Tag: goals

Don’t Slow Your Roll

Don’t slow your roll. You’ve done it. You’ve decided to make the changes necessary to start living a new life, a better life, your best life and make the world a better place. You’ve taken steps to start making the change, then your motivation just seems to wane, and you fall yourself falling back into the same ol’ same ol’?

Even if you’re taking baby steps, keep taking the action, no matter how small to move you closer to where you want to be. All these efforts are cumulative. Even if you miss a day, you can take another step tomorrow.

Certainly, there will be roadblocks or challenges which you will face along the way. Let fear not be one of them.

Facing your fear and not letting it keep you from doing the right thing is what life is all about. I know it’s an over-used phrase, nonetheless, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s all about perseverance in the face of adversity.

Keep on going.

What must you do to change your life for the better?

Do you feel your path ahead is not within your reach? Do you need to take some classes? Do you feel imprisoned by your current situation?

Regardless of how unworthy or incapable, you might feel, you have everything you need right inside of you.

Is there fear about leaving your job for one that will better serve you but will require sacrificing cash flow or security? The false sense of safety and security promoted by society and attached to your “job” is the biggest trap which is used to keep you in your own prison, to keep you controllable and subservient, preventing your growth and expansion.

Be willing to change your world, even if it means taking a pay cut.

Look at the heroes of our age, the people who stood up against what would be insurmountable by others. Who do you look up to? Study them. Use them for inspiration.

If you start thinking, “My life has been so awful,” consider those who have overcome incredible obstacles to live a better life and make the world a better place, take a deep breath and take another step.

Find ways to remind yourself of your dream and make it come true.

Just map it out and do it.

Remember to celebrate your wins along the way. Don’t expect approval or recognition from anyone else, this is your journey.

Looking for back up? Find those people who support you no matter what you do, they have your back. The naysayers? Don’t let them get to you. Kick them to the curb (or put them on hold), at least while you’re moving and shaking to make the adjustments and improvements necessary for your life.

Try to do something different every day. If you are able to do things differently in your life this may put you in a position to meet someone who is likeminded and more supporting, whom you may invite into your circle of influence.

There’s a big world out there, and you are gaining more and more access to it with every step you take outside your comfort zone.

By setting intermediary goal posts, such as completing a course of study, getting a different job, achieving a certain level of income, moving to a different location, starting a business, or whatever it might be, you can see the results of your efforts, and know when it is time to celebrate.

There is no limit to the number of goals you can have, and there is no limit to their size. The smallest of goals, like getting up without hitting the snooze button, or not watching the NEWS (Not Even Worth Sharing), or texting someone in your life a short note of support or gratitude, anything.

The more goals you have, the more you will have to celebrate.

You can repurpose your life and change it massively for the greater good.

You got this.

Five Years

It took you five years to get to where you are right now. If you look back over the last five years, you can see how everything unfolded to have you arrive where you are today. You may, or may not, have exerted a great amount of planning and effort to come to where you are now, or just let it unfold on its own. Nonetheless, it’s been five years, and here you are.

In just the same way, you could be living a completely different life, the life you’ve always dreamed of, in the next five years, and you can do it yourself. You don’t have to break any laws, compromise your morals, or deceive anyone in order to live the life you’ve dreamed of.

I’ve known of and helped many people do just that, create the life of their dreams with extremely humble beginnings (some the humblest imaginable) and all it takes is creating a vision and mapping a path from here to there, with a little movement along the path every day, you will arrive at your destination.

Now, making a commitment for five years might sound like a long time at the outset, but think about the other commitments you make for five years, like for school, relationships, buying a car, or leasing an apartment. We all make five-year commitments to all kinds of things, why not something that can dramatically change your life for the better?

It may take a year, or ten years to get there, but you can do it if you do a little something-something every day to move you closer to your best life ever.

The basic process is simple enough, first to visualize your life in five years, then to break the progress necessary into chunks of manageable size to get you from here to there.

This works for anyone, unemployed, underemployed, over-employed, artists, inventors, novelists, organizations and businesses, no matter where you are or what stage of life you are at in this moment.

To visualize all you need is a good imagination and a way to document the results. Close your eyes, and see in your mind’s eye the life that you want in five years, with as much detail as possible. Use all five senses and write it down while being very descriptive. The more detail, the better.

Next up, develop your map. Start from where you are by evaluating all the resources you have available at present, in essence, packing your bags for the journey, and it will be a journey, not a vacation.

A vacation, you start and it is paid for and budgeted (normally) in advance. A journey, on the other hand, you embark upon with what you have, and you pay for it, and make adjustments, as you go along the way.

No journey is ever taken without starting or taking the first step followed by many successive steps.

By reducing your journey into sections, it allows you to stop and reevaluate your progress along the way. Think of these as landmarks. It’s like charting a nationwide trek with key points or destinations to acknowledge along the way. You might stop at the Grand Canyon along the way, only for you, your Grand Canyon might be buying a house, horse, or bus to rent or building a website, investing in a certain amount of stock, or bitcoin, etc..

Whatever it is, you have these milestones, or goals marked out on your map in succession, so that your five-year plan will have you at your Grand Canyon at the specified time, say in six months. If you’ve accomplished your goal, you can feel rest assured you are well on your way and your map is accurate.

If you’ve made it to the Grand Canyon ahead of schedule, then you might want to revise your map, or at least the timeline, because if you keep it up, it looks like you’ll be living the life of your dreams a lot sooner than you expected.

If the date has come for you to be at the Grand Canyon and you can see that it is still a way off, then this is an indication you need to revisit your method(s) of progress. You may well be moving toward your goal a little every day, but it might be time to step up your pace or to readjust your expectations.

In any case, your best life, the life you could have only imagined before, is waiting for you only five years away, maybe sooner.

New Years Resolution

New Years’ resolutions, they’re coming up. It’s that time of year where you look back, review the progress you’ve made the last year, possibly recall your intentions at the beginning of the year, and compare where you are today to where you were only a year ago. How will this affect this year’s resolutions?

If you’re like most people, you started last year with the best intentions and at best within three months you’d slipped back into your comfort zone, forgetting about all those well-laid plans of having new and improved tomorrow.

Are you participating in a little self-sabotage by setting your goals too unrealistically? Sometimes, if you set your New Years goals too high, you’re bound to miss the mark.

If you take a look at the other folks who knocked their resolutions out of the park, last year, you probably noticed they took a little different approach.

You could take a more practical approach to achieving a goal by chunking it into bite-sized pieces. For instance, instead of resolving to

Lose 50 Pounds

I have a client who desired to do so, but accomplished it by avoiding such a lofty statement, and instead resolved to lose one pound a week. Almost a year later, she’s down almost 60 pounds.

The 50-pound resolution just seemed too overwhelming at it could lend itself to feelings of discouragement very early on, and this leads to the high failure rate of New Year’s resolutions. After a while (within the first three or four months) it just seems highly unlikely that you will be able to get there, so it’s easier just to fall back into the same ol’ same ol’.

It’s easy to spout off an incongruent claim or hope to have a better year, in the throes of a New Years Eve celebration, but to really have a vested interest in seeing your resolution take root and come to fruition throughout the coming year, that is a horse of a different color.

It’s going to take more than just empty words. It will require a plan, and a bit of stick-to-itiveness to get ‘er done. You will have to consider what obstacles that might get in your way. How will you stay motivated to keep going, even if you don’t feel like it, or when no one’s looking?

Will you have to make changes in your lifestyle to accommodate your new resolution? Is there the likelihood that you can make your resolution come through on your own, or will you need some assistance?

Sharing your resolution with others can help up the ante on your intention(s) at hand.
Teaming up with someone who has a similar goal can be good if he or she is as motivated as you are to see this through. Then, you can lean on each other in times of weakness and help to see each other through the tough times. But if your teammate bails, you better have a backup plan.

Family and friends can be very supportive (then, on the other hand, sometimes not so much. It depends on the family and friends). You might consider enlisting the aid of a coach or accountability partner to help keep you on track along the way.

Are you going to militantly force yourself to do whatever it takes, or make gradual progress over time to slowly get from where you are now to where you want to be?
It appears the most successful resolvers set up a series of small goals in a progression over particular time intervals, anywhere from “per day” to “per month.”

What if you miss the mark or fall off your horse?

No problem, dust yourself off and get back on as soon as possible. Don’t let a misstep or stumbling block prevent you from getting what you want, even if it means starting from scratch all over again. You can do this.

Here are some of the New Years resolutions that are probably crossing your mind, and you have the ability to achieve them, if you put your mind to it. Such as,

I’m going to lose X pounds

I am going to commit to performing a random act of kindness every (day/week/month).

I’m going to trade some of my extraneous activity time (video game play, Internet surfing, social media, or any other time-suck) for healthy physical activity (X amount of time per day/week/month).

I’m going to spend X amount of quality time with my family, loved one, mate/spouse.

I’m going to take up (insert name of new hobby or interest).

I am going to take a class in (whatever you want to learn).

I am going to do something (be as specific as possible) to make the world a better place.

I am going to volunteer (don’t let this be non-specific. Give it some thought and think about when and where you might like to lend your services).

I am going to save $xx.xx per (day/week/month) to put toward (school, vacation, travel, etc.).

I’m going to quit (insert addiction of choice and have a plan for either elimination or gradual measurable decline over time).

Just some ideas to set you on the road to a new and improved next year.