How to succeed at anything!
You know those nights when you go to bed full of good intentions. Tomorrow you will eat better, be motivated, go to the gym etc etc. you're gonna start that book.
the next day you wake up and somehow it never gets done.
It's funny because we expect to wake up and be completely different to who we are today. If we were already that person we would have done what we wanted to do tomorrow today!!! The way to succeed is not to continually wish to wake up more motivated tomorrow!! You're not lazy or the worlds worst procrastinator. All you probably need to do is understand more about goal setting, healthy habits and rituals.
The answer lies in the NOW moment and the trick is to set yourself up to win!!
When I'm helping people achieve goals, the one thing those people who aren't achieving, have in common, is that they are setting the bar way to high. Nobody likes to fail and as soon as we do, we tend to give up temporarily (until the next day or week). You can repeat this pattern for years, blaming procrastination, no motivation and great excuses - beating yourself up and no doubt shaming and guilting yourself in the process. This serves only to reaffirm your worst fears and feed the lack of change.
If we set the bar too high then we are less likely to take ANY action because it feels intimidating! ALL action is good, ANY action is good, no matter how small!!
To help people, I always find out how fair their goal setting is.
For example, a client came to me recently wanting to change her lifestyle. She felt that she drank too much, she ate too much and she never exercised. She would say to herself every evening that tomorrow will be different and then she would wake up and do exactly the same thing again the next day.
She would emotionally beat herself up and then repeat the cycle.
When I asked her to name one positive and easy change that she could make, she responded with 'I'm going to see a nutritionalist and I could get a personal trainer, or join the gym'. These sound like reasonable changes but each one of these options has potential for instant failure, why you ask? Because they are all WAAAY too big! Even small is too big!!
You see, if you have something in your life that you always say you will do, but that never gets done, I don't doubt that you couldn't tell me RIGHT now, HOW you could succeed. Most people know what to do, but the reason you can't often do it, is because the end point is too much of a leap from where you are now. To add any new practice, habit or ritual into your life, start small!! Small is a prelude to big and it's the most essential and overlooked formula for success in changing anything!!
If you get used to setting really easy targets, you will naturally start to get used to succeeding. Once that's in place, and you feel how good it feels to succeed, you can't help but set yourself more goals and very quickly achieve ANYTHING!!
Sure, go to the nutritionalist, get some motivation and advise from them. Join the gym and get a personal trainer. However, whilst you are waiting for your nutritional appointment, why not just add two or three healthy foods into your existing diet today and take one unhealthy thing out. You can succeed today, right now! Doesn't that feel better than the completely unrealistic, imaginary day when you are nothing but healthy, never eating anything bad ever again? If everything else except perfection is failure to you, then it's easy to understand why that method causes you to lose motivation and never succeed. Take your bar down! Set a more reasonable goal!
Don't wait for the gym membership! Don't wait until you have bought new trainers and all the gear, don't wait until after work when you are too tired and can't be bothered, or your 'busy period' at work is over! You are working against yourself when you do this!! Stop expecting yourself to feel the motivation at 5pm that you had at 9am that morning!! Whenever you feel the motivation is when you take the action! Do 5 mins exercise at the side of your bed every morning when you wake up! 5 mins of running in the spot, squats, lunges, or stick some music on and get a little funky with your bad self! If you struggle to do that then you can start to understand how you would fail at the more intimidating goals!!
Every time you hear yourself give an excuse, and I mean EVERY time, tell yourself firmly that that's exactly what that is, an excuse. Set a long term goal, and then back it up with just ONE step that takes you in the right direction!!! Not a giant leap, a teeny tiny step in the right direction! Once your up and moving, that five minutes becomes 10, which becomes 15 and when you add that up every day, that often equates to more than what you would have done 'intending' to go to the gym!!
I've used gym as an example but you can apply this formula to everything, and imagine how your life could be if you did apply it to everything today?
Just a little more veg and fruit than you normally have and just a little less of the naughty stuff. A glass of water between every glass of wine/alcohol. You don't have to start that book, but you could just get used to writing by starting a journal or making notes in your phone when you feel inspired.
Don't clean the whole house, just clean the sink, or clean for 10 mins.
Your perspective is also important when breaking bad habits and creating healthy new ones.
Don't focus on the lack of chocolate biscuits and how lovely they would taste if you just maybe had one. This suggests that you are stopping yourself from having something that you really want, and that sucks! Decide today what you want your body to look like, and how healthy, how fit and how toned, you would like to be. Decide how healthy you would like your heart muscle to be and how long you would like to be healthy for. Once you know, then all you need to do before everything you eat or do, is ask yourself 'is this choice in line with the healthy person I am choosing to be?'.
This one perspective adjustment changes your life!!
Make a plan!!! Don't make a plan to make a plan, just quickly right now, think of 3 things that you would like to be different in your life.
Take just one action step today in those three areas. Google a hobby, write one sentence or a rough outline of a CV. Make everything simple and do each action step for between 1-5 mins.
Today is the only day you have! No more excuses, set yourself up to SUCCEED!!!
You know those nights when you go to bed full of good intentions. Tomorrow you will eat better, be motivated, go to the gym etc etc. you're gonna start that book.
the next day you wake up and somehow it never gets done.
It's funny because we expect to wake up and be completely different to who we are today. If we were already that person we would have done what we wanted to do tomorrow today!!! The way to succeed is not to continually wish to wake up more motivated tomorrow!! You're not lazy or the worlds worst procrastinator. All you probably need to do is understand more about goal setting, healthy habits and rituals.
The answer lies in the NOW moment and the trick is to set yourself up to win!!
When I'm helping people achieve goals, the one thing those people who aren't achieving, have in common, is that they are setting the bar way to high. Nobody likes to fail and as soon as we do, we tend to give up temporarily (until the next day or week). You can repeat this pattern for years, blaming procrastination, no motivation and great excuses - beating yourself up and no doubt shaming and guilting yourself in the process. This serves only to reaffirm your worst fears and feed the lack of change.
If we set the bar too high then we are less likely to take ANY action because it feels intimidating! ALL action is good, ANY action is good, no matter how small!!
To help people, I always find out how fair their goal setting is.
For example, a client came to me recently wanting to change her lifestyle. She felt that she drank too much, she ate too much and she never exercised. She would say to herself every evening that tomorrow will be different and then she would wake up and do exactly the same thing again the next day.
She would emotionally beat herself up and then repeat the cycle.
When I asked her to name one positive and easy change that she could make, she responded with 'I'm going to see a nutritionalist and I could get a personal trainer, or join the gym'. These sound like reasonable changes but each one of these options has potential for instant failure, why you ask? Because they are all WAAAY too big! Even small is too big!!
You see, if you have something in your life that you always say you will do, but that never gets done, I don't doubt that you couldn't tell me RIGHT now, HOW you could succeed. Most people know what to do, but the reason you can't often do it, is because the end point is too much of a leap from where you are now. To add any new practice, habit or ritual into your life, start small!! Small is a prelude to big and it's the most essential and overlooked formula for success in changing anything!!
If you get used to setting really easy targets, you will naturally start to get used to succeeding. Once that's in place, and you feel how good it feels to succeed, you can't help but set yourself more goals and very quickly achieve ANYTHING!!
Sure, go to the nutritionalist, get some motivation and advise from them. Join the gym and get a personal trainer. However, whilst you are waiting for your nutritional appointment, why not just add two or three healthy foods into your existing diet today and take one unhealthy thing out. You can succeed today, right now! Doesn't that feel better than the completely unrealistic, imaginary day when you are nothing but healthy, never eating anything bad ever again? If everything else except perfection is failure to you, then it's easy to understand why that method causes you to lose motivation and never succeed. Take your bar down! Set a more reasonable goal!
Don't wait for the gym membership! Don't wait until you have bought new trainers and all the gear, don't wait until after work when you are too tired and can't be bothered, or your 'busy period' at work is over! You are working against yourself when you do this!! Stop expecting yourself to feel the motivation at 5pm that you had at 9am that morning!! Whenever you feel the motivation is when you take the action! Do 5 mins exercise at the side of your bed every morning when you wake up! 5 mins of running in the spot, squats, lunges, or stick some music on and get a little funky with your bad self! If you struggle to do that then you can start to understand how you would fail at the more intimidating goals!!
Every time you hear yourself give an excuse, and I mean EVERY time, tell yourself firmly that that's exactly what that is, an excuse. Set a long term goal, and then back it up with just ONE step that takes you in the right direction!!! Not a giant leap, a teeny tiny step in the right direction! Once your up and moving, that five minutes becomes 10, which becomes 15 and when you add that up every day, that often equates to more than what you would have done 'intending' to go to the gym!!
I've used gym as an example but you can apply this formula to everything, and imagine how your life could be if you did apply it to everything today?
Just a little more veg and fruit than you normally have and just a little less of the naughty stuff. A glass of water between every glass of wine/alcohol. You don't have to start that book, but you could just get used to writing by starting a journal or making notes in your phone when you feel inspired.
Don't clean the whole house, just clean the sink, or clean for 10 mins.
Your perspective is also important when breaking bad habits and creating healthy new ones.
Don't focus on the lack of chocolate biscuits and how lovely they would taste if you just maybe had one. This suggests that you are stopping yourself from having something that you really want, and that sucks! Decide today what you want your body to look like, and how healthy, how fit and how toned, you would like to be. Decide how healthy you would like your heart muscle to be and how long you would like to be healthy for. Once you know, then all you need to do before everything you eat or do, is ask yourself 'is this choice in line with the healthy person I am choosing to be?'.
This one perspective adjustment changes your life!!
Make a plan!!! Don't make a plan to make a plan, just quickly right now, think of 3 things that you would like to be different in your life.
Take just one action step today in those three areas. Google a hobby, write one sentence or a rough outline of a CV. Make everything simple and do each action step for between 1-5 mins.
Today is the only day you have! No more excuses, set yourself up to SUCCEED!!!
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