It’s easy to quit. To replace your dreams with commitments and a list of things you “have to do”.
Giving up is certainly easier than starting something new. Starting takes energy. Quitting takes none. Take a moment to reflect – tally the goals you’ve given up on – the marathon you never ran, the business idea that didn’t get off the ground. Maybe you can’t remember quitting. Maybe you put it off and forgot to pick it up again. That’s how it happens – almost by accident.
What happened? WHY do we quit?
Sometimes we quit because life gets in the way. We forget to prioritise ourselves. We talk about this in our Masterclass, how to put yourself first and feel okay about it.
Other times we quit because of the way we defined success. It was too vague and we knew, consciously or subconsciously, that meeting it was never going to happen.
Typically, the reason for this is not because the goal itself was out of our reach. Few goals are, as long as we’re committed to them. Rather, it’s because the way we defined success was all or nothing. We gave ourselves a broad goal, like “I want to be the best …” and then had absolutely no way to achieve that goal, nor a defined path to lead us there.
Having a dream provides colour, purpose, definition. But what we need to focus on is the numerous, smaller, more mundane things that need to happen along the way.
Redefining Goals and Success
It’s nice to keep the goal in mind. But what if we stopped focusing on how to achieve a dream, and instead focused on how to achieve the individual tasks necessary for that dream to be realized?
Let’s start with the example of running a marathon.
If you’re not yet a runner, running for 26 miles is not going to happen. Put it on a nice piece of paper, draw a big smiley face on it, then file it away. It’s time for action.
What will you do today to live like a marathon runner:
Find time for yourself to go jogging.
Someone to train with
An accountability partner.
…Then you need to rack up your first mile.
If we really want to start achieving our goals, we need to experience ourselves as that person now. The person who takes the action today, the person who creates evidence of success along the way to achieving that big audacious goal.
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Doing so gives us a path to follow.
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It gives us successes, showing us the progress we made along the way.
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It provides the joy of achievement and the ability to re-assess as we move forward.
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It ensures that the idea of achieving goals need not be overwhelming.
The final goal can be the same, and if it is your dream then it is a dream worth following.
But now you’re awake, and it’s time to figure out here in the real world what you need to do that would ultimately bring you to achieving that dream.
You know what your dreams are.
Now it’s time to assess the process that someone would take to get there.
You want to be successful?
Okay.
HOW?
