DECIDE TO DO THE ACTIVITIES YOU NEED TO DO REACH YOUR GOALS
THEN DO THEM EVERY DAY
You must start. As you start, you will figure it out along the way. You can’t expect yourself to know all the steps but you can expect yourself to take the next step. And you take those steps by engaging in the activities you have planned out in your action plan. Those series of decisions to take one more step will eventually lead you right where you want to go.
Decide every day that this day you will do what you set out to do.
Then do the activities you have already planned out to reach your goal.
Here’s a little case study on the steps to life transformation. If you notice the dates on these posts, I wrote steps 1 , 2, 3 and 4 in February and now it is September. I got stuck on Step 4.
Yep, I was following my own advice and then got stuck.
Seriously.
You’ll laugh when you read what my goal was (and still is):
CONSISTENCY IN EFFORT TOWARD MY GOALS
Good God, who knew it would be this hard. Apparently I wasn’t as ready to change as I thought I was–see Step 3
And then one day I was.
In fact, it was September 6th, 2017, and I finally decided the pain of staying the same and getting the same results was too unbearable.
And now I’m doing it!
The kids I work with will often say, “I CAN’T DO IT!” as they are doing the exact thing they are saying they can’t do.
“BUT YOU ARE DOING IT!!” I always reply, smiling.
Which is exactly what I have been saying to myself these last 8 days.
YOU ARE DOING IT!
I was so, so tired of not doing the consistent work I needed to do to reach my goals. In fact, the YEARS of frustration with myself lead many times to the depression I struggle with. Which in turn led to lack of motivation and more avoidance. Which led to more frustration.
Then one day, I decided that I was going to start.
I’d start with a small goal, to prove to myself I could be consistent.
I’d let my success with that fuel more successes.
I’d take the time to understand the habitual thoughts and feelings that led to my starts and stops in the past.
I would no longer let myself stop doing the activities that would get me to my goal.
And you know what I found??????
One of the biggest roadblocks to my consistency was the belief that I really COULDN’T do it. That I would once again disappoint myself. That I would fail like I had before and the time before that and the time before that.
Deep down to my soul I didn’t believe in myself. This realization settled on me and it was so freeing because for the first time I truly understood in my soul and not just in my head that the only one holding me back was me.
That’s it.
And another deeper truth I realized was that I am scared of success.
Scared of doing well and not being able to sustain it.
Scared of not knowing how to be successful through my low days and days where I just want to be in bed all day.
Scared of knowing I didn’t know how to be consistent in my effort at what I wanted to accomplish and fearful that any success would be a fluke and I would end up in more failure and disappointment.
My answer to these fears is to do what have I decided to do despite how I feel and despite what I think.
This is where I came up with the 100 day transformation challenge for myself.
I like to talk to myself and I said, “Annie, the 100 days are going to pass anyway, you might as well just do this for 100 days and see if anything changes. You will lose nothing. And you have the potential to gain a whole lot.”
So here is the goal that I’m working on, using my own 6 steps:
My goal is to BE CONSISTENT IN MY EFFORT TO ACHIEVE MY GOALS
The habits preventing me from this are:
- Negative self talk (You can’t do this, you’re going to fail, etc.)
- Making excuses (I’ll do it later, I’m too tired)
- Not prioritizing my time (time wasters like Facebook, etc.)
Ways I will achieve this goal (using SMART method):
100 push-ups every day for 100 days
1 minute plank every day for 100 days
1 post on Instagram every day for 100 days
I picked these actions to achieve my goal because they are
specific and measurable;
attainable for what I can do at this moment;
relevant because two of my larger goals are to get in shape and work on my blog/social media business sites;
and time-bound–100 days seemed long enough and had a nice ring to it.
AND I’M DOING IT!
I’m taking each day one by one and deciding each day to do what I have set out to do.
Nothing in my life has changed except for my commitment to do these things NO MATTER WHAT.
Every day I fight back the habitual thoughts that tell me I can’t do this just like Wonder Woman deflects those bullets with her arm bands…..
Every day I fight back the feeling that my efforts won’t get me where I want to go and that it is too hard to keep going……
Every day I focus on what I have done over the previous days and what I will do for that day……..
Every day I focus on how good it feels to keep this promise to myself…….
Every day I focus on what it will feel like to reach that 100 days and tell myself I did it…..
So here’s my encouragement to you.
The worst thing that can happen from this whole process is that you learn more about yourself and what does and does not work for you.
Pretty awful, right?
Sometimes when you are working on change it doesn’t feel like you are doing it. All you can see is what you aren’t doing yet and your actions may not feel like how you expect them to feel.
TRUST THE PROCESS.
Keep at it on a consistent basis. DON’T STOP PRACTICING! Don’t stop doing what will get you where you want to go.
Stand back like you would if you were teaching a child to ride a bike and yell, “YOU’RE DOING IT!” over and over to yourself.
Get excited for yourself when you make that first long run without falling off. Feel that rush as your legs are pumping hard and that bike is not falling over.
So what if you don’t know how to use the brakes yet! So what if you are a little wobbly! So what if you fall off and scrape up your hands and knees!
You get your butt back up on that bike and keep practicing!
YOU ARE DOING IT!
And then just keep going.
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