So Much Happier Blog
Transforming to Succeed
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
Last week we talked about being able to look at ourselves and notice what we have the power to change that would improve our prospects in moving toward our goals. This is definitely not the easiest thing to do! We’re likely to struggle with various emotions in the process, because no one likes confronting their own limitations. Also, the idea of change, of tackling what we may have found and working toward new skills, can be challenging and scary. And yet this is exactly what we need to be doing all the time if we want to grow into the kind of people who can succeed in a changing landscape—which is what life will always present, whether you’re a hermit or a big-city dweller.
Once you know what you need to change, I recommend first setting your focus on what you really want and why, and find ways to think about this often. Every day you will need to refresh your motivation, particularly when your endeavors require struggle and persistence—and in the process of change, this may be nearly every day! You might want to make yourself little notes or display pictures that you find inspiring. Maybe you’ll make a playlist of music that buoys you and reminds you what all your work is for. Change takes focus and grit, but you’re allowed to have fun while you’re working at it! Make sure you’re finding ways to keep your purpose alive and remind yourself what it’s all about.
You’ll then need a roadmap that shows you your path to your goal so you can see what you need to do, and in what order. Important: Right from the start, accept that this will be a living document, and you will add to and edit it as circumstances change and as you learn experientially. If you add time-related goals to your map, know that those can and sometimes must change. They’re meant to challenge and draw us forward, not tyrannize us. Too many of us have become demoralized by the idea of setting goals at all because not meeting a deadline can feel like failure, and that’s a very hot button for many of us. Overreactions to our perceptions of failure are common, and yet destructive to our learning and growth in profound ways. The truth is that when things don’t go as planned, there’s almost always something to learn that will help you as you continue toward your destination, and if we lose sight of this, me may quit. If you really want that goal and you keep managing your energy and your outlook, you will return over and over to the plan with a willingness to evolve it and yourself as you go. No one is ever perfect, even those who succeed wildly! We’re all human, and trying to hold yourself to impossible standards that include never making mistakes is not helpful.
The last part of this process I want to mention is attention to your physical and emotional well being. If you don’t eat enough nutrient-rich food, move and stretch your body, and get enough sleep to help your body regenerate, you’ll most likely burn yourself out before you can accomplish anything meaningful, and never be able to sustain the prolonged activity that the pursuit of most goals requires. If you don’t manage your emotions, you will be fighting the chaos of bad moods and demotivating thoughts, which will seriously cut into your productivity. You’ll also be missing out on the priceless information that your emotions are trying to convey about how you may be getting off track from your own values and truest desires, as well as about parts of you that may need attention before your subconscious mind will get on board with your success. And trust me, your subconscious is powerful! If it’s not on board with your plan, it will find ways to sabotage that will be both highly effective and most likely invisible to you so that you have little chance of countering them. Sure, you can vilify and stuff down your emotions because it’s what you know, and learning new skills takes time and effort, but if you take a little time to learn an alternative method of operating, you’ll be able to benefit from much smoother sailing for a lifetime. Doesn’t that sound better? I have found that learning some powerful emotional management tools can revolutionize our experience of day-to-day life for the better.
As you probably know already, I recommend Tapping as one of the most highly effective and useful tools for emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical transformation. It’s incredibly supportive in working through road blocks all along the way, whatever it is you may struggle with. If you’ve forgotten how to use Tapping, you can find a couple of quick videos on the subject here. It doesn’t take long to start getting the benefits, so get going or brush up, and I think you’ll find that it really helps!
Who's Your Inspiration?
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”
Who or what would you change for if the stakes were high? Motivation, which is the willingness to confront challenge and surge toward a specific purpose in the face of uncertainty, can be a tricky beast to harness. If you're struggling with motivation, there are causes you'll need to handle at the root. At the same time, until that work is finished and beyond, there are some hacks that may help you to get through tougher times.
When you're languishing in the "blahs" and you can't seem to want to do anything, the biggest culprits to look toward in today's world are 1) physical needs that aren't being met, which cause a constant energy drain (such as proper nutrition and adequate sleep) and 2) a lack of clarity about what stirs your passion and enthusiasm, or a failure to leverage your passion effectively. Both of these should be thoroughly addressed if you want to reach maximum performance, but here's a shortcut that can act as a booster in the meantime: Figure out who you're drawn to serving and enlist their help in goading yourself into targeted action.
It's amazing how many of us will take action all day long if someone we love needs us, but never take action for ourselves! This is often because of unfortunate beliefs that were instilled in us (such as "To be a good person, I have to put my own desires and needs last") by family or other cultural elements. It can then become sheer habit for you to live out these beliefs, and they may run in the background virtually invisible to you, seemingly a core part of your identity, hard to clearly recognize let alone consciously change. Finding the beliefs that keep you feeling stuck under a mountain of reasons why your life is the way it is, and why you can't have what you want, can be a complicated process, but if you become comfortable with Tapping, it becomes a lot easier! Suddenly you don't have to figure out how to untangle this hopeless ball of string with just your logical mind. Your far-more-powerful subconscious mind starts to get on board when you Tap, and can lead you through a non-linear, but still amazingly effective, process of discovery and release from limited perspectives. If we have a solution to all the overwhelm that keeps us frozen in place, it's much easier to take action in the name of our own goals.
When you want to effect change, first setting up underlying support structures that will create a stable platform on which to anchor your work is a smart strategy. Having healthy exercise routines and mental, emotional, and spiritual practices in place can really help us to be in it for the long run. In addition, finding crafty ways to build your overall motivation and focus is well worth your time so that you have a variety of options on call whenever you just want to lie down and quit! No matter how positive you are, there will be times when you're running up against an obstacle that feels like it might be the last straw. For me, that's usually technology! I do appreciate all the incredible inventions that we have access to in modern life, but when my computer is refusing to talk to my printer for reasons unknown, the thought of spending the afternoon trying to mediate an argument between virtual entities with inscrutable motivations can make me want to climb the curtains. People I get. High-tech machines, not so much.
We're all different, so finding what motivates you will take observation. With some focus over even a week or two, you should be able to isolate a few ideas or activities that really get you excited about life. To find them, ask yourself questions like, "If I could stop time and do absolutely anything I wanted with no consequences for weeks at a time, what would that be?" If you answered "Sleep," then that gives you a clue about what you need in your life to recharge! Imagine that you've had 6 months to a year to just laze about and do nothing, and then try this question again. You'll probably come up with a thing or two that you'd love to do or explore.
Chances are, though, if you're not already adept at motivating yourself with passion, there will be someone else in your life for whom you would get out of bed no matter what. Knowing this is gold! If it's true for you, guess what? You can now enlist that person's help in any number of ways in your efforts toward a goal or a making a new habit stick. Sometimes all it takes is reminding yourself that you're exercising, for example, so you can be healthy for major events in your loved one's life that are still years away. You can also ask them to act as a cheerleader, and give them frequent updates on your progress so they can encourage you regularly. For some people, the idea that their actions affect their pets is a super-potent driver. Those who work with energy in healing practices know that your health, both physical and mental, affects the health of those around you, including that of your companion animals, in both subtle and more overt ways. Helping oneself in order to help a pet can be a very motivating way to commit to change. This is one of those hacks that can boost your motivation when nothing else is working because love is an incredibly powerful force that can be harnessed to impel us into action. As an added bonus, doing things for those you love makes you feel great, as long as you're doing them out an authentic loving spirit and not out of an attempt to control other people or events.
No matter where you are in your journey toward utilizing consistently effective self-motivation skills, you can build toward mastery in this area little bits at a time. Gaining the ability to motivate yourself no matter what's going on takes work over time for sure, but any effort toward building these skills will leave you more empowered and self-aware than before. Waking up to what works for you, and putting what you've noticed to work for you, will help you to build strong habits that will serve you well in the pursuit of all your goals. Pick a suggestion from above and get started! You deserve to feel excited about getting up in the morning, and these will help you get there.
The Upside of Down
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
This week I read an article about how middle children are becoming less common because family sizes are smaller than they were a generation ago. These "middles" may tend to become more self-reliant and diplomatic, according to some in this position, because they get less attention and have to gain skills through self-reliance and a bit more adversity than their eldest and youngest siblings. In adulthood, they may cherish these traits, but in childhood it may have been hard to seem less important, less visible. This got me thinking about the ways in which we can all learn to appreciate the skills we have picked up, by necessity, out of the ashes of our own annoying or upsetting circumstances.
Even someone whose life looks easy to others has been through trying times. No one goes through life unscathed. So even without knowing you, I know that you've been challenged, buffeted, and forced to adapt somewhat in your life. If you think about the times in your life that have been hardest, you may still wish things could have been otherwise and experience some pain in the recollection. That's very normal. But if you want to stop being defined by these unfortunate events, sometime when you can find a quiet, calm moment, try allowing yourself to perceive beyond the plot points of your story. What did you learn about yourself as a result of living through this experience? What decisions about the future did you make that have helped you to become more of your truest self? Where did you become stronger and more able to spot and avoid trouble in the future? What skills did you decide to cultivate so that you could meet similar challenges more competently in the future? And how has all this learning served you since then? How will it continue to serve you and others with whom you can share your wisdom?
When painful things happen, it's easy to get stuck in wishing they hadn't, because pain obviously feels bad. We may have experienced real loss, which can be extremely vivid, and it can distract us from the appreciation of what we still have that's good. Note that I'm not arguing here against the process of grieving, but it need not exist in a vacuum—when it does, that's when we can really spiral downward in unhealthy ways. If we never get around to acknowledging the hard-won lessons of growth we've achieved through hardship, our self-confidence will lag behind our level of competence. We won't actually acknowledge or get to enjoy the greatness we already have at our fingertips. We will let opportunities where we could have excelled pass us by. We will feel uninspired and unfulfilled because unused aptitudes weigh on us; we know we could be wielding them in the service of our deepest purpose and feeling a glorious satisfaction in it. Who do you think is more of a blessing, someone who shuffles around demoralized and drained, or someone who has the confidence to own their skills and use their powers for good? Who has more fun?
You don't have to love that bad things have happened to you, but I do recommend that you purposefully celebrate all the growth you've attained, whatever the circumstances that gave rise to to it. This is a far more productive place to focus than on past disappointments. By all means, Tap on the aftermath of those adverse experiences to release old pain, because sometimes the weight of them prevents you from effectively doing much else—you know if you've been reading these blogs for while that I'm the last person who's going to tell you to just "suck it up" and ignore your emotional reality! But also, train your mind to appreciate the best in yourself and the world around you. This is a powerful commitment that will help you boost your self-confidence and skyrocket your motivation to make progress in all the areas where you most want to win.
Stalking the Wild Motivation
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence —that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
Motivation is a tricky animal. Just the concept of it tends to conjure up feelings of overwhelm, fatigue, and sometimes even shame as we remember the times we've tried to whip ourselves into shape in the name of it; many of us have been taught that motivation means harshness, activating our inner drill sergeant to yell repeatedly at us that life is not yet the way we want it, and we don't measure up, so we better get up and march. We think we need to hold on tight to disappointment, self-recrimination, and the knowledge of just how far we are from our goals—otherwise, we'll be lazy, useless people. Right?
Wrong. This is the best wisdom we've come up with over the course of thousands of years of hierarchical thinking and a habitual, homicidal imbalance between masculine- and feminine-energy processing. While this is not the worst effect of this long-term imbalance (not by a long shot), it is definitely counterproductive. It's not that there's no place for the inner drill sergeant, but over-reliance on it to the exclusion of other approaches to motivation will leave you exhausted and dispirited. It will also feed a vicious cycle in which you think the problem is hopelessly you: You're not good enough, you're not capable, you're just lazy, and on and on.
Most people are actually far more motivated by positive feedback than by blame and negativity. Think about it—during the times in your life when you felt most fired up, energized, and active in the pursuit of a goal, was it because others were constantly berating and insulting you, or was it because things were going pretty well already and you felt a charge of optimism and excitement about a positive vision? If you're like most people, the answer is option two.
Natural motivation bubbles up from a wellspring of creativity and optimistic desire within. If you want to nurture it and foster its long-term health, look to divert anything that will disrupt its otherwise perpetual motion: Memories of past difficulties and the negative beliefs about yourself you've formed as a result; others' careless comments or active sniping at your goals that tempt you into destructive cynicism; bad habits that steal your physical vitality; the overwhelming noise and distraction of a busy world. We've examined all of these in previous blogs, so you can look for clues there as to how to minimize these distractions. Staying motivated is mostly about removing inappropriate influences and feeding your creative energy. This is your new job. Learn to love it and become expert at it.
If you find yourself trying to grit and muscle yourself to greater productivity, take a time-out and ask yourself why you don't want to take on your tasks right now. If you can acknowledge the reasons, you can do something about them. Are you grumpy because you skipped a meal and you need to eat something? Is it because you aren't getting any time to work on the things that actually excite you? Are you low on energy because you're sleep deprived? Are you resenting an interaction with someone that keeps playing in your head and distracting you? Are you afraid of failing? Whatever it is, maybe you can take action on it before you proceed. If not, you can at least start thinking about what changes you can make to help yourself out going forward.
The more you clear away what's in the way of your natural enthusiasm, the more you automatically wake up with a pleasant desire for putting in some work toward what you want to create. Sometimes, you'll need to work on reprioritizing and giving your schedule something of a makeover. Sometimes, all you need is a few minutes of daily Tapping to express built-up emotion and relax your body (or meditation, or journaling, or painting, or prayer, or something else expressive and/or relaxing). We sometimes need to do things we don't enjoy in order to live and keep the lights on, but we always have power over how we're thinking and approaching our tasks. As we make more supportive choices, creativity and motivation can thrive.
Dancing with the Gods of Mischief
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to 2018! In the first week of this new year, many of us will be thinking with renewed fervor of the creation of our most cherished goals. This week may bring you a fresh, more hopeful perspective on what's possible for you and for the world, which feels great. But you know how some years you decide to work toward new things and become quickly derailed from your forward motion? And then that kills your buzz and your motivation to keep at it until you actually get what you wanted? In the interests of helping you to preserve your happy sense of possibility, which is the motivational equivalent of perpetual motion, I offer you these thoughts this week.
We feel the sense of hopefulness about a new year in part because we can look ahead at a familiar unit of time with an intrinsic structure that has become familiar to us—seasons we've come to know, with their attached holidays and weather, clothing and habits, and it's fun to fill that container with an ideal vision. Creating something beautiful, something that sparkles with promise and expresses who we are at our very core, reminds us of the very best we carry within us. Of course that feels great! (Research has shown that the vast majority of people are far more efficiently motivated by positive feedback than by negative experiences, so this makes perfect sense.) At this particular time of year, we allow ourselves to get swept up in the the optimistic moment. Yet, as the year progresses, and our perfectly imagined plans start to go off track (which is inevitable), the structural integrity of our confidence begins to break down along with the structure of our idealized vision of the year.
Instead of taking developments in stride and using them as an impetus to make course corrections, we may decide that we're falling behind, there's not enough time left to make the year into something satisfying! We succumb to the mounting pressure to rectify the differences between vision and uncertain reality on a tight timeline. Sometimes we don't even notice how much we're measuring our intrinsic value against how much of what we want is unfolding according to the schedule we imagined for the current year. Just as age is only a number to which we attach conditioned meanings, often, without thinking, we may decide that not having accomplished something by a certain time of year must MEAN something about us or about our ability to accomplish it at all. If we allow this measurement to remain unconscious, we're far more likely to grind into the end of the year frustrated, grouchy, and not in the mood to celebrate the numerous holidays we might otherwise enjoy with gusto.
Even for those whose lives look easy from the outside, it's very rare that any longer-term plan ever goes as expected. The nature of being human includes navigating constant surprise. The scope certainly varies, but unless you're a hermit, the constancy of the need to confront this dynamic does not. Since this is a common denominator, it doesn't actually "mean" anything about you except that you're human. Success is not keeping every variable in your projects an inescapable chokehold—it's created by a willingness to confront every day's surprise with a willingness to put together pieces of a constantly morphing puzzle in the most constructive pattern you can engineer in that moment. The more you try to cement the pieces to the game board, the more likely it is that the whole thing will rupture under unsustainable pressure and blow up in your face.
Here's what I recommend you do in order to keep up with the pace of natural and inevitable change that will permeate all your projects while constantly feeding your enthusiasm:
- Plan to actually write down what you would most like to have happen this year and read this every day. The point of this is NEVER to make you feel anxious about what's not happening, but to remind you what's important to you, keep you focused on it, and galvanize your creativity around what you can do today to make some progress toward goals that excite you. Not because you really should, or you must, or you're a mess if you don't, but because this helps you to feel that you're really alive.
- Plan to take stock of where you are in relation to where you'd like to be at least once per month, perhaps on the first of the month so it's hard to forget. If you're disappointed about your progress, first of all, admit it! Then do something to address the situation. In light of the current factors in play, decide on a new timetable that seems challenging but possible. If you're stuck somewhere, do some research. Talk to someone you know who has applicable skills. Talk to an expert. Get help brainstorming from a group with diverse viewpoints. In short, reset and keep moving.
- Do something to address the emotions that have come up around what's happening or not happening. If you just let them sit there and fester, pressure will build and you'll be careening toward that grumpy-end-of-year situation, and worse, an unwillingness to persist for as long as it takes. What helps you to feel better? Do it!
- Hint: Exercise. Talk or write out your feelings. Allow yourself to mourn anything that's truly lost. Use Tapping/EFT to help you move through your emotions more comfortably, and regain balance and perspective.
- Not everything can be solved with more or harder work. We need to balance out our effort with play and restoration, which primes the pump of creativity and keeps us healthy. We need to breathe, laugh, and connect with others sometimes before we can solve intractable problems. We need sleep and nutritious food and plenty of water to be at our best. It's a lot to balance, to be sure. That's why improving your ability to greet each day with calm observation of what's happening before diving in is so important to constructing a productive response.
- Even if they're not what you envisioned, find ways to keep enjoying the seasons and their particular rewards. There's something deeply satisfying about marking the passage of time that affects us all if you allow yourself to appreciate them.
It's great to use a new year as inspiration for new projects, but keep in mind that rigidity around deadlines you have chosen out of preference will demoralize you. Letting yourself become rigid is the one mistake that causes more people to quit positive new habits than anything else. The most successful people build confidence through constant interaction with changing circumstances. The more you challenge yourself to keep coming back to the table with constant effort despite confusion and setbacks, the more capacity you build for solving problems and racking up accomplishments. No worthy goal comes into being without the completion of many actions and small milestones along the way. Most goals take much longer to finish than we'd like them to, and must adjust to disruptions that feel like attacks on our free will and our happiness. Life isn't easy, but we persist because refusing to try to improve our lives is no fun. It's sad, boring, and feels like a waste of time to live without direction, and who needs that? Whatever you are able to accomplish this week, this month, this year, celebrate it, and all you've learned and become as you brought it forth. This learning is just as important to your happiness and future success as the product you were able to create, and as you keep at it, you grow more skilled and efficient and creative, and life grows ever more fulfilling.
Sustainable Motivation
“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”
There are two basic options you have every time you seek to motivate yourself toward a task or a goal. One acts like Superman's Kryptonite, draining your energy, creativity and sometimes even your will to live, and the other acts like a vast array of brand-new solar panels, powering your progress with no further investment through the inevitable daily dose of the sun's rays. You may now find yourself wondering, if this is true, why in the name all that is good would anyone choose the first option? That's an excellent question! In this blog, we'll look at why we do this, and what the two options are in the first place.
The first option, which most people vastly overuse in the quest for motivation, is shame. I've heard it said that while guilt is the feeling that you've done something wrong, shame is the feeling that you are wrong. Did you get the difference? Give a moment to sink in, because this is important. Shame is, frankly, guilt gone too far. If you believe that you just are bad, that doesn't leave you anywhere to go, and if that doesn't drain your will to live, I don't know what would! The purpose of feeling guilt at all is to let you know that you've veered off course, and you have some work to do to get back on track so that you're living within the parameters of your own values. And here's where we get down to the reason why we then flip into shame: We were taught to.
The application of shame is a very popular tactic for attempting to keep children (and later, adults) in line. If a caretaker implies that a child's behavior is bad and love may be withdrawn because of it, she is likely to be scared into submission. She is also likely, with limited understanding, to take away the message that she is bad—sometimes that's even the intended message. The point of all this from the adult perspective is to maintain some control, and to teach the child safe and desirable behavior. Parenting is hard, children are energetic and unruly, and sometimes anything that works without obvious harm is the goal.
Adults will use shame tactics on adults for control as well, because they know that subconsciously, many will be intimidated and manipulated by them without even noticing what's happening. Also, these are the tactics they were taught themselves—and these things get passed on generation after generation. You can see this playing out in arenas like politics, advertising, and religion, not to mention family dynamics. We learn, from the way others try to motivate us, how we should try to motivate ourselves. And while I'm no child development or parenting expert, I can tell you that for adults, this approach is a disaster.
I want to move on to a better way, while first acknowledging that though you can do a lot through the power of choice and intention, you may need more than that in order to turn away from the habit of overindulgence in guilt and shame. Many of you know what I'm going to say next! EFT, y'all. Otherwise know as Tapping. It's simple to learn, free to use, and once you're comfortable with it, you can use it to rewrite how you experience old memories and how you process new experiences. Depending on your situation, this may take some work. It may even be appropriate to seek guidance from a mental health professional as you do this work, depending on your situation. But I have not found anything else to be as helpful and empowering across such a range of complaints. That said, now let's move on to greener pastures!
The second way to motivate ourselves is through joy. Does that sound good to you? If not, you may find that you have a lot of programming around this concept that causes you to immediately assume that this is dumb, wouldn't be effective, is the territory of the self-indulgent, etc. If so, that right there will prevent you from fairly considering just how efficient it actually can be, and making some amazing progress. What I find to be true over and over is that when we find ways to amp up our inspiration around who we are and the path we're on, everything becomes easier and more fun. That, in turn, builds confidence and optimism, not to mention enthusiasm and physical energy, that will carry us through challenges and setbacks when necessary.
So how do we go about connecting to the infinite power source that is joy? You'll find your own tricks and refinements, but the essential part of the endeavor is in acknowledging that you have a unique part to play in life that has to do with many factors, including where you came from, your family, your friends, your natural talents and the skills you've built, as well as your desires and passions. You are valuable. Knowing that you have something special to offer, you then get to decide how you will assemble all of your pieces into a work of art. This should be fun!
- If it's not fun yet, consciously ask yourself all throughout the day how you could make your tasks more fun. You're alive today! Act like it! Celebrate it!
- It's also important to celebrate what you want (your vision for your future) as well as what you have right now, and love both as best you can. If you're really loving and appreciating something, anything, you're building reserves of joy
- Lastly, celebrate yourself. You will always make mistakes and do some things badly, especially if you're learning, growing, and trying new things. That never means that you are bad. It means that you're human, and there will always be more to learn
- If others are sending you the message that you're bad, that's about them, not you. You decide what you will improve about yourself. It's great to take feedback into account, and others can teach us a great deal, but you are the final arbiter of what's right for you and your timing
- Every day, you need to be spending some time purposely enjoying and honing your vision, and considering your best next steps for getting there. You need to "keep it real," in other words, allow yourself to think of that future you want as a real thing that's being built right now
- It's also important to train yourself to be awake, alive, and aware in the present moment, because that is where all opportunity will show up. Have you ever noticed that an opportunity is never offered to you in the past or the future? If you're spending too much mental time in either, you're missing out on what's happening and what's possible right now!
Powering your life with joy and inspiration is like hooking up to a renewable energy source that draws you forward. It's the most efficient and sustainable way to boost yourself into the future you want, so think about adding more of it if you want to generate perpetual motivation.
Do This and Thrive
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.”
I rarely do this, but in this week’s blog I’m going to emphasize and reiterate what I said last week, because there is nothing that is potentially more powerful in your life than unleashing your own innate motivation through joy. If you have not yet made time to think through and write out your most cherished hopes in the form of goal statements that are positive, in present tense, and as specific as you can make them, now’s the time! If the thought of doing this still makes you want to break out in hives, then please reread my blog from two weeks ago for ways to relax about this and make it fun.
These are not static statements of what will happen to the letter, because life throws curve balls, and requires flexibility. You are not going to spiral down into shame if you need to modify anything you write, you’re just going to keep reminding yourself what you want and why, and work on enjoying every step that moves you closer to one of your goals, however small the step. Both the process and the result are important, but the better you get at process, the more results you can achieve.
To recap: People who have written out their goals and review them every day get more of what they want. This is not very difficult or time consuming to do. Take some deep breaths, grab a pen, and go for it. Do it now! We’re all rooting for you!
Goals? Ugh.
“Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.”
Goals are a tricky thing. While many of us have heard about the importance of having clear goals defined to draw us forward, there are numerous pitfalls that divert us from enthusiasm in this area. The main message of most advice in this area can be summed up by the slogan, “Just do it.” We’re expected to man up, push past misgivings, write out goals, and then place timelines on them and drag ourselves by the hair, come hell or high water, toward the finish line. While I do think that this approach can inspire and work well for a small sample of the population, I think for most it’s either vastly unappealing such that goals are never written, or it’s not detailed or enjoyable enough to work any sort of magic for us over time—and most worthy goals take time to achieve. If the standard two-step idea motivates you, that’s great. Carry on! But if not, below are some things I can offer in order to help you gain access to the benefits of working with goals in supportive ways. We’re not actually going to look at a detailed process for doing that this week, we’re just considering the patterns that get in the way of our entering the process at all.
· Let’s start at the beginning. Goals are supposed to be inspiring, exciting, joyful visions of a future result you’d love to create. It’s easy to lose sight of this basic truth amidst all the “motivational” rhetoric. Thinking about goals this way sounds non-threatening and fun, right? Except…
· We think that if we decide on and/or write down a goal, that’s it. It can’t be modified, and if we don’t get to it inside of the amount of time that we’ve assigned to it, that means we’ve failed and all is lost. This “proves” that we’re never going to have the things we want. We’ve been here before and it feels terrible, especially because…
· We know how hard we are on ourselves in our own minds. Vicious, really. Usually more so than anyone else in our lives, though we doubtless learned some of this from others along the way—we just ran further with it so that no one can say anything to us we haven’t already said to ourselves
· Knowing this, the idea of having an optimistic goal brings up tension and the projected misery we know we’ll experience if anything goes wrong—which it will, because no process is ever perfect! Suddenly this seems like a cycle that’s to be avoided at all costs, because the result is not joyful attainment, but the disturbance of our peace and self-esteem
Sound familiar? And yet, people who do have written goals that they actively engage with daily are more likely to achieve the things they want; if we can just get past some of these unpalatable associations with goals, better progress might be in store. How about some improved conceptual guidelines:
· Let’s rethink. Realistic goals cannot be inflexible. That just doesn’t make any sense. In this chaotic, messy world, nothing ever goes as planned, so how is it logical to think that we can project an exact estimate of any road between where we are and where we want to be? Goals need to be living, breathing plans that we can continually adjust as the process unfolds. The act of changing them needs to be seen as a normal, even enjoyable, part of your interaction with the original idea and the realities of life on Earth. Sometimes, the unexpected will happen. Count on it. When it does, I’m not saying you need to abandon the vision—that’s what makes all the work and adjustment worthwhile—just adjust your concept of the path toward it
· Assigning time deadlines to the overall goal, and the steps you think will get you there, helps in your planning, and can help keep you on track by giving you something to shoot for—but these will always be arbitrary to some degree. What you want to do is choose an amount of time that seems somewhat challenging, but still allows you to feel excited about the project. You can and very well may change it later
· If people around you tend to be judgmental, you don’t have to tell them all the details of what you’re doing and planning. It’s generally best to share the nitty gritty only with those who you know can be trusted to be supportive and helpful
· It’s important to introduce humor into the process where you can. Working toward goals will tend to require some tasks that you don’t find enjoyable, but the whole thing will go much more smoothly if you can lighten the mood when you find yourself struggling. Also, remind yourself that growth and change usually involve growing pains, and that’s normal and ok. But you don’t need to be miserable, and in fact you’ll be a lot less productive and creative if you are. You can take breaks and ask for help, and you should do both as needed
· Many people who have become hugely successful went through a lot before that success arrived. What they did not do is give up on themselves or decide that they were failures when things went awry. Everyone spirals into negative self-talk sometimes, but only you get to decide how you will value yourself. Missing a deadline or goal NEVER has to mean anything permanent about you. While we’re alive, we can still change and learn, and doing these things is some of the most thrilling stuff in life. When necessary, you will take a break, get some perspective and some rest, and then regroup
· You will spend time every day thinking about and consciously enjoying the idea of having what it is that you intend to create. This habit is everything. It supercharges your ability to stay positive and in the game. As soon as you lose the ability to enjoy your vision, your motivation will crumble. This is actually the single most important part of the entire process, because the vast majority of people are most powerfully motivated by pleasure, NOT by pain or avoidance of misery
· You always retain the right to reshape your process or vision based on the experiences you’re having in the pursuit of your goal. You might decide that your original plan doesn’t seem to be the best way forward, or you might need to add steps and more time. You might even decide, once you’ve gotten a taste of progress, that you need to rethink the ultimate goal, because it no longer seems like a good expression of what you want. You remain in the driver’s seat. You’re the decision maker regarding what you want your life to be about. It’s ok to keep tinkering with the vision as you go even if no one else understands what the heck you’re doing. It’s your life! And we don’t always know what will be satisfying until we try it out in practice
I hope you’re starting to see that the point of goals is not to hold yourself to impossibly rigid standards or abuse yourself if all does not go according to plan. The point is to spur you toward a quest for greater achievements, and the experience of greater joy, than you’re likely to just stumble into without clarity and inspiring challenge. Making and working toward them can and should be fun! You can make it so! Let these ideas stew a bit, and next time we’ll consider the details of how to get started with a helpful vision and map out a process.