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Question: Every year I write out my goals and intentions for the year and have huge expectations that ‘this year will be better than the last’. But then my enthusiasm fizzles out and I don’t accomplish much (or any) of my goals. I look back and think I should be farther along in life by now. How do I stick to my goals and feel great about my life?
Answer:
Thank you for asking this very important question that so many of us feel. Here’s where so many go wrong, despite all the right intentions at the beginning of the year.
The new year is like a new page, a new chapter, a beginning. The problem is in the way we think about the first day of the new year. We think it is the reset button to the course or path our life is on.
December 31st at midnight is not a Cinderella moment where magic happens. It’s just another day turning over into another day.
We put so much emphasis and meaning on January 1st that we are surely disappointed within a few weeks when we don’t see our goals transpiring.
We need to stop putting the pressure on ourselves and waiting for the big day to arrive. The big day arrives when we decided within ourselves that we need to make a change, what the change will be and map out a strategy to the change actually happen.
There is a start, middle and end to goals. Otherwise they are not tangible, real goals. Just pipe dreams.
The other pitfall is in the thinking of ‘I should’. Any sentence that starts with ‘I should’ is doomed for failure, thus, sinking your self esteem and motivation. You are where you are because of the way you think and the action that goes along with that thinking. So you ‘should’ be exactly where you are right now.
How do you ‘stick’ to your goals? Here’s how. You need to seriously THINK about where you are right now in your life. Write it down. This is your Actual.
Now seriously THINK about what you want. Write it down. This is your Vision.
What you have is the gap between the Actual and the Vision. THINK about the gap. What steps do you need to do to close the gap? Write that down. Break down those steps that close the gap into bite size chunks. It’s very hard to fulfill a goal that has an open ended time frame, or a 12 month or longer time frame.
Take your big Vision and break it down into action steps, then break the action steps into Seasons, into months, into weeks, into days, into hours, into minutes. Look at this EVERY morning and every night.
You now have a foolproof plan to accomplish your goals and live the Life you ‘should’ be living. Check out my audio called “How Big is Your But? Learn the 7 Ways You are Sabotaging your Success” and my new book called “Paralyzed: Getting Past the Excuses of Why You Aren’t Successful.”
Jason Reid, The Rechargeable Entrepreneur has been working with Odette for over a year.