It’s that time of year where many are eating, drinking, and sharing in all types of merriment, as well as shifting their gaze to the big new year, 2020! With the ending of an entire decade, many are feeling especially called to set some big goals for themselves in the new year. Most of us know that new years resolutions, while made with absolute conviction of follow-through, seldom last past February. There are a number of reasons why that follow-through is so challenging, including setting goals that are much too big or not having any tangible way to execute those goals.
Goal-setting is a main staple of the work I do in my practice and over the years I’ve honed in on my personal formula for achieving any goal in mind, which I call the 3 C’s of success.
- Control
I can guarantee that there have been at least half a dozen times in your life that you’ve felt like you just don’t have the ability to achieve what you want. You end up feeling powerless, discouraged, and frustrated. None of these emotions help even in the slightest bit in regards to building a sense of confidence or mastery, which is needed in order to achieve goals.
In order to combat this, it’s exceptionally important to reconnect with your sense of control within your life through the choices that you make. A client recently shared a phenomenal quote with me, “You are one decision away from a totally different life.” The minute that I heard this, it filled me with peace and a sense of calm, which quickly gave way to an even bigger feeling of excitement.
Every day we’re faced with hundreds of decisions and every time we make a choice, we’re exercising our will and casting a vote toward which direction our life is going to take. If you can remind yourself that you hold the control of what happens in your life based on what you decide to do, you’ll feel significantly more empowered to make choices that make a difference.
So every time you have a self-defeating thought that tells you that you don’t have any willpower, you just don’t have what it takes, or that you’ll never be able to get a handle on something, remind yourself that you’re really just one decision away from the life that you want to be living and you have the ability to make the choice that’s truly in alignment with what you want.
- Consistency
If you’re working on a lifestyle change (building deeper connections with the people in your life, expanding your knowledge about a certain topic, creating a new spiritual practice, reconnecting to your body in a healthier way, etc.) it’s important to work on it every single day, but don’t create such a massive task of achieving this.
Consistency is the key to building any habit and all that means is that you have to do the new habit every day. But where people fall off the goal achievement wagon is from trying to build consistency in too big of a fashion. Make small goals that are easily achieved on a daily basis in order to build a consistency muscle within your psyche.
Meditate for five minutes a day (instead of the over-achieving one hour a day), read for 15 minutes a day on the topic you’re learning about (instead of trying to force yourself to read during every break in the day), spend 20 minutes a day organizing in your home (instead of trying to do one massive chunk of several hours at a go).
If you’re in it for the long haul of lifestyle building, then you need to pace yourself for that and set yourself up advantageously with mini goals that you can easily complete on a daily basis.
- Course correction
Oh the trap of telling yourself that you already spoiled the day with that one choice you made earlier so the rest of the choices that you make don’t even matter! The example that lends itself so well to this is food. Let’s say that you’re trying to eat healthier and this morning instead of going for the tofu scramble you went for the donut. Now you’re in the mindset of thinking that you already ruined the day by making this choice so you may as well just eat whatever you want for the rest of the day and get back on track tomorrow.
But why do you have to wait until tomorrow to get back on track? And who says you ruined your goal for the day?
Remember our earlier point that you’re just one decision away from a different life. You made one choice, but in the very next moment, you’ll get an opportunity for a new one. So go for course correction right away, it’ll get you back on track with your goal sooner rather than later and it’ll remind you that you do actually have a lot more power in the situation than you’re realizing.
It should be honored and congratulated that you’ve connected with a desire for an upgraded life. Now set yourself up so you can achieve it Reconnect to (or even create for perhaps the first time ever) your deep sense of empowerment and ability to change your life one decision at a time.
This is exactly what I needed to read right now so I can step into 2020 with tangible, achievable goals and into my new life!!!
I’m so glad that you found something useful and no better timing than right now!