January is the month we associate with resolutions and the setting of new goals. In my last blog we discussed what I call the five pillars of success. Those pillars that are necessary for success are visualization, planning, emotionalizing, executing, and assessing. I want to delve into planning and emotionalizing today.
When you visualize yourself as successfully completing a goal, it allows you to see what you had to do to get there. Visualizing makes it easy to see the steps you need to take. Planning then is a simple process of writing down those steps.
Planning to do anything also requires a certain amount of forethought. You must be able to anticipate not only what you will need to do to reach the goal, but also anticipate any potential problems that might occur. You will need to decide what tools you will need for the endeavor and what new skills you may have to acquire to reach that goal. You will also need to anticipate and prepare to find additional help in reaching that goal in some cases.
Making plans can be overwhelming at times. The plans become more complicated as you start to factor in more and more details that you determine to be necessary. Often the plans become so cumbersome and confusing that it seems easier just to give up. I always advise my Better Way 2 Better Health coaching clients to go through a goal setting procedure that I teach. For more information about my coaching problem, you can contact me.
Goals need to have a clearly defined point of success and a time frame that the success must be accomplished by, otherwise it is just a wish. Properly set goals can also serve as a motivational guide that keep you working and moving toward your destination. I advise my clients to take the overall goal and divide it into smaller parts. A yearly goal can be divided into monthly goals, those can be broken into weekly goals, and the weekly goals can then be made into daily task lists.
Emotionalizing the steps necessary to complete a job is one of the most essential steps to success. Emotion is energy. When you do a task with emotion, it gives that task energy or life. If you ask your teenage son or daughter to do a household chore you will likely get what my dad used to call a Half-Fast (half assed) job. This is because the young person does not want to do the job to begin with and therefore puts no heart or energy into it. When the job is being done with no heart, energy, or what I refer to as emotion, the result is a poorly done job.
Putting emotion into a job also requires some planning. The more you anticipate the needs for task completion and factor those in the more likely you will be to give the task some emotion. Emotion also comes from having a solid idea of why you are doing the quest to begin with. In the case of a health goal, you need to know the specific reason for taking on that goal. Is your goal weight loss to look good, reduce risk of heart disease, lower blood sugar levels, increase your sexual prowess, find a new partner, or just try to make an old partner see you differently?
The reason for doing a thing brings the emotion to the equation. One of my favorite authors, Brendon Burchard likes to say that a power plant does not have energy, it generates the energy. Since emotion is energy, we must not think of ourselves as having emotion as much as we understand that we are going to generate that emotion.
The best way to generate emotion is to be the person that brings joy and happiness to everyone and everything. Be uplifting. Be positive. Have that “can do” attitude and share it with others. This does not mean that you must be pollyannish about it, but you should be pleasant and upbeat.
A second way to generate emotion is to celebrate your “wins”. Make sure you acknowledge yourself each time you check off a task that moves you closer to your goal. A trick that my dad used to use was to almost finish a task but stop for the day with only a little bit to do in the morning. When the next morning came, he would do one little thing and give himself a “win” to start his day.
Success requires time, thought, energy, and often assistance from family, friends, and knowledgeable people along the way. No one can be a self-starter, self-motivator, and be skilled in all the necessary areas you need to win the day. At the very least, you will need an accountability partner to help you reach your goal. If you have questions about goal setting and goal achieving, feel free to reach out to me at weber407@comcast.net and mention you saw this blog.
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