How do you stick to your goals?
You always start the year pumped to achieve more, but just a few weeks later, you’re exhausted and slowly give up on them. As a result, you end up judging yourself for not being consistent with your goals and waiting for the next year to set them up all over again.
In today’s post, we will be talking about the five main tricks you want to use to not only stick to your goals but to achieve them fast and go for the next ones.
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1. Know Your Why
Okay, I know it’s not that secret, and I also know you might roll your eyes on this. But if you are anything like me, you might also read stuff like this one and then do NOTHING about it.
If you read so many times, “Know your Why,” did you also find the time to sit and write down your reasons for achieving your goals?
Because listing the benefits in your head won’t work!
You want to boost that creativity and paint the picture that’s in your mind with real words.
For example, suppose one of my goals was to eat healthily this year. In that case, my Why could be the following: I intend on eating healthily this year because I know I will feel better in my own body. We are what we eat (literally), and I would like to think that my body is nourished by fresh organic food, clean water, and lots of fruits and veggies. I will eat healthily because I want to feel energized all day long, wake up early, and forget my digestion problems. I want to eat better because that would help me carry a healthy baby, lose weight, get rid of anxiety, enjoy cleaner skin, and regulate my period (pick one or more that resonates with you).
You see, if I stay longer than two minutes, I will come up with more and more (and more) reasons to eat healthily, but the secret is to grab the pen and write it down. Go for a minimum of 5 reasons, but don’t just list them; explain why this will improve your life and how you will feel once that happens.
2. Get Obsessed With The Idea
And I mean really obsessed with it. You need to breathe with the thought of achieving your goal. You want to read information online, get books on it, listen to podcasts, talk with friends, ask for specialist’s advice, take online classes, write, paint, dream of it… You want to live for this goal.
That doesn’t sound realistic? Do you want it that much, then?
If you aren’t willing to gift that goal with attention, nourish it, and explore it, are you sure it’s the right goal at this point?
Let’s go back to our “eat healthy” resolution. If that was my goal for the year, I would most likely subscribe to more than a few YouTube channels and listen to podcasts on eating healthier. I would also get curious about how my body works now and what types of food make me feel good or bad. I’m a journal-lover, so I would start recording my daily meals and how I feel about half an hour to an hour after eating that meal. If I have lunch and an hour later, I feel mushy, sleepy, and low energy. This food will go into the No column of my journal (even if it was claimed as healthy). If I were trying to fix a health problem with a better diet, I would definitely invest in a consultation with a dietician…
Again, there are plenty of ideas and ways to stay present and engage with your goal on every possible level. You can’t just write something on your goal list and forget it’s there until December.
3. Focus On One Thing At a Time
Yep, another trick that isn’t that secret, but do you know why it is so important to focus on one thing at a time?
Imagine you have 100% of your focus under your control (which you should, but hey, that’s another story), and you are free to decide what to do with it.
If you had 5 tasks on your to-do list today, you would have to give each task 20% of your focus. Now, imagine you had 10 tasks – that would mean you would have to give only 10% of your focus to each one.
Here’s the thing. Day-to-day goals are easier to achieve as you need to focus on a specific task for an hour or two (or less), and once it’s done, you’re free from it. You go to sleep, and on the next day, you’re fresh and ready for another batch of daily goals.
When it comes to bigger goals, though, things get different. If you’ve made up your mind to improve your diet and eat healthily, that won’t happen for an hour or two on Saturday afternoon. It will require your attention at least three to four times a day.
What if you also had the goal to exercise 5 times a week? Now, you add an exercise schedule 5 times a week on top of your healthy eating.
But we are ambitious human beings. We research for opening a business, applying to study in a university, reading a book per week, organizing the house, being a better parent, implementing more self-care rituals… The list could go on and on for a while.
How would you focus and do one thing properly if you regularly split that focus into many different places?
How would you focus and do one thing properly if you regularly split that focus into many different places?
insideofhappiness.com
That chaotic goal-chasing won’t work. It will exhaust you, and you will most likely dream of a day off from doing any of the mentioned. On that day off, you will feel so relieved that you will take the week off… you get the point. Shortly, it will be December, and you will (once again) have that conversation with yourself, where you take on another batch of goals for next year.
What should you do instead? Should you focus on one goal every year? No!
Have as many goals as you wish. Instead, evaluate the energy level they will require to achieve them. Start with one thing, get comfortable with it, make it part of your life, and start loving it.
If I wanted to eat healthier this year, I would consider it done once I don’t get “tempted” by all the junk food, and I don’t think twice before getting/ordering/cooking/choosing food that makes me feel good in my body.
Once I hit that sweet spot, I would add one or two days of exercising to my weekly schedule. A month after that, I will most likely be more than happy to exercise that amount of hours, so I might add one more to it. I will keep increasing until I achieve the 5 times per week goal.
Your goals shouldn’t make you hate your life; they shouldn’t exhaust you and take away your inner peace and happiness.
Your goals shouldn’t make you hate your life; they shouldn’t exhaust you and take away your inner peace and happiness.
insideofhappiness.com
When you have the right goal, you will be excited about it, you will live and breathe with that goal in mind, you will explore options to get to the end result in the best possible way. You will simply feel like you’re living your best life. Because when you have the right goals, you are just one step closer to it.
4. Be Curious About The Excuses Your Mind Comes Up With
Hiding away your excuses and pretending they don’t exist will only give them power.
Instead, explore them. Why do you have that excuse? Why is it tempting? Does it have any potential to make you more determined to stick to your goal?
Shall we proceed with the healthy eating goal? Okay!
Let’s say that two weeks after I start eating healthy, I get invited to a birthday party, and the food doesn’t cover my new resolution at all. Obviously, unless you have some food intolerance, you will most likely eat it. You don’t want to be that fussy person in the room who can’t handle a piece of cake at a birthday party.
Yet, once you get back home, you see your partner left a box with cookies on the table, and you think, “Okay, anyway, today I already had nothing else but unhealthy food; just a cookie can’t make it worse.”
No, it can’t! Your diet won’t be affected by a cookie, but your willpower next time you see that box will be affected. Two hours later, you will reach for another cookie; on the next day, you might add a pizza slice, and you’re already halfway through giving up on your resolution.
Instead of thinking that a day is lost, think of it as an opportunity to work on your willpower once you get tempted by food choices you know aren’t good for you. I can promise you the hardest steps are at the beginning of the process, not at the middle or the end of it.
Just because you slipped once, that doesn’t mean you must give up on the goal and wait for another burst of motivation to take on it again.
Now, let’s see how all these tips get together in the last one.
5. Rinse and Repeat, Again and Again
Okay, let’s be realistic for a moment.
Almost nobody sets up goals and then sticks to them for eternity. Normal human beings like you and I are aware that we will not only get tempted, stressed, busy, and overwhelmed by life, but we will have to struggle a bit to stick to any goal.
Eventually, we will fail. There will be days when we have no time for cooking, and we must come up with something quick and not-so-healthy.
There will be times when we can’t fit an exercise session between the work meetings and your kids’ appointments.
Life happens, as we often say.
What do you do about it?
Are you going to shrug your shoulders and confirm that you failed?
No!
Because, as another cliché says, you only fail once you stop trying.
If you had a week where you forgot to stick to your goal, that doesn’t mean you should have another week like that. Focus on your goals day after day, and stop judging yourself; you won’t feel better about it.
Instead of taking the failure as confirmation of how bad you are at sticking to your goals, use it as an opportunity to do it again and make it last longer.
Never, ever give up on achieving something your heart says it’s good for you! Write that somewhere, and look at it every single day.
Never, ever give up on achieving something your heart says it’s good for you!
insideofhappiness.com
Summary You Need
Let’s summarize all that into a few good tips:
- Know why you do what you do. Emphasize how your life will change positively once you achieve your goal (or even in the process of working on it.
- Get obsessed with the idea, love it, explore it, read about it, talk about it, breathe through it.
- Focus on one thing at a time, and don’t listen to other people who juggle 5 new habits on YouTube. They literally get paid to do it, so they have a very strong Why. You need to start small.
- Be curious about how amazing your excuses are, then laugh at them and do as you decided initially.
- Rinse and repeat as many times as you need until you get to that comfortable sweet spot where you don’t need to… well, rinse and repeat.
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5 Tricks To Teach You How To Stick To Your Goals
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
