How Badly Do You Want It?
I am fascinated about us humans. About our capability to change, to up our game.
We say we want something. We dream. We set goals. But how often do we do what is necessary to achieve those goals?
I was reminded of this, this week. We have been emailing some of the people on my list, as part of our preparation for the GDPR legislation that kick in next May, who haven’t engaged with my blog over the last four months to see if they wish to carry on receiving my blogs or not.
I have had a couple of people who have said: ‘I haven’t got time to read your emails, I seem to remember that you laid out a strategy for that in a previous email a while back but I guess we didn’t change’.
Following a strategic planning session some clients are voracious action takers. They increase their activity levels and action levels. More and more things improve in their business, everybody’s pace picks up, all adding up to game changing progress and results.
Others, open the Strategy Action Plan, read it in between the same old busyness, start to implement but quickly get distracted and do not follow through. Suddenly they realise a year later that they are in the same place as they were 12 months ago.
Don’t fear failure….fear being in the exact same place next year as you are today.
In order to break out of doing the same things and getting the same results, you have to break out of your old habits.
You probably know the process:
- Get enough reasons why. What will it cost you if you don’t do anything different? What will you get/could you get if you change your habits and start taking action and implementing voraciously? Do not tolerate standing still. Be acutely aware of the days, weeks and months ticking away and get moving.
- Set very clear goals and visualise them regularly.
- Build a team of A grade players and spur each other on to higher levels of focused effort.
- Take action each day/week towards your goals.
- Celebrate the wins.
Knowing is one thing, doing is another. Catching yourself in the moment of (unconscious) decision as you are about to hurtle off down the circular path of your old behaviour is harder still.
I was having a chat with a friend this week about this challenge, in the context of cleaner eating after getting into a naughty-but-nice holiday pattern of good food and good wine. This prompted her to tell me that at the point of going for the high carb or sweet tooth option she trained herself to ask herself: “Does it taste as good as skinny feels?”.
I love that! Catch yourself in the moment:
“Does it taste as good as skinny/healthy feels?”
“Will this distraction feel as good as the fulfilment of a life-long goal?”
“Will being right feel as good as nurturing a strong happy relationship?”
What is your equivalent question that will stop you in your tracks for engaging in your old habits and prompt you to make better choices so that in one year’s time you are in a very different place than you are now?
Create your own phrases and post them in the comments below and be sure to use them regularly.
