Getting Your Goals Back on Track

We started this journey off with 100 days left in the year. Have you gotten off track? Have your plans been derailed? If you’re not tackling all the tasks you intended to accomplish by now, it’s OK!! We're human, flawed. As Robert Burns says, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” It's ok to experience mistakes or setbacks so long as you don't let it freeze you in place. There's still 81 days left! That's a ton of time still! Dust yourself off, forgive yourself for the slips and push yourself to get right back on track. If we were perfect, we wouldn't have to push ourselves so hard. Just think, the harder you have to push yourself to achieve your goals, the louder you are going to cheer and celebrate when you accomplish them.

We are creatures of habit. In the book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Dugigg, we learn that habits all function in the same basic way: a cue begins a behavior routine which ends in a reward. Once we understand how habits work, we can learn how to change them or use them to establish new positive  habits in our lives so that we can achieve our goals. We need to train our brains to almost go on autopilot in the direction of our goals. Everyday our brains make decisions on how to do things without much input from us, such as how to walk, talk or reach for a glass. If we had to consciously make decisions about every action we take throughout our day, it would be overwhelming so we need to retrain our brains to form new habits. To do this, we first have to figure out what cues, routines and rewards we get from our habits.

What cues do you have that lead to negative routines? Do you mindlessly eat while watching tv? Do you intend to workout every morning but time gets away from you so you end up not doing anything at all? Do you get tired and hungry after a long day at work so you just go through the nearest drive through to pick up dinner? Do you intend to go to bed at a reasonable hour but end up scrolling Facebook or watching YouTube videos until midnight? We need to recognize these cues, these patterns of behavior and plan new routines so that we can change how we handle these situations.

What tiny steps or changes can you do to set yourself up for success? For instance, you could routinely lay out your gym clothes each night to cue yourself up for working out in the morning. You could get up an hour early everyday and workout first thing so that you aren't having to try to go to the gym after work when you are mentally drained. You can meal prep on the weekends so that you aren't having to cook every night after a long draining day at work. You could set an alarm on your phone at 9 pm to remind you to begin a nightly routine of prepping lunch for tomorrow, lay out your gym clothes, take a nice relaxing bath, leave your phone to charge in another room while you read a book in bed for a few minutes so that your brain realizes that these repeated actions means it's time for bed.

By repeating these new actions over and over, we create and trigger new pathways in our brains that allow us to repeat these actions faster and easier each time until they become a reflex or autopilot item. They become things/habits you just do! Reflexes are triggered by external cues that tells your brain, it's time to do a specific action. By repeating behaviors often enough, they become muscle memory. Muscle memory is when we repeat an action over and over until the brain slowly focuses more energy on the correct action and it's stored in your long-term memory so that behaviors/actions are repeated without ever having to think about it. They just become a natural reaction. It’s a no-brainer, so to speak.

The rewards we receive from accomplishing things kicks in our endorphins, the happiness or accomplished feelings we receive. They motivate us to repeat the routine every time the cue occurs. By building up tiny successes in tiny steps, in one area of your life, the desire to accomplish things will spill over into other areas. Willpower is a muscle that you need to build up just like muscles in your body. Studies have proven if you workout even just once a week, it will help you build up your willpower muscles. That one successful action will cause you to seek out other successes. Persistence is key! Believe in yourself. All habits can be changed!

Remember when you were in school and the teacher would give you a gold star? Oh how that often triggered us to strive for more. Habit Trackers are a way to help our minds track the "chain" or "streak" of days on which we complete the desired habit. Our reluctance to break the chain forms a second level of motivation to help us establish the habit. I keep one in my journal.

So, what habit would most positively benefit your life? What could you do consistently that would help you achieve your goal? When you feel like engaging in the "bad" habit, ask yourself what you get out of the habit beyond the superficial and obvious? Then replace that habit with a new one you desire to do that gives you the same type of reward/outcome/feeling. Do this over and over until it becomes . . . a habit.

#100DaysToGreat #FinishingStrong

Feed a Soul - Starve A Demon (Part 1)

What are your personal demons? They are those things that eat at your quality of life. They live off your shame, fear, guilt, worry, self-esteem and cause you to view yourself as a victim. We need to learn how to quit feeding them - starve them into submission so that you can move forward. We need to understand the price we are paying for keeping them alive and keeping ourselves stagnant.

The three demons I am going to focus on are:

* Fear
* Negative Internal Self-Talk
* Toxic Relationships

Fear
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." ~ Mark Twain

Fear immobilizes you and prevents you from enjoying and living life in the moment. It prevents you from moving forward toward your goals. The first step is to define what your fears are. Do you fear failure? Success? Criticism? Rejection? What are you afraid of?

Failures are moments where you have risked something and it hasn't worked out as it was intended. It doesn't make YOU a failure. You should strive to learn from the decisions you have made and perhaps make some adjustments on your approaches in the future.

Success comes with new responsibilities. It means having to accept the accomplishment rather than using the lack of success as an excuse. It can be very scary to step outside your comfort zone. You know what they say about the lesser of two evils, we often accept the comfort of the evil we already know rather than accept the potential for more difficulties.

We place so much importance on what others think that we fear that they'll find fault within us and criticize us for them. Truthfully, the only person you need to truly appease is yourself. You need to realize that no one is perfect. Constructive criticism can be a great learning lesson for self-improvement. Someone criticizing your decisions and choices just to be hurtful, don't have your best interest in mind to begin with so you can ignore them. Those who feel compelled to knock someone down in order to lift themselves up are usually just showing their own insecurities. Take what they have to say with a grain of salt.

Rejection comes in a lot of different forms. For example, it might be the rejection of a business idea or a rejection of a potential mate. Rejection by one does not mean rejection by all. Think of how many authors, singers and actors who get rejected on a daily basis. Persistence is the key! They take the insights and feedback provided and learn from them to increase their chances of success in the future.

I like to think that fear is the world's way of saying I'm truly living because I'm taking a risk. By facing our fears, we take those chances that propel us from one place to the next.

Learn to face fear like an adrenaline junkie! Recognize the sweaty palms, the gasp and holding of your breath but take that leap of faith, that first step off the cliff because it causes your blood to race, your heart to pump and lets you feel how alive you are! Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, says “every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.” The trick is to learn how to nurture that seed so that the fear dissipates and blooms into opportunities.

Educate yourself about the risks, the alternatives, and the possible outcomes. This helps take some of the wind out of fear's sails. Don't let fear paralyze you into inaction.

#100DaysToGreat #FinishingStrong

Day 100 - Inventory

Today's the day!! Are you excited? There are exactly 100 days left in 2018. What are you going to do with them? What if you took these last 100 days and focused with great intention to improve your life and achieve the goals you most likely established at the first of the year?

The first thing I recommend is that you review what's happened in 2018 so far. Look back at your New Year's resolutions you set at the start of the year. Which are still unfinished? What prevented you from accomplishing those? Write down the lessons you've learned - what worked, what didn't work and why. Also, look at what you did accomplish. What pushed you to accomplish those goals? What support did you have to make it happen? What lessons/behaviors can you apply to other goals to replicate that success?

For the remainder of the year, set one or two end-of-the-year goals and make them a priority - do all you can to accomplish them. Don’t let fear or procrastination hold you back. Find whatever it is that keeps you motivated, committed to moving in the direction of accomplishment.

Take out your planner, open your Outlook Calendar, your Google Calendar, your phone calendar or whatever it is that you use and set a reminder that your deadline of December 31st for achieving your goals. I took out my planner, flipped to December and marked off the last 100 days.  I wrote 1 on December 31st and worked my way back to September until I hit 100. By noting them on my calendar, it'll help me with a visual countdown until my deadline.

I'm going to focus on these 4 areas:
  💹FINANCIAL
  🔬HEALTH
  📚ORGANIZATION
  💝SPIRITUAL

When choosing your goals, make sure it's a goal or goals that are truly meaningful to you.

First things first though! Take an inventory of exactly where you are. You have to know exactly where you currently stand to make a plan for how to get to where you want to be.

For example, for my financial and health goals, I spent a few hours yesterday devising a financial budget. I noted due dates, interest rates, account balances, etc. I used a program called Everydollar.

Today I went through the pantry and wrote out an inventory of everything in it along with the expiration dates and cleared out anything expired.  Now I just need to do the Fridge and Freezers along with the spices, etc.

Both of these items will help with my financial, health and organizational goals!  A triple whammy! Yay, for forward progress.

I'll provide updates on other items and will share ideas of lessons learned along the way. What baby steps can you take today to move you towards a strong finish to the year?

View these last days of 2018 as a gift - a second chance to dust off some of your goals and really focus on them. Don’t allow yourself to go on autopilot. Instead, choose to be intentional about making these last days count. When you’re overwhelmed and there are a million things to do, remember to focus on what really matters. Where can your actions make the greatest impact to your life?

Here's to #FinishingStrong in #100DaysToGreat