Thought about committing to a goal, but haven’t had much luck?
Are you ready to stop: messing around; procrastinating; waiting for the right moment; allowing fear to overwhelm your decisions, intellectualising; overthinking; doubting
yourself; and any other negative thought process that has been holding you back in actually making a solid commitment?
Here’s what you need to do:
Explore
Some people will often start a goal by merely doing something productive and ‘seeing how it goes’ – this doesn’t work.
It’s important to explore BOTH the opportunities AND the obligations of your goal. Establish all the difficulties in your plan, BEFORE you start – so you’re ready for them when they arise, so that they won’t throw you off guard, discourage you and leave you feeling… yes, you’ve guessed it, demotivated!
Yes, it’s important to highlight the positives of achieving your goal, but you should also be aware of the things you’ll have to sacrifice, all the hard work you’ll have to put in and what obstacles you are likely to face. So, when things get tough, you’ll be ready for it and you’ll be able to start focusing on the opportunity, whilst accepting the obligation at the same time.
Opportunity > Obligation: It is important however, to ensure the opportunity outweighs the obligation. Make sure you really enhance all aspects of the opportunity to yourself. For example:
You want to lose weight for a holiday, but at the same time, you are like me and LOVE cheese and pizza and cheese. Did I mention I like cheese?
Anyway, the point I am making is if you like cheese more than you want to lose weight, things are going to be difficult. Make sure you sell yourself your dream/goal. Highlight and enhance all the positives; make them as desirable as you can!
Ask yourself:
- What will achieving the goal mean to you?
· How will it make you feel?
· How will it change your life?
Fight
Be aware – your brain will try and trick you! You brain is very clever, it is designed to keep us safe… a natural instinct to keep us alive. Your brain will try and avoid anything uncomfortable and without warning it will start to justify why you’re not achieving your goals (this is more commonly known as… lame excuses).
Your brain will continue to justify and rationalise to a point where you agree with yourself that achieving your goals and aspirations is a bad idea and you’re just fine how you are.
Listen, let me tell you something… you’re lying to yourself. Ignore that destructive part of yourself. Fight it off. Fight it hard. Because it was come back, time, after time, after time, and keep trying to justify more reasons as to why you should
get back into your comfort zone. But let me tell you another thing, you wont get anywhere by staying there.
I find it useful to write myself a note and stick it on the wall. When you’ve managed to finally fight off denial and your true self is exposed, motivated and ready. Capture that feeling, that drive, that emotion and write a note of what you
want to do. I also find it useful to sign it. That way, when the negative, life destroying part of you comes back again, you’ll have the note to remind you what’s really important to you and to try and ignore any temporary feelings and emotions.
Believe
I understand this can be a daunting experience. I know I’m going to sound cheesy here, but this is the number one most important part to successful goal-achievement, so I have to say it. Some of you may never have heard it before…
You can do it. No listen to what I am saying here: you
absolutely can do it. Self-believe is crucial to motivation. Affirming your worth and abilities are very important. There are so many people that hold back because they feel they are incapable of doing something. Achieve it. And then
wonder what the hell they were worried about in the first place!
You will be amazed at what you can achieve.
Commit
I go back to what I said at the start: STOP waiting… You may never get the chance if you keep waiting.. there is absolutely not better time to start than right now… so start now.
Explore. Fight. Believe. Commit.
Lewis Raymond Taylor, Director & Personal Development Mentor at Hunger Start
