It’s not what you’re capable of…

 

Even if we all had wings
very few of us would fly
like most things in life
it’s not what we are capable of
it’s what we are willing to do

 

image and quote from Bigstockphoto.com by graphicphoto

Get Explicit and Make those Juicy Goals

What does it mean to get Explicit?  If this is the key to making a New Years Resolutions, or really any goals successful, then explicit is important.

ex·plic·it – ikˈsplisit/

adjective

adjective: explicit

1.    stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.

This will be our working definition.

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     So let’s get explicit.  

When you think of your goal, begin by asking yourself, on a scale of 1-10, how important is this goal to me?  If you are not at a 9 or a 10, then why do you think this is a goal worthy of your time and attention?  What would it take to get the goal to a 10 for importance?  This is really important because we will often say something is important and then not follow through on it. This is the behavioral equivalent to saying, “I don’t really care about this…” and I am not in the habit of working with people on their lukewarm goals.  A lukewarm goal is basically a set up for failure.  Not the sort of failure where you really try to change something and you don’t succeed, but the sort of failure that you get from not really trying.  I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but those are two very different types of failures.  I don’t enjoy spending a lot of time, money, energy and not meeting a big goal, but at least I know I gave it my all.  In my mind, there is no failure with true effort.  When I was younger, I was a swimmer. I would spend hours a week at practice, back and forth laps, working on my stroke, a lot of time and energy was invested.  All this work didn’t mean that I won every race I entered, but without the time, commitment and effort, I wouldn’t have even started, let alone finished a race.  The more I trained, the better I did.

Let’s look at the example like I want to “Get Healthy”:

• Is this a real goal, or is it a goal you think you ‘should’ have? Do you think it’s a 10 value goal?
• How do you know you’re at a 10?
• What does “getting healthy” mean to you?
• What are the most important aspects of this goal for you?
• What would it look like if you were behaving in a “healthy” way?
  • Remember, “healthy” may mean different things to different people.  Be clear about what you mean.
• How will you know you have reached your goal?
• What will you have done during the year, when you look back on this goal on Dec 31, 2015?

Maybe my goal over the next year is that I want to eat healthy, or maybe I want to exercise every week.  Do these goals sound interesting or juicy?  If the goal doesn’t excite you, it will be harder to commit to.  What would a juicy goal sound like?

You might start with: “I want to exercise every week” then keep writing what you want from the goal.

• I want to move daily
• I want to feel powerful in my body
• I want to spend time outside breathing in the forest
• I want to take my dogs on regular walks

If you sum up these wants, what might the goal sound like?

• Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!

As you write what you want from the goal, you can begin to mold the goal into something that speaks to your soul.  Which goal sounds juicier to you?  I want to exercise every week  or Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!  I know which one I will be choosing.

What are the baby steps that I need to take to meet the goal “Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!”?  Break it down:

• Commit to X number of times a week.
• Put it in your schedule.
• Find a friend who might want to join you.
• Join a dog club that walks.
• Or start your own dog walking Meetup.
• Find the dog leashes.
• Pick some places close to your house that you can go walking outside that make you feel excited.

Figure out all the little things that you need to do to help you meet this goal.  The baby steps help you map your plan for success.  This is true for every goal you ever set for yourself.

Time to pick a goal.  Next blog we will start looking at different goals and how to suss out whether they are 10’s for you.

In the Words of Buckaroo Bonzai…

no matter where you go… there you are.

It seems to be a theme this week; I’ve been talking with clients about the idea of them wanting their lives to be different by either running away or having things magically change.  The underlying idea being, maybe if the situation changes, it will be easier for them.  Let me start off by saying, there is nothing wrong with leaving a situation or changing it, if you recognize that you take your baggage with you.  Leaving the situation can give you a break from whatever rut you find yourself, but if you have a pattern or habit of behavior or thinking, most likely you will find yourself running around the same tree very soon.  In order to break a habit or change a situation, you need to start with yourself.  What do you need to be aware of in order to really change whatever situation you find yourself in that you don’t like?  That’s the big question.

One question to think about is: Is there a pattern here?

Awareness can make a huge difference in outcomes.  In fact, Awareness makes ALL the difference. With awareness, we can begin to understand our patterns and what motivates us to behave, speak, fight, and make choices, etc in certain ways.  With this insight, we can begin to choose with clarity.

Another question to think about is: Where do I want to be in 6 months or a year?

Awareness let’s us know what’s going on, but in order to know what to choose, we have to have an idea of where we want to go. In his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Steven Covey says to begin with the end in mind, and that’s the truth, we definitely need to have a direction.

I was talking to a client the other day, she gets into patterns in relationships where she is in financial crisis and wants someone to ‘save’ her.   But, people don’t tend to want to financially rescue other people for free, so she ends up with the cost of what she has to do to keep the savior engaged in saving her.  She then begins to feel bad about what she has to do, or put up with, and ends up hating her savior.  She had to take a good hard look at the pattern, now that she knows it’s there, she has to start to develop the idea of what she want to move towards.  “I want to feel safe and like I don’t have to worry that creditors are knocking at my door.”  My thought to her was, “If you want to truly be ‘safe’ you’re going to have to deal with the financial drama you create.  Creating a different dynamic in that regard will allow you then to choose the people you actually want to spend time with, based on liking and respecting them, not because you have to put on a show to get them to do what you need… like save you.”

We do this in jobs too.  “I hate my job, but I can’t quit.”  Well, why not?  I realize that people have expenses, kids, homes, cars, insurance, etc.  But, if you really hate a job, why can’t you start to think about what you want to move toward?  Feeling stuck and choosing to stay that way is most likely a pattern too.  There are times, that with good reason, we need to stay in a job, even if we don’t love it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be planning a change down the road.  It may mean we need to take a look at what skills we need to develop, education, etc.  The pattern is just the easy place we can get stuck; it doesn’t mean we have to stay stuck forever.  Someone once said, the only difference between a rut and the grave is the depth… ruts are easier to jump out of, death is terminal.

If we have the courage to pay attention and stop running away from our stuff, life gets a lot less complicated. It’s sort of like that quintessential picture of the newlyweds driving away in the car looking over waving at the crowd with little cans hanging off the back, those little cans are actually baggage, the cans say things like: problem managing anger, commitment issues, fear, wants to be saved, and I’m not feeling so confident. The problem with the little cans is you’re dragging them along with you and until you can see them, you can’t toss them in the recycle bin.

One of the problems of life is that we can’t really hide from ourselves, no matter where we go… there we are.