation, are you ready to throw your goals out the window as well? Douglas has some observations about the limitations goals create as well.

The word goal is quite similar to the old spelling of jail, he notes. In fact, it is still spelled gaol in Australia and Scotland. A goal we set in any lifetime does become a jail for us; it’s like an oath we are bound to forever. If we don’t acknowledge those old goals and destroy them, we can stay trying to reach them endlessly.

This can have devastating consequences when it comes to income and investments, for example. If your goal was to have one million dollars and you reached it but didn’t acknowledge meeting your goal, your own goal setting would compel you to lose that money so you could again meet your goal of getting to one million dollars. Similarly, when we set goals now for the future, we lock ourselves into a universe of no choice in the future.

What’s a better choice? Douglas suggests the word target. A target has much more flexibility than the word goal. It’s movable, you can change it, and you can shoot at it again and again.

You can also undo your goals in any area by asking for all the goals and the secret agendas you have in any area, and asking the universe to “destroy and uncreate them.” The universe is actually your ally and will do as you ask. Destroy has a similar but slightly different energy to uncreate, which is the exact opposite of create. By asking for both to occur at once, a more complete clearing of those old goals can be accomplished.

What if you gave up your motivation and goals, and starting using questions, creativity, and targets instead? Might your game of life become much more fun?