GOAL SETTING TO GOAL ACHIEVING

by Joseph Segal

 

“TODAY I WILL ACHIEVE MY GOALS OR SOMETHING EVEN BETTER!” #Affirmation

If you want to achieve your goals in life you have to know what they are and write them down.
A great way to remember this is;

Ink it, don’t think it!

 

GOAL SETTING IS THE PRACTICE OF CREATING
THE HABIT OF MINDFUL PROGRESS

 

Much of what we share in The Inner Circle life transformation course (JosephSegal.com) is about becoming mindful and aware of our choices and decisions.  If we can be in the moment aware of life rather than driven to extraction by it, we can make healthier better choices and experience healthier better outcomes. Self-development for the most part is about creating better life outcomes and experiences so we can meet our deepest needs be it love, connection, purpose, security or other values.

We want to have better outcomes and that is why we set goals and invest our life’s efforts. Better outcomes and experiences in relationships, in our financial freedom, and in whatever we choose to do creates greater health and happiness.

A goal is really a decision we make about what is important to us. The more we focus on what’s really important to us in our life the happier we will be! So in this article we are going to look at goal setting as part of our practice of mindful happiness.

We all experience a sense of greater happiness when we achieve the goals we set for ourselves. One thing successful achievers share in common is they write their goals down and they set meaningful goals they work on as a part of their way of life.

Big achievers set big goals that inspire them, write them down, take steps to energize them, feel a sense of reward for progress they create and they take small continuous steps to make progress towards them learning and adjusting along the way. 

One of the keys to creating habits of success and achieving our goals is to focus on the energy we bring to the world and how we look at the world, in other words our “mindset”.  

One of the things we share in our course is a morning ritual or set of habits to create positive energy to power our efforts. We call this “The Golden Hour”.

THE GOLDEN HOUR WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

In Inner Circle life transformation course we describe the powerful idea of creating a happiness success ritual for your mornings we call the “Golden Hour”.

In the Inner Circle life transformation online course we will describe how you can create a daily happiness gratitude list to help you focus on what matters most, and how to use meditation that includes visualizing your perfect day, and take in inspirational positive media to set a positive tone for the rest of your day that carries over into everything you do.  It’s really powerful technology for a happy good life!

These are all very powerful and effective habits to create!  We know you’ll be successful with them and want you do be successful.

We also know creating new habits is challenging to do. So understanding this idea is very important before you can really absorb and benefit from the ideas the Inner Circle life transformation course which I hope you take soon (it’s 100% free!). Click the image banner below then register for instant access!

 

 

SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING IS CREATING SUCCESS HABITS

Our goals shouldn’t just be things to get done or there will be and endless list and we may well miss out on a lot of what  makes life worth really living!

Why do some people have more success achieving their goals than others? Why is achieving our goals so challenging? Often, it is because we do not yet have the habits in place to support the actions we need to take that produce the outcomes we seek in life.

These habits might include:

• Getting up early each day.
• Doing the big important hard things first.
• Looking for the good in ourselves and others.
• Living a life of service and helping others around us.
• Surrounding ourselves with nourishing not toxic people.
• Learning new skills every day.
• Meditating, visualizing and resting.
• Connecting to our intuitive intelligence and inner wisdom.

Among others!

One approach to successful goal setting and achieving is to take daily steps to ensure we create the new habits that we need to help us succeed at our goals.

Most of what we do in life is habitual. When we focus on creating good habits we create more progress towards the goals we set that are tied to those habits. You can do this!

LET’S BREAK HABITS DOWN INTO STEPS

First there’s a cue or signal we recognize. Then there’s a routine we engage in and finally there’s some reward which reinforces our habit.  An example of this would be watching TV while we eat a meal. The cue is sitting down in front of the TV with a plate of food in front of us. We then have a routine of reaching for the remote control and turning on the television and watching it while we eat. We watch something that’s entertaining and interesting in some way and are not alone with our thoughts while we eat and that is the reward that reinforces the habit.

Let’s say we decide that having the negative news on television while we are eating is not good for our digestion, weight management and mental health and we’d rather not continue this habit.  We can alter the cue and not sit down in front of the TV with our food and instead eat in the dining room.

We can turn off the television if its already on when we bring our food from the kitchen to wherever we usually eat.  Then we can make a change to our routine and substitute listening to a podcast on our phone while we eat in place of having the television on.

Here’s an example of using Cues and Rewards.

We can engage in conversation with our living partner while we eat.  When we are done we can take conscious notice of how rewarding and good it felt to listen to that really interesting podcast or have a conversation with someone we live with. We could thank them for sitting and eating with us. We could give ourselves a sweet piece of fruit after our meal as a reward.

This is how we can break down the key components of a habit and adjust them to help us become happier and healthier!

Take a moment and visualize one of the habits you have for routine aspects of your day.  Can you identify the cue that triggers the routine you engage in? It might be the clock striking twelve signifying you’re free to go take your lunch. It might be your alarm clock going off or your first cup of coffee in you mug. 

Next identify what the routine is that you do every day after that cue.  Finally, what is the reward you can see you get out of doing that behavior? Becoming mindful of why we do what we do gives us the opportunity to make new choices about what we do!

CREATING THE SUCCESS  MINDSET IS VITALLY IMPORTANT!

One of the main reasons goals go unfulfilled is because people are overwhelmed by them and don’t believe they have the ability to achieve them so they either give up or don’t even start. So it is important to create a confident mindset by reminding yourself why it is you want to achieve the goal and how great you’ll feel when you do. 

Quite often we do not achieve our goals because we do not believe in our ability to do so or in our being worthy of them. A great deal of the lessons we explore here will help you to reprogram those self-defeating beliefs and replace them with a positive foundation for building new ones.  You can do more than you realize and believe you are capable of. Trust me of this I am most certain.

In 1954 runner Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile barrier which was an act that every runner agreed was an impossible achievement.  Legends say that runners had tried to break this speed barrier for over a thousand years. Just as a year passed from that great achievement another runner broke the four minute mile barrier and then many others soon followed! Why? Because they now believed with certainty that it was possible.

Now even strong runners in high school are breaking this four minute mile barrier.  You are capable of achieving for more than you give yourself credit for. Now is the time to expand your thinking and create big goals for yourself. Now is the time to see yourself winning the race and breaking the records!

When you write your goals down as we will do in the exercises presented in this course, you will activate a part of your brain called the reticular activating system which helps your brain focus on what’s important in your life. Other tools like meditation, visualization and journal writing will reinforce this new awareness and help you create the happy successful life you want to live.  Here are a few very effective techniques for managing your goals and creating more positive momentum in your day to day life.

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS IN GOAL SETTING

 

SURF THE WAVE OF EXCITEMENT

Learning to manage our energy is a key to getting more of what we want done in life done. 

Sometimes that energy manifests in the form of fear or nervous energy that causes us to pause and never start on whatever we actually want to get done. The way not to become swamped by the emotions of fear and self doubt when working on your life goals is to learn to surf the waves of excitement and let the current of excitement of doing something you deeply desire carry you forward. If you get nervous about a goal or deadline think to yourself, awesome here comes a gnarly wave and surf the wave of excitement to take the next step and ride it out!

Most of life is not what happens to us but how we choose to respond to it when it does. Reframe your nervous energy as excitement and use that energy to power you forward. When your inner voice says “oh no this is really scary!” notice that and respond to yourself “I’m really excited about this”. Surf the wave of excitement and enjoy the challenges you face with the cool of a surfer who knows he may wipe out now and then but that’s the price of catching the great waves and being out there one with the Ocean.

 

CUT IT IN HALF

Now that you have energy, and fear is your ally rather than your enemy, here is another great mind-hack for achieving goals when you find yourself unable to get started on them. If you want to read a book for example, try setting the goal of reading the first chapter. If you find yourself not doing this then cut the goal in half. Set your goal as reading the first several pages of the book. Still not doing it? Cut it in half again and read the first page.

In college, very often the hardest part of studying was simply getting myself to start. So, I set a goal to just open the cover of the book. What I found was as soon as I did so, it was easy to read the first page of the assigned chapter. Once I did that I found myself reading effortlessly.

The Pygmies of the Rain forest had a saying. The way to eat an Elephant is one bite at a time. (Well that might be apocryphal but you get the idea!). Inch by inch it’s a cinch, yard by yard it’s not so hard!

So make sure your goal is inspiring to you and your steps small and achievable so you feel comfortable taking the next step, and then you’ll take another and so on! What small step can you take today towards a goal of improving your health, your business or learning something new to position yourself to experience the life you want to live each day?

Try the Cut It In Half Mind Hack technique today and put procrastination in your rear-view mirror. You need to do self-assessment asking yourself and writing down why you think you are not doing what you want to do. Then make the next step smaller until you get it done! Remember, “Ink it don’t think it!” There’s a lot more to goal setting and it’s worth learning too. But remember take small steps and keep improving. 

 

TRY THIS GOAL SETTING PROCESS

Take out your journal or pad of paper and on separate pieces of paper write one goal in each of these areas of your life, money, health and relationships. These three tend to impact most of our feelings about how well our life is going.

Write one goal which again is basically a mindful decision you’re making about improving your life and make it as specific as possible.

Next tie that goal to an experience you want to have. For example you might write “I’m going to lose five pounds this month so I can have the energy to go on a trip somewhere nice. Or perhaps “I’m going to save $50 a month so I can treat myself to my favorite restaurant with my someone special.” 

Now write three new habits you can imagine will move you further towards your goal.  Let’s take the case of saving $50 a month. One new habit might be to skip the morning Starbucks cup of coffee and wait for the coffee at the office instead. It could be to put your extra change in a jar by your door when you come in from shopping or work. You get the idea!

Then take a look at each new habit and look for the cue or trigger event that could help you create that new habit each day. Write that goal cue or trigger event down by the goal. Now take the next step and make adjustments as you go step by step. Have fun with it. Remember to reward yourself for each step in some way that is meaningful to you and give yourself credit for every step you take. You are mindfully living your life to embrace and grow your own happiness!

GREAT JOB! LET’S KEEP GOING!