The Language of Accomplishment
The first panic sets in right about in March, when we realize January is long past. But we continue to mire ourselves in the worry and the weight of everything that is not what we want. The second panic, usually around the end of May/June when we hear someone say “half the year has gone by already” and we get the sinking feeling we haven’t done a single thing to push us out of last year’s funk which we hoped and prayed would be whisked away Dec 31st last. The third panic comes after Halloween, when suddenly the nonsense about candy and Thanksgiving comes at us, wave after wave of items made in China, recipes we will never make and the persistent bombardment of information promising us a fresh glimpse into a new life if we did the one thing they advertise. The fourth and final panic comes just before Christmas and New Years where we are faced with having let 11 months go by and not a single one of our goals even blinked at, much less written, marked, planned, contemplated or even accomplished.
Want to make 2018 different? Want to actually achieve your goal(s)? Here it is. It’s nothing new. In fact, it’s very old. Older than dirt, but it’s mind-blowing if you read it with new eyes. Here we go. Get ready. It goes by fast.
The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new—Socrates
#Goals usually end up in one of two categories: I want to X less and/or Y more. Now, in my daily readings about the RAS. Yes, I read daily about the Reticular Activating System. It’s effing brilliant stuff. In my daily reading about it, I have found the mind does not process negatives. That is, you could say “I want to lose weight” knowing exactly what you said, but all your brain heard was “I want weight.” It doesn’t process the negative word of “lose.” So, the more you say or think you want to “lose weight” the more weight you will have. If you actually want to lose weight, you need to engage your sexy RAS and consider changing your statement to something like: “I want to have a slimmer and healthier body.” There are no negative statements there and the RAS gets turned on, helping your cells process, at the DNA level, your new wants. That’s some next level quantum physics, baby!
Kind of like what Mother Theresa said and I’m paraphrasing: I will never participate in your anti-war rally. But, show me your peace rally and I will lead it.
Ask yourself what is really important and have the courage to build your life, literally positively, around the answer. This is why language is so important. The words we choose end up defining us and our very circumstances. Please choose words which lead you toward the person you are so proud of becoming. I often wonder about the names people chose for themselves and their social media following: so-and-so’s ‘madness’ or ‘addiction’ or ‘wild’ collection of everything gone nuts. Consider, if you participate in these groups or follow these people, what kind of influence those words are having over your very thought process, as you are flashing those words across your field of vision multiple times a day. Sure, it’s all in good fun. And, I want you to get your goals accomplished.
Discipline is sexy.
You are not going to master your life in one day. That’s ok. Master the day. If you aren’t there yet, master the hour.Then just keep doing that every day. Consider giving one positive action a home for the month. By the year’s end, you will have 12 positive actions that you can proudly say you absorbed into your daily living. So, what if instead of thinking about solving your whole life you just think about adding good things? Just let your pile of good things grow.
AH, but how? How do we get from panic in March to resolute in December? Planning. Write down the themes for your months in advance. Color them into your planner. You know the thing you carry around and spends beaucoup bucks on? What if you made every minute of every day of every month count in the theme you selected?
Taking time to plan is an investment in yourself and it doesn’t cost a dime. Oddly, I’ve never had any of my military or law enforcement clients question me on the “master the day” concept. It seems to be ingrained from the get-go. So, when it comes time to write their goals, they’ve already practiced a few weeks with writing things down, even if it’s one or two words. It doesn’t have to look good. But, It has to be written. The RAS only works when you write it down. Don’t even try to type it into your phone. Well, I mean, @CarieHarling and I can type it into our #OmniFocus but that’s because we know what we are doing. If you start typing it out first, we will send you back out the door to re-enter. You’ve come to the exit. This is a perfect example of “Go back and do it again.” Furthermore, when we do type it into our OmniFocus, we are both cognizant of the fact that it will get written in the planner at some point and the digital allows us to keep an ongoing master list of all of our thoughts so we can organize them better to put DOWN ON PAPER. Trust us. We know what we are doing.
So, go for it! Write it all up in your planners. Use the month on two pages to theme it all up before January ever swings by. Gawk at June in January and see what lovely things you will be up to, so when someone asks you, “what are you up to?” You can actually tell them!
What a feat it will be too! To look back in December 2018 and see your accomplishments outlined and detailed in a manual for living your life! One that you created. to go hardcore? Theme every week instead of every month. 52 accomplishments in one year. Then you can proudly ask your friends if your planner makes your RAS look big, knowing the answer is a big, fat, yes!!
Be good to yourselves. Self-care is a learned art, not a luxury.