Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.
Stephen Covey
Goals are great and it is common practice to set goals to achieve anything meaningful in life. But most goals are not met because there are inherent challenges that come with goals.
As the goals are longer term in nature, there is a need to plan the way to achieve goals and this planning is where most of us struggle and give up in the middle.
So the following 4 tips are what I found that can be useful in achieving the goals
Look for your bright spots.
Psychologists tell us that we are wired to look at the negative. One famous study concluded that when it comes to the way we think, “bad is stronger than good.”
So when it comes to changing our lives, we’ll tend to ask ourselves,
“What’s the problem and how do I fix it?” But often we can benefit more by asking a different question:
“What’s working and how can I do more of it?” In other words, we can learn from our own “bright spots.”
When it came to my own meditation practice, I had become a chronic procrastinator. I had set a goal to do 2 times meditation daily for a minimum of 15 minutes each but found I only hit the target sporadically.
When I was searching for how to address this, I came across a nice article that said, instead of feeling sad about failures, it is important to look for bright spots:
So the question was what is different about the days when I do manage to complete 2 times meditation? And what I discovered was that almost every day, I had been ending my work early in the evening at 7:30 pm.
So this realization turned into a strategy: I started planning to end my day work at 7:30 pm every day. The early-ending approach has worked like a charm.
“When I’m finishing that early, I have no motivation to continue in the office, I have all the time to spend on my meditation for 15 minutes.”
This has defeated procrastination by cloning his bright spots.
Make one change at a time.
Over the last 15 years, a series of studies in psychology has confirmed a sobering result: Change is not easy, and attempting multiple changes means our brains are not good at it.
The research shows that our brain is trained to conserve energy. In many different situations, we need to spend energy: like when controlling our spending; holding in our emotions; managing the impression we’re making on others; resisting, temptations; coping with fears; and many, many others.
Why is this important? Because any life change will require self-control which in turn requires self-monitoring which means focused energy.
Self-control or willpower is the fuel that allows change to succeed, but it is like a wave. Ebb & flow. It is not consistently high. It can go down
For that reason, you will have a better chance of success if you can focus on one change at a time.
If you try to change your profession and add new exercise routines and money habits all at once, you are more likely to stall because you overburden your brain, and the brain will short adopting shortcuts and runs out.
Turn that one change into a habit.
A few years back Vijay, a client of mine came to me saying he is constantly falling behind on his personal “to-do” list. “Looking at the list on the phone,” he kept telling,
“I need to send those e-mails, phone my mother I haven’t spoken to in a while, clean that room that I haven’t touched, go to the gym, do meditation, go shopping, the list really does go on and on.”
He resolved to create a daily routine: Every morning, like clockwork, he’d finish one task. “Once I’m on a roll, it seems easy to carry on.
I remember to look at my list for today’s task because I’m used to doing it, and I almost look forward to ticking off that day’s chore,” he said.
Habits are effective because once established, they no longer burn self-control. (Think about how little mental energy it requires to take a shower, make your morning coffee, or carry out any of the other
habits you’ve acquired.)
You’ll be more likely to keep your resolution if you can turn it into a habitual behavior—something that happens at the same time and place on a regular cycle.
Set an “action trigger” to start your habit ASAP.
What’s the best way to start a habit?
Let’s say you’re trying to exercise more. You might declare to yourself: Tomorrow morning, right after I drop off my son at school, I’ll head straight to the gym for my workout.
Let’s call this mental plan an “action trigger.” You’ve made the decision to follow a certain plan (exercising) when you encounter a
certain trigger (the school’s front entrance, tomorrow morning).
Action triggers like these can be surprisingly effective in motivating action. Doctors suggest patients who have gone through fractures, hip replacement, or knee surgery follow & repeat simple action triggers as
“I’ll do my range-of-motion extensions every morning after I finish my first cup of coffee.”
Those patients who used action triggers recovered more than twice as fast, standing up on their own in 3.5 weeks, versus 7.7 weeks for the others.
Psychologists have compared action triggers to “instant habits” because what they do, in essence, is make our behavior automatic when the trigger moment comes. Seize that power for yourself: Jump-start a new habit by setting an action trigger.
That is it. The above 4 steps can make wonders and tell me in comment if which one you want to follow from today
