Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 111
I wanted to give you a very breezy three-step plan to focus on your goals.
Now, this is for those of you who have something big or something little that you're working towards. We're kind of at the beginning edge of a new year and lots of people might have some goals that they're working towards and some people might just have some things that they would like to feel a little bit different about. Like maybe your goal could be to be kinder to yourself, or maybe your goal could be to wash the dish directly after you've eaten. Or maybe your goal could be to try and read a chapter of a book a week. Make your goals your own. It doesn't have to be some big I need to go back to university or write a book grandeur, ideal, although of course it can be.
But there is a really simple three-step plan that I think really will support you no matter what level or level of investment your goal will take.
And firstly, the first point is to work out why you're trying to do it. Do you want to do it because you're trying to feel something different? Do you want to do it because you're trying to get away from a feeling that you're having at the moment? Working out the emotion that you anticipate you will be able to feel when the goal has been achieved is going to give you huge insight into what is motivating you, what is driving you, and most importantly, what's going to keep things on track when you're not feeling like everything's going your way or everything's working out in your favour. And in the middle of any big journey is some trudge and some boring. And knowing what you want to be feeling or what you're hoping you're going to be feeling is going to be the thing that motivates you through this little swamp. So, try to work out your why.
The second thing is to break things down into manageable chunks. When we have a big goal or a goal that feels like it's very far away from where we are now, it can be very off-putting to think that we have to do a whole load of little steps to get there. We want to make big leaps and jumps and be able to mark our own progress. But the truth is that consistency is the thing that gets anyone towards their goal. Marking and mapping out your journey towards where you want to be in the most, small incremental steps is going to be the way that you carry yourself through those trudgy days. Making your path full of little things that are, frankly, more effort not to do than to do is going to be the way that you carry on making little bits of progress every day towards where you want to be. So breaking things down into those manageable chunks may feel like you're not making the kind of headway that you want to, but actually, when you look back, you'll see that all of those little steps along the way have taken you far.
And the third thing is to stop trying to get things right, because perfectionism is the enemy of any great achievement. Most of us have ingrained within us that we don't really like being rubbish at things in our adulthood. And when you have an idea that you must be good at things, or you must get things right, or along the way. Often what it does is just end up with people, yourself, myself, not taking the kind of action that you need to in these circumstances, because we're full of either somewhere between embarrassment and shame, and start layering on all of this judgment about how we're not doing things right, or we're not good enough, or it's all falling apart already. And so you can choose your tactic, whether it is to try and be kinder to yourself, which is definitely what we teach at www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk but maybe it might be just something more gentle or more playful. Like, I'm gonna actively try and get things wrong along the road, or I'm gonna try and make three big mistakes today and just try and see what happens when you're actually taking the action and not allowing yourself to be off put by those feelings of, I haven't got things right yet.
So your three-step plan is to work out your why, break things down into manageable chunks, and stop trying to get things right.
This, I think, is a little game plan for life. Whether your goal is something that you've just invented, or whether it's something that you're yet to aspire to, even if it is just, you know, as tiny as you've not been feeling well lately, and you haven't gone out much, and someone's invited, a friend's invited you out for coffee, you could still use this game plan for that kind of thing. Working out your why, breaking out all of the steps that it would take, including your steps to get home, and then stop trying to do things right. Work out that you can arrive there, say that it's been a bit of a struggle, and that you only want to stay for ten minutes. It's all still part of the game plan.
I hope that this is useful for you this week. I hope that you can apply it to things in your life, and if you do, I'd love to hear about it. Please do. Drop me an email.
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