One of the things that really disappoints me is when you hear people sharing their ideas and dreams and then justifying why they "can't" pursue them. Are you one of those people? Far too many of us are.
Over the next few issues I am going to unpack this and then show you a technique to begin to break free from limiting yourself.
So let’s begin by defining some key words: Fantasy; Dream; Goal; Limiting Belief. A fantasy is something that is impossible to come true. As a young boy I wanted to fly like Superman! A dream is something that could come true, but won't, unless you can convert it into a goal. This therefore means that a goal is a dream with an action plan attached to it. So how do we do this you may wonder? It all begins with having as clear an understanding as possible of what this dream is. To do this you need to engage all five of your senses AND passion. Top sales people will tell you that you don't sell the product but rather what the product can do for you. So for the moment in your mind’s eye and with your self-talk begin with getting passionate about the outcome of achieving your goal, the reward that you deserve for "getting there".
So go on, take a few minutes every day to just allow yourself to go to that special place.
Next week I will pick up on this and I will give you some practical tools as we discuss Limiting Beliefs.
In the meanwhile, stay strong, stay focus,
I hope that you all enjoyed last week’s new topic and have been busy engaging your senses around creating that extra clear vision.
One of the biggest things that holds us back is our own limiting beliefs.
You see people all the time not achieving their goals, just falling short and often it is caused by internal dialog and an untrue belief.
For how many years did the world believe that for a human to bench press 200kg was an impossibility? In fact, the record of 165kg stood for almost 40 years. It was because Doug Hepburn was lied to about the weights that his trainer got him to break that particular limiting belief, you see each time he "tried" to break the 165kg he failed until that one day that his coach put 181kg's on and told him it was 160kg's (an amount Doug knew he could do) that he broke the record. once he had proven that it was possible, the record was broken four more times in relatively quick succession.
We need to make sure that we allow ourselves to break our limiting beliefs - shatter them into oblivion! So ask yourself why is it that you think you can't?
It was Henry Ford who said "if you think you can or if you think you can't - you are correct"
This week I want each of you to ask yourself what it is that you need to add to your own personal toolbox of skills that will help you to achieve what you so rightfully desire.
Till next time; stay strong, stay focused,
Have you been working on those SMART goals over the past 2 weeks? I am sure that if you truly want positive change in your life you have been.
Irrespective of where we are in our lives we want to go higher; further; faster. It's wonderful that we are in the mind-set of evolving to a higher level, however we must also be aware of the pressure we place on ourselves.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks of achieving our goals is that we give up when things don't work out exactly as we want them to immediately.
There are three reasons for this in my opinion:
1) We have set our goals too high.
2) We've gone into this venture with the wrong mind-set.
3) We don't have a clear picture of what we want to achieve.
We've dealt with number 3 in the last issue, so let’s look at the other 2.
It was Michelangelo who said "The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
This is why we need to break our goals down both into SMART and Short, Medium and Long term goals. If something seems to easy to achieve, why not be to brave to push yourself to the next level? Afraid of giving up because you "fell short" of achieving? Maybe this is when its time to break that mountain of a goal into bite size pieces. Take your goal and break it into smaller goals that are more achievable, realising that each small win will be a building block to the next step and win.
We need to realise that goals can start small, Bolt didn't just become the fastest man one day, it was a systematic build-up of little goals that got him to where he wanted to be.
How often when you ask people why they want to achieve what they want to achieve they give you an interesting reason, if you continue to talk to them and really listen you will hear them describe what they want to achieve in more detail and then you will hear the true reason.
So when it comes to yourself, once you know exactly what it is that you want to achieve ask yourself "When I reach my goal, what will have changed for me and those around me?"
Keep asking yourself "and?" after each answer, you to will be surprised with what begins to emerge from the recesses of your mind.
So here’s this week’s task:
1) break your goals into bite sized pieces
2) Ask yourself "When I reach my goal, what will have changed for me and those around me?" following it up with "and?". Don't do this once, rather keep doing it until...
Till next time;
Stay strong, Stay focused,
Here is to hoping that you now understand how important it is that you aim towards achieving something rather than running away from something.
So let’s make this into an actual goal. As I stated 2 newsletters ago, you need to put some actions into a dream to make it a goal.
One of the simplest strategies is to use the SMART Goal Method.
SMART is an acronym
Specific; Measurable; Action to Achieve; Realistic; Time Line
S - be as specific as possible when creating the goal, it's not I want to loose weight, but rather I want to loose 10kg.
M - how are you going to measure that you are on track in achieving this goal?
A - what are you going to begin doing or do differently to help you achieve your goal?
R - is the goal a realistic one?
T - you must create a deadline by when you want to achieve this goal.
When you combine these all together you begin to create that action plan and have a clearer vision of what you want to achieve and what’s required of you to "get there".
So grab some paper and begin deconstructing your goal this week and then build it up again as a SMART Goal.
Till next time; stay strong, stay focused,
Have you been working on those SMART goals over the past 2 weeks? I am sure that if you truly want positive change in your life you have been.
Irrespective of where we are in our lives we want to go higher; further; faster. It's wonderful that we are in the mind-set of evolving to a higher level, however we must also be aware of the pressure we place on ourselves.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks of achieving our goals is that we give up when things don't work out exactly as we want them to immediately.
There are three reasons for this in my opinion:
1) We have set our goals too high.
2) We've gone into this venture with the wrong mind-set.
3) We don't have a clear picture of what we want to achieve.
We've dealt with number 3 in the last issue, so let’s look at the other 2.
It was Michelangelo who said "The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
This is why we need to break our goals down both into SMART and Short, Medium and Long term goals. If something seems to easy to achieve, why not be to brave to push yourself to the next level? Afraid of giving up because you "fell short" of achieving? Maybe this is when its time to break that mountain of a goal into bite size pieces. Take your goal and break it into smaller goals that are more achievable, realising that each small win will be a building block to the next step and win.
We need to realise that goals can start small, Bolt didn't just become the fastest man one day, it was a systematic build-up of little goals that got him to where he wanted to be.
How often when you ask people why they want to achieve what they want to achieve they give you an interesting reason, if you continue to talk to them and really listen you will hear them describe what they want to achieve in more detail and then you will hear the true reason.
So when it comes to yourself, once you know exactly what it is that you want to achieve ask yourself "When I reach my goal, what will have changed for me and those around me?"
Keep asking yourself "and?" after each answer, you to will be surprised with what begins to emerge from the recesses of your mind.
So here’s this week’s task:
1) break your goals into bite sized pieces
2) Ask yourself "When I reach my goal, what will have changed for me and those around me?" following it up with "and?". Don't do this once, rather keep doing it until...
Till next time;
Stay strong, Stay focused,
Have you all noticed that the Christmas decorations have been up for a few weeks already in most shopping centres?
When we see this the 1st two thoughts most of us have are: Why are they up so early? The 2nd one is Dam, another year is almost over and I haven't achieved half of what I had planned for the year!
The question is "why not?"
The answer is scarily simple, yet we don't want to own it.
We are lazy!
Some of us do not want to wear a label calling ourselves lazy, however it is our truth.
Thinking for a moment of how hard most people work, its a statement that hard to swallow, or is it?
The largest amount of human energy is spent on one of two things, either working on satisfying our basic needs or busy inventing things to make our lives easier.
How much time and effort did James King (1851) put into inventing a drum style washing machine? Why because he "wanted to make laundry day easier".
Now lets be honest we all embrace these modern day inventions and wouldn't want to "go back"
How does this relate to ourselves and the fact we haven't achieved our full potential this year?
We need to learn how to improve ourselves, looking at all aspects of our "SELFS" from our self-worth, self-respect; self-esteem and self-confidence.
This is a journey that over the next few issues I will unpack for you, starting with Why we often try and fail.
Till next time; stay strong, stay focused,
It's so common to hear the words "I will try", maybe it is you who has said it?
I would love it if each and every one of you make a concerted effort to eliminate the word "try" from your vocabulary, unless you are talking about rugby that is.
Why you may be asking?
As I mentioned in last week’s Note, we are all lazy and the words we use always do have an impact on our actions.
Try happens to be one of those words that I call "an escape clause" word.
Think of it in this way: someone asks you to do something for them, your response is "sure, I'll try" A few days later they ask you for feedback and you say "sorry I couldn't..., BUT I TRIED"
Try leaves us open to have an excuse to not do something or justify why it is ok to fail. What i want you to START doing as of today is to DO, not try.
When you DO, you may succeed or you may fail, however when you fail, instead of justifying why with an excuse, you will look at the why and how you could improve on it, to DO it over.
As Yoda says " Do or do not; there is no try"
So be honest with yourself and decide if you are going to do something or not, stop telling yourself and others that you will try! It's almost the same as the word BUT, have you noticed how "but" always cancels out what was said before it? "I was going to ... , but..." (you fill in the blanks), now say the same sentence again, replacing the word "but" with the word "and".
It changes the feeling and meaning of what you said does it not?
This week, allow yourself to become more aware of the words you use, eliminating "try's" and "but's".
Go on give it a bash!
Till next time; stay strong, stay focused,
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Somerset West
Email: jason@jasonsandlerspeaks.com
Phone: +27 (0) 72 329 2760