Traditional Goal setting wisdom dictates that our goals must have a time frame attached to them. In other words, we must have a deadline. For example, I want to lose so many pounds by such and such a date. When we set such a goal we go all out to achieve it – for a few days – hoping to see huge progress in the short term. As this rarely happens, whatever the goal, we lose our enthusiasm and trip up, usually telling ourselves that we’ll start again another day when ‘things’ or the ‘time’ seems more right.
Somewhere deep down in our subconscious mid we’ve scored ourselves as a failure once again. It doesn’t take many such failures to keep us feeling down rather than dynamic. And we wonder why it’s so hard to get our mojo working again.
There is another possible negative to the goal tied to time method. When we achieve our goal we may feel great for a moment or two then we slip into ‘now what?’ Strangely enough that can be followed by an empty feeling or mild depression. If your goal was weight loss guess what will happen next – comfort food!
There is a better way, a much easier way. And the beauty of it is that once you get it, you can transpose it to any area of your life and success itself becomes a habit. Not only that, you avoid the anti climax that can often follow achieving a goal.
Here’s how it works. And it is surprisingly simple. You have your big scary audacious goal. It may be weight loss. It may be that you want to learn something new like playing a musical instrument or maybe you want to write a best seller. Whatever it is put it to one side for a moment.
Acknowledge that you are going to have to actually do something about it. You have to take action. And you are going to have to commit some time to whatever it is on a regularly basis. Start small and stay small. You’ll want to pick something that you can and are going to, turn into a habit.
If you want to lose weight, start by drinking a glass of water before every meal and with every mid-meal cup of tea or coffee. If you want to write that novel or paint a masterpiece, start by setting aside time every day, for writing or painting, and then write or paint for that allotted time.
Creating a daily habit of an activity related to your eventual goal will more likely achieve success than any desperate time driven schedule.
You will also find that a habit requires no motivation. Rather as you make progress the tiny progress that you do make as a result of the habit is in itself motivating. In other words, the habit becomes self motivating.
Should you have to miss or should your allocated time be cut short for whatever reason, don’t beat yourself up. Just do what you can and carry on thereafter exactly as before.
To make a start aim for a seven days on the trot. Then, make any adjustments you feel are necessary and go for another seven days and so on.
When the habit is firmly entrenched, when it becomes an addiction, and you begin to see small positive progress towards your goal, you will feel, well – Dynamic! Pat yourself on the back, reward yourself and keep on keeping on because you are Dynamic.