You may have been given the wrong advice.
Many of us know that you must first break it down into smaller attainable steps, when strategizing how to finally achieve your goal and make it less overwhelming. If it is something that you know might take a year to accomplish, you want to break it down to monthly, weekly, even daily steps that you will have to patiently execute. This is great advice that is totally valid and makes logical sense, but many of us are aware of this strategy and somehow are still not accomplishing our goals.
We’re told often times not to let our emotions get the best of us, but in this case allowing our emotions to contribute in this process could just be the missing link.
Connect Emotionally
You may have to find your inner child here and go back to those times where you had no problem imagining and visualizing very vividly. Try to recover your long lost skill of make belief and try to imagine yourself that you have already achieved this daunting goal that you so desire.
Don’t worry about how you accomplished it. Just visualize yourself victorious and that you now are the person you wanted to become. Acknowledge how it feels to be this person having accomplished your goal. You need to go deep and really feel the emotions that are surfacing as a result. Are these emotions of fulfillment and feeling proud? Maybe you’re surprised, but now you feel like there are no limits. It could be a feeling of finally NOT disappointing yourself. All of a sudden you feel gratitude and this internal self trust. Maybe you feel like a total badass!
Harness these unique emotions and try to revisit them daily. Having felt the emotions associated with your accomplishment will give you an opportunity to really feel your goal, and at this point it will be real. Physically you may not be there yet, but having truly felt it it is now coded into your subconscious and just a matter of time before you close that gap.
Take Physical Action
Taking action can usually feel intimidating, but don’t forget that you already broke your goal down into daily tasks. So check your task off today’s to-do list. Don’t worry about the weeks or months to come, it is all about finishing today’s task. As soon as you finish it, no matter how small it was, it will give you a sense of accomplishment and pride. You will automatically like and trust yourself more for following through and not bailing. You will also notice your motivation increase as a result of being more congruent with yourself and you will even become excited about taking on tomorrow’s challenge.
Control The Momentum
Action creates momentum, and momentum breeds desire that just keeps pulling you forward like a magnet. The hardest part is behind you, which was getting traction and making forward progress. Now it’s just a matter of ticking off the daily tasks as you’re getting closer to your ultimate goal. Once you’re in motion it is a lot easier to stay in motion right? At least that’s what Newton’s first law suggests, and it applies here as well.
Now, you do have to be careful with what some refer to as the honeymoon stage. And that’s basically the excitement of any new endeavor that you might embark upon in life. That initial excitement could wear off after a few days or weeks and you might start to fall back into your old routine.
If you start to waver with your drive, go back to what we covered earlier. Reconnect with the emotions from your desired outcome and remind yourself why you started in the first place.
Acknowledge Your Progress
It doesn’t matter what the ultimate goal is for you. Whether it is losing 15lb, finishing a triathlon, or starting a business, we all feed off and are driven by the same thing. Progress. As long as you have a way to measure even minimal, but daily progress you will continue to feel the necessary drive to propel forward through the days, weeks, and months to finally achieve your goal. Those moments of grinding away through the less exciting and tedious tasks will have a deeper meaning and eventually result in an achievement of a lifetime.
Success Starts With Building The Right Foundation Around Health:
Originally published at thetrihub.com on January 27, 2017.
Originally published at medium.com