We’ve all felt the disappointment that comes from setting a goal and giving up on it after a couple of weeks. Sustaining motivation for a long-term goal is hard to achieve, and yet the best goals can usually only be accomplished in a few months or even years.
Here’s the solution: Focus instead on creating a new habit that will lead to achieving your goal.
Want to get out of debt and start saving? Create the habit of brown bagging it to work, or watching DVDs instead of going to the movies, or whatever change will lead to saving money for you.
By focusing not on what you have to achieve over the course of the next year, but instead on what you are doing each day, you are focusing on something achievable. That little daily change will add up to a huge change, over time … and you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come in no time.
Little grains of sand can add up to a mountain over time. In a previous post "Waiting for someday" there is a video compilation of Will Smith, and in it he speaks of building a brick wall, instead of focusing on building a wall, you should everyday "focus on laying one brick, as perfectly as a brick can be laid, and pretty soon you have a wall".
Now, changing your habits isn’t easy but is achievable, especially if you start small … take baby steps at first.
How do you change your habits? Focus on one habit at a time, and follow these steps:
1. Positive changes. If you’re trying to change a negative habit (quit smoking), replace it with a positive habit (running for stress relief, for example).
2. Take on a 30-day challenge. Tell yourself that you’re going to do this habit every day, at the same time every day, for 30 straight days without fail. Once you’re past that 30-day mark, the habit will become much easier. If you fail, do not beat yourself up. Start again on a new 30-day challenge. Practice until you succeed.
3. Commit yourself completely. Don’t just tell yourself that you might or should do this. Tell the world you DEFINITELY will do this. Put yourself into this 100 percent. Tell everyone you know. Email them. Put it on your blog. Post it up at your home and work place. This positive public pressure will help motivate you.
4. Set up rewards. It’s best to reward yourself often the first week, and then reward yourself every week for that first month. Make sure these are good rewards, that will help motivate you to stay on track.
5. Plan to beat your urges. It’s best to start out by monitoring your urges, so you become more aware of them. Track them for a couple days, putting a tally mark in a small notebook every time you get an urge. Write out a plan, before you get the urges, with strategies to beat them. We all have urges to quit — how will you overcome it? What helps me most are deep breathing and drinking water. You can get through an urge — it will pass.
6. Track and report your progress. Keep a log or journal or chart so that you can see your progress over time. It’s very motivating to see how far you’ve come.
The biggest tip of all: Always stay positive. I learned to monitor my thoughts, and if I saw any negative thoughts I would squash it and replace it with a positive thought. If you think negative thoughts, you will definitely fail. But if you always think positive, you will definitely succeed.
This new video from http://noahjammond.com warns how to avoid the "unhealthy use of
Optimism".
"The only thing that stands between a person and what they
want from life is often merely the will to TRY it and the
faith to BELIEVE that it is possible."- Anthony Robbins
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