Visualization is critical in goal achieving.
Affirmations are important, journaling is important, planning and strategy are important. But visualization is critical.
In this video I explain how to incorporate visualization into your goal achieving strategy:
Thanks for nothing, Venn!
We’ve all seen the Venn diagram that shows us that our purpose is somewhere in the sweet spot of that which we love, that at which we do well, that which the world needs, and that for which we can receive decent payment. It sure is great—in theory.
Not all of us get to find the space resting handsomely amidst all four of those ideal circumstances. Heck, some of us may be lucky to find ourselves barely obtaining the rewards from one partially realized category.
Yes, this is ideal. Yes, let’s agree to never stop striving for ideal. But what if we don’t have that now? Then what?
You can still realize your purpose through your job even if you aren’t realizing your purpose in your job.
I know, work with, and coach several individuals who are working in a particular field right now because it pays them decently—or at least more decently than leaving to pursue a more passion-driven alternative. Similarly, I know people who are doing something they love but barely scraping by—and by “barely”, I mean using credit cards to supplement their already-frugal lifestyle because “barely” doesn’t cut it.
Which is better?
I’d say neither are feeling fulfilled. Those in the former group feel like sell-outs forced into working dispassionately to earn decent livings. And those in the latter feel proud of “sticking it to the corporate man” at the expense of sticking it to themselves and their future security.
You’ll never hear me give blanket advice to someone that says “go get a job at a bank, earn your $40k and give up on your dreams because you’ll be happier if you can afford rent and groceries.” Both my husband and I had jobs that were life-squelching, soul-sucking, miserable, ulcer-forming experiences, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I also don’t wish for one to be saddled with personal credit lines that mimic that of the national debt, where the only way out is to file bankruptcy or fake your own death.
Since we can’t make others pay us more for our passion; sometimes the smart choice is to “go get a job at a bank, earn your $40k and give up on your dreams pursue your dreams in a different capacity because you’ll be happier if you can afford rent and groceries.” But can we do that without completely signing over our soul to the devil of corporate greed and cubicles?
I think we can.
Let me share a story about a client of mine. She likes her job. She doesn’t love it in that I’m-nursing-orphaned-children-back-to-health-and-building-wells-in-the-desert sort of way. It’s a good job with a good company doing good work for their clients. But it’s not something she has been dreaming about since she was a little girl day-dreaming of her fairytale future.
She does, however, have a dream to take her father’s ashes to Australia. A place her father had always dreamed of going. A place they had talked about visiting together. Unfortunately for all, life got in the way of his dream. Her father died unexpectedly and now my client feels this pull to complete the voyage in homage to her beloved father.
But again, sometimes life gets in the way. Australia is expensive and paid time off can be hard to come by. That being said, my client, is in a sales role and earns commission on new clients she brings on. And possibly, if she could increase her client base by about 10 percent, she would have the extra income to make her trip to Australia.
When we broke down the numbers, if she could do the same work she does on her best days (note: I did not say make the sales, but do the work), on all days, that increase in activity (basing it on her current results) would be enough to increase her personal revenue.
So for her, even though prospecting is difficult, the burden is greatly lessened by her connecting her personal purpose (taking her dad on the trip he never got to take) with her professional role.
You, too, can do the same.
Sure, not everyone is in sales or in a position to directly control their income. But can we find similar reasons to align doing the hard because it provides us with the good?
My grandfather worked three jobs so that he could ensure that all seven of his children went to college. If his purpose wasn’t connected to those jobs he would have probably given up. However, because he could connect the dots between his jobs and his children’s education—even though the jobs themselves were not his purpose—he was able to see all his children graduate with four-year degrees.
In the book Switch, a story is told about a hospital cafeteria worker who saw his purpose in keeping people healthy and alive through keeping an incredibly sanitary cafeteria. Again, nothing very purposeful in cafeteria work alone—in fact, many would shun the work as too degrading or beneath them—but this man saw it as a vehicle to a larger destination. He literally saved lives (and I mean literally, hospital deaths actually declined).
Can you align your purpose of raising hard-working children by showing them your work ethic? Or your purpose of bringing theater to inner-city kids in a volunteer, weekend position because you have a 9-5 job that pays you enough to take care of your own family. Can you see yourself not as a cog in the wheel but as a vital ingredient in the bigger recipe?
While I hope you find a place that allows you to do that which you do well, you love, and the world needs all while making good money, I suspect most of us might have to search in a couple different places to find them all.
And the sooner we become okay with our job not necessarily being our purpose but a vehicle which allows us to achieve our purpose, the sooner we will be more satisfied with both.
Yes, go forth and find your purpose. But don’t necessarily quit your day job.
I have this amazing opportunity in front of me. However, taking it means giving up one of the projects on which I am currently working—which I love. In fact, I love it so much when I was approached about this other opportunity I informed them that I likely wasn’t interested.
My personal philosophy has always, but especially lately, been to be a “yes-[wo]man”. I believe this so whole-heartedly because I’m convinced that our subconscious minds are constantly working on our behalf, in a Secret-y, Law of Attraction-esque way we are searching for the answers—and solutions—to our souls biggest dreams.
In doing that we are drawn to those solutions even though they don’t always present themselves as solutions. In fact, sometimes they present to us as problems, inconveniences and nuisances. Because of this trickery, I have a personal policy to always say ‘yes’.
(Note: I realize there are some people that can’t say ‘no’ and so they become pushovers bombarded and bogged-down with ‘yeses’, and while that is a problem, I think saying ‘no’ too frequently is a greater epidemic. In the case of the aforementioned, time-management, setting boundaries, and understanding that guilt is poison are the oft real issues but that’s a post for another day.)
So, because of my Policy of Yes, I was very upfront with my suitors that I am always open to having a conversation but that I wasn’t sure that I could take on both projects with adequate attention, therefore, I may not be the right person for them. If, on that basis, they wanted to continue the conversation, I would be delighted.
And the conversation was had.
I was actually very intrigued. And because of some other factors in my life, it actually makes more sense than I would have given credence to two months earlier. Oh, and I’d be damn good at it.
However, I kept finding myself wallowing in this pit of sadness. Feeling like if I changed directions I failed. And if I stayed put I was shooting myself in the foot—the proverbial damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t.
But then something dawned on me. The other side of the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t coin is blessed-if-you-do, blessed-if-you-don’t. For the first time on this particular journey and maybe in my life, I realized that I really do win either way. This is literally—and I don’t use the word ‘literally’ lightly—a win-win!
I am still scared. Believe me. It’s scary but if we are not scared, we aren’t growing. And if we aren’t growing we aren’t helping ourselves or those around us. See, we need to be evolving, improving, enriching in order to help others do the same. Stagnation is death (think: bed sores, the slowest zebra in the pack, moss overtaking the pond—sorry for the imagery, I suppose I could have just said ‘literally’).
If you aren’t scared, you are comfortable; and comfortable people are rarely at the top, living their dream.
Upon this realization, I felt a huge sense of peace wash over me. In finding peace we are free to try our hardest and know it still might not work out but that we are better for the effort, improved for having the opportunity.
And if we win, what a blessing.
How are you blessed-if-you-do, blessed-if-you-don’t? Are you ready to be a ‘yes-[wo]man’?
You can’t make more time–I’ve tried–but you can use the time you have a little bit better.
I’ve talked about Power Hours many times before. In my opinion, it’s the single best way to maintain a high level of consistent achievement. But how do you get their if you are falling into the procrastination doom-spiral?
I’m one of those people who tends to freeze when I feel overwhelmed. If something feels daunting, then better to take my mind off the problem altogether with mind-numbing social media or by binge-watching Netflix than to face and solve the problem. This is my nature, my default state.
This is a problem for me—or it can be if I don’t address it.
Well, now I have a new way to address it. Not so much new as in different, but new and improved. Like ketchup or something, it’s already kickass but it’s now kickass-ier, with real sugar or non-GMO tomatoes or whatever.
Back to making Power Hours more kickass-ier. As I have talked about before, I traditionally recommend Power Hours in three blocks of 20-minute segments, two times per day, for a total of six segments. This works for a lot of reasons I have mentioned so I won’t rehash.
The problem is it doesn’t work for the person, also like me sometimes, who is feeling overwhelmed, feeling like the goal is too big or frankly just not feeling like doing it.
(I know I shouldn’t admit that there are lots of times I just don’t feel like doing something. I know there are people out there who haven’t had an out-of-discipline experience, but frankly, I’m not talking to those people—or if I am it’s to help them understand the people like me who don’t come perpetually disciplined. This is for the rest of the worthwhile, talented individuals who occasionally struggle with motivation, and those who lead them.)
Ya, dishes and laundry are the domestic hot-potato in my home. #Embarrassing
So, again, back to making Power Hours more kickass-ier. Here is my list, here is one sliver of one fraction of what I need to do today. I have been procrastinating on my taxes, well, for months now. I know it’s a job that’ll probably take me a couple hours. Laundry, that’s just a given at my house. There is never a time laundry doesn’t need to be done. The next three are for a consulting project I am working on; it’s a fairly substantial project about to take 50-plus hours. I have got about five in, and would likely leave the last 40 or so for the weekend before the deadline… if it weren’t for this trick.
That’s it.
No magic. No brain-surgery. No super-human powers or Spidey-sense required.
Just a list. A list of deconstructed issues I need to tackle. The key is two-fold:
That’s all that needs to be done: A list of important task somewhere between not-overly-simple and not-overly-complex and the acceptance of only subjecting yourself to that “horror” for 10-minutes. Allow the feeling of accomplishment sink in. Lather, rinse, repeat. Or don’t. But do bask in the feely-good-feelings of getting that list out of the way.
If you want to take it to the next level as I will with my “Tax” item, which obviously is more than a 10-minute endeavor (although I spent 20 or more), you can break it out further next time. So my list for tomorrow will say “Receipts”, “Donations”, “Mileage” as these are the next steps that I identified missing from my pile-o-taxes today. But headed into today, I didn’t even know what I had gathered and what was missing. And I wasn’t making any progress starting to look for it.
The 10-minute list trick gave me the motivation to start with the peace of knowing I could stop.
I believe that’s part of the psychology of procrastination and fear. We procrastinators build up in our heads—some based on reality, some not-so-much—the pain that doing something is going to cause. Scenarios like “It’s going to take forever”, “it’s so horrible” and the like pervade our consciousness until that’s all we can see making the whole project much more daunting than it really is.
That’s why the 10-minute rule works: because even the most wildly abusive torture can be endured for 10-minutes. And then usually in that time we realize it wasn’t that hard or horrible. And once we are at that point we are already victorious. Regardless of if it was or it wasn’t, we have accomplished more than we would have had we not started.
What’s been haunting the back of your mind for some weeks now? What tasks and goals can you chip away with today by using the 10-minute list?
Answering the difficult question of when should you try a different tactic versus when should you keep on keepin’ on.
In Jim Collins’ book Good to Great he metaphorically references the flywheel (‘a heavy revolving wheel in a machine that is used to increase the machine’s momentum’). It’s incredibly difficult to move but once it is moving it’s incredibly difficult to stop. So, too, can our actions work when striving to reach our goals. But…
There’s bad news: sometimes it can feel as if nothing is happening in those early, critical stages.
In my five steps to goal achieving (listen to audio here) the fifth step, Review, Re-evaluate, and Redesign, is critical. Doing so allows us to adjust our plan because it’s likely that the way we envisioned is not the way our goals transpire. But…
There’s bad news: we may move on to something else before the seeds we’ve sewn have had a chance to take root.
So, what’s a goal achiever to do?
That same question came out recently as I was working with a client. It can be tough to decipher but from that discussion I outlined five steps that will help you determine your ideal course of action.
1. Track and review the data. If you haven’t been tracking, you need to start—immediately—and then give it 30-90 days depending on the goal. Key metrics you may want to include are time based (how long does one activity take ), quantity based (how many X do you need to get Y, and how many Y do you need to get Z). If you know based on your collected data that it takes 10 networking meetings to get one new client (10 hours) and that it takes 150 cold-calls to get one client (five hours). It becomes easier to choose cold-calling over networking even though networking might be more fun. Thusly, if you are deciding whether to keep doing what you are doing versus try something different, if you don’t have that kind of empirical information, you will likely go with what feels better emotionally, and that may not be wisest.
2. Lay out your road map. Laying out your road map includes running through both possible scenarios and the logistics of each. It sounds silly or even redundant but it’s important. Doing so can ferret out obstacles that were glanced over previously. For example, I was considering joining a networking club on Thursday mornings. It happens to be at the same time as one of my company’s group trainings. That was fine, because I don’t teach that particular class. But sometimes I am asked to fill in. Although, not often enough to stay within the 75 percent attendance requirement. But what happens if I get a client from the group? They won’t be able to attend our company’s group training because they have the same meeting! Therefore, it wasn’t a good fit for me, even though I had been considering this group for months and nearly made the investment. It wasn’t until I mapped out my entire process-flow that I saw the serious glitch in pursuing this avenue.
3. Make a pro-con list. I have used this technique many times and it has consistently provided insights. I do a pro-con list for each option because sometimes a pro for one is not necessarily a con for the other. Then you can count the pros and subtract the cons or you can ascribe weighted values to each the pros and the cons. You can try both or do something entirely different. But the idea is to brainstorm all of the little things that maybe don’t mean much as a stand-alone item but seeing a half-dozen on the page starts to highlight a significant difference. Furthermore, qualitative aspects can be included. For example, comparing the networking event and cold-calling I might include “I hate cold-calling” in the cold-calling cons. That way, it gets represented but it’s not the be-all-to-end-all decision-making criteria. Yet, if all other things are equal, I can choose to continue networking.
4. Consider past history. While your goal may have something to do with breaking bad behaviors that aren’t serving you anymore, our history of behaviors can’t be excluded entirely. For example, suppose I am considering whether to adopt a networking strategy but I have never effectively networked and in fact I’ve started and quit a number of times. In this scenario I’m going to have a lot of baggage if I switch to this strategy solely because I don’t want to cold-call anymore. That’s not to say it can’t be done, it’s to say it is an additional obstacle to consider. Furthermore, if I have a history of “strategy hopping”, that should be considered before I forgo any accrued momentum switching what I am currently doing for the proverbial greener grass.
5. Trust your gut. This is last point for a reason—well, a few reasons. For one, you should only trust your gut infallibly if you have enough evidence that your gut has served you well before (as opposed to it having led you to “strategy hop”). Secondly, trusting your gut should be used in conjunction with reviewing the data. Very rarely does a situation go ideally when the gut-instinct completely contradicts the data. You could be the anomaly but this article is about increasing your odds, not winning the goal-achieving lottery. Lastly, your trusting gut is a muscle not unlike your biceps. As you work it, safely, you build it. You wouldn’t go to the gym and curl 150 pounds out of the blue. Train your gut by including him in the decision but not letting his emotions rule the day.
Follow these steps for more clarity on whether you need to take a new route or keep the path. If you are still confused, continue doing what you are doing. The reason being if you cannot come up with enough conviction to move on after working through this process, then it’s likely you are experiencing a bout of temporary frustration with the current path. While I can relate and empathize with that, there are more than a few anecdotes about one’s biggest breakthroughs occurring after the adrenaline rush wears off.
You only need to look at the Good to Great examples or the metaphor of the flywheel to observe this occurrence.
I remember this Garfield poster hanging on my fifth-grade classroom wall. Garfield had books roped around his head and he was attempting to learn by osmosis—a concept for which I ached to be true. It was a joke of course because, you can’t learn by osmosis. Or can you?
First of all, do you remember the fifth-grade science concept of osmosis?
Technically: a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semi-permeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane.
Or, less technically: what is denser will fill what is less dense until both parts are of equal density.
Consider your goal (basically a goal is something you are learning to do, how to earn or how to become, right?). Now consider what forces are in a sense pulling you away from, or pulling you toward, your goal.
Are there people in your life that are naysayers, doubters, and Debbie-downers pulling you away from the achievement of your goal? Or are you surrounded by people who are cheerleaders, accountability partners, and challengers lifting you toward it?
Are you using the time in your car to listen to music and commercials which distract you from your plan? Or are you listening to motivational, educational and inspirational CDs and books?
Are you socializing too frequently without purpose? Or are you mentoring someone or being mentored?
Do you read books and magazines that are helping you reach your goal? Or do you solely read your Facebook newsfeed for hours on end and get sucked into the black hole of social media negativity?
Is your TV blaring from the moment you get home from work until the moment you go to bed? Or do you have partake in something like a Power Hour where you are actively and purposefully building momentum toward the achievement of your goal?
Hear me clearly that none of these things alone is bad: music, socializing with friends, fiction-reading, social media, etc.
Where we tend to run into problems, however, is when we let these time- and energy-sucking activities control us rather than controlling them. We can easily get sidetracked from our goals when we allow these things to creep into our lives like the proverbial frog slowly boiling to death as the pot of water heats up.We don’t even notice being distracted and ruined by them, it just happens a little more at a time.
In my five steps to goal achieving, step number four is to live intentionally (you can listen to the audio here). In doing this, we can use some of our vices as rewards, or we can insert these activities into our day in a controlled fashion. It’s not necessarily how you choose to do this, just that you do.
I like to tell people that the degree to which you lives intentionally is the degree to which you will achieve success.
If a person chooses to partake in time-wasting activities that slowly begin to control his precious time he risks losing his drive and determination. In choosing to be surrounded by success-draining individuals he forgoes the very creativity that inspired the goal in the first place and the energy to persistently attack it. In effect, he will have failed by osmosis.
However, if a person makes a concerted effort to be surrounded by other successful people, immerse himself in his goal, and live intentionally, he will effectively influence his success—through osmosis.
Garfield may have been missed the mark, albeit humorously, trying to tie books to his head. But he wasn’t so far off by suggesting that what we let surround us does indeed impact us—whether or not we notice it.
On that note, ask yourself if who and what you surround yourself with is helping to create the more successful you or is it stealing your goals from you bit by bit? Ask what else you could add to your day or week to increase success by osmosis?
[Author’s note: this is in no way to say that just by being surrounded by successful people and reading goal-related books one will become successful. Action is absolutely required. However, by doing the aforementioned activities, action becomes easier and more likely; creativity and motivation more freely flow.]
Marjorie Dudley 