By Do you wake up in the morning overwhelmed and conflicted by your own goals?
Perhaps you told yourself you were going to exercise more, eat healthier, declutter your home or get more organized. Yet when the time comes for you to tackle these things, other things seem to get in the way. As a result, you find yourself either skimping on your goals or pushing them aside altogether. This contributes to feelings of overwhelm and stress. Not just about the process but the fear of the possible consequences you could face (e.g., poor grades, having a messy home) should you not reach your goals.
Within minutes those goals and intentions are replaced by worrisome thoughts, fearful images, embarrassment and shame. This is how self-sabotaging beliefs such as, I will never lose weight, I probably will lose my job, or I am probably going to fail set in.
If this sounds like you, know you are not alone. According to over eighty percent of New Year’s resolutions do fail. Not because the person is not capable but more so they did not change their consciousness before setting the goal. Which is why I feel the key to achieving your goals (whether it is a New Year or not) is to take some time to release, get clear, and calm before moving forward with any kind of plan.
Here are some tips to help get you started:
Do A Brain Dump
Set your phone timer to one minute. Then purge all the things which you believe may be getting in the way of you achieving your goals. For example, if you want to increase your business revenue you might put something down like, lack of support. The key is to limit it to one minute, otherwise you could get yourself into reactivity.
The purpose of this one-minute dump is to externalize the thoughts, stories and narratives you may be telling yourself. Very often it is not the goal itself but the beliefs and stories around the goal which elevate the levels of anxiety. The one-minute time limit keeps the process constructive by putting in place some boundaries. For example, if you are upset about your weight write it down, worried about the bills, write it down, frustrated with your workload, write it down, you get the point.
Put it all down on paper with the intention to release rather than judge or fix what is coming up.
After one minute, put your pen down, and repeat this sentence out loud, releasing these thoughts, beliefs and behaviors from my mind now makes me feel….. don’t answer the question, just take a nice deep inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth or nose. Be sure to inflate your lower abdominal area on inhale and deflate it (pulling your navel toward your spine) on exhale. Proceed to the next step which is getting clear.
Getting Clear
Now that you have all the brain chatter released, flip the same piece of paper over and draw a line down the middle so you have two columns. Label one short term goals and the other long-term goals. Then proceed to write down what flows off the top of your head. For example, a short-term goal might be something like drinking a minimum of five to eight classes of water per day. A long-term goal might be to reach a certain amount of sales or to secure a certain number of clients within a six to nine week period. The more specific you can be the clearer the goal. Avoid broadly phrased goals such as make more money or get on the NY times best seller list.
Don’t worry about how, you will achieve your goals or in what order, the purpose is to get clear so you know how to focus your attention each day.
Create Calm
Now you have completed the writing exercise take a deep breath (inhale and exhale) and ask yourself this question, what feels right to focus on first? Notice I said, feels right. Not what I think I should focus on, what I better focus on, or what other people tell me to focus on, what feels right to you to focus on first?
State it out loud to yourself and then ask yourself how long will I focus on this task today? For example, if you are behind in your emails and it feels right to focus on your emails first, decide the amount of time today you will tend to them. It can be anything from thirty minutes, sixty minutes, to several hours. The point is, give yourself permission to focus on quality versus quantity.
Applying these three steps, brain dump, get clear and then focus on what feels right can set you up for successfully achieving your goals.
