I want to provide you today with the most important content there is with regards to successful goal accomplishment. This content will be brutally honest and has a better than average chance of making some of you angry. If I do that, I will consider my conversation with you a success.
I wrote in previous blogs this month about how to succeed in accomplishing your 2022 goals and resolutions. Please refer to the previous blogs on this website. In that material, which is part of the content I share with my Better Way 2 Better Health clients, I wrote about the Five Pillars of success. I explained the pillars named visualization, planning, and emotionalizing. Today I want to finish the discussion on the Five Pillars by talking about the last two pillars, execution and assessment.
Execution needs no explanation. Execution is simply doing what you have planned. What we need to remember is that there is a difference between doing a task and doing the task with excellence. The way that we determine that difference between completion and completion with excellence is called assessment. This is the point where some people will start to get upset with me.
Assessment is judging. We are inundated today from many sources of media that we are not supposed to judge anyone or any effort that has been made. I will tell you right now that what is being foisted on us about judging from social media platforms, news stories, public figures, and so forth is a load of horse manure. Judging, or in this case assessing, is growth. We cannot grow or improve without comparisons and comparing means judging. If we did not judge, you could not buy a product of any type that suits your need. You would not have a credit score and would not be able to get a loan for anything. You could not be able to find a suitable spouse. Businesses would fail because there would be nothing to measure the success of that business.
The idea of being non-judgmental also leads to excuse making. I see this in my chiropractic practice all day long. Patients make excuses and justify not exercising by telling me that they exercised because they move while at work. I have patients that justify not drinking water because they inform me that they drink coffee, tea, or soda pop and those things have water in them. Without judgment it becomes very easy to excuse poor effort by telling yourself that at least you tried! Seriously?! You want a participation award for blowing off your exercises and eating at McDonalds as you try to lose weight?
The people that do this are among the first to complain that a weight loss program does not work or that exercising adds muscle mass or that they are just genetically predisposed to being large and is why they are heavy. Look, you could excuse yourself all the way to diabetes or a heart attack if you weren't careful. You must understand that you must assess to progress. Sometimes being harsh with yourself is necessary.
I am not advocating beating yourself up and using berating language with yourself. I am asking you to just be brutally honest with yourself and take full responsibility for your actions. For example, if you complete a task you should celebrate. You did it! You need to celebrate to maintain your enthusiasm. You also should analyze your actions in completing the task to see what you did well and how you could do better next time. What could you improve your results?
If you fail, celebrate! What??!! Yep, you read that right! Celebrate the fact that you failed. You now know what not to do next time. In doing this assessment, you break down your effort and analyze what went wrong, when it went wrong, and why you think it went wrong. Your failure will be a huge lesson in how to succeed next time. There is a story reported by Napoleon Hill in his epic book Think and Grow Rich about reporters that were questioning Thomas Edison about his latest invention, the electric light bulb. A reporter asked Mr. Edison if he was dismayed by the fact that he had tried 10,000 times before he was successful in his invention. Mr. Edison is reported to have said that he was not upset, because he now knew 9,999 ways that would not work.
Becoming successful takes hard work and lots of it. What I have tried this month to present to you is an organized way to approach being successful in attaining your goals. It requires thought, planning, maintaining a positive attitude, effort, and some hard evaluation. I hope these blogs have been helpful.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic. If you would, please email me at weber407@comcast.net or better yet, find one of my videos on this topic on Face Book, and add your comment in the comment space. I read all your comments and would love to talk more with you on this topic!
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