Stay Focused

When you start to make changes to your life, for the first few days you will be excited and ready to take on the world. However, very soon reality takes over and your mind will try to pull you back to your old ways.

This self sabotage happens to most people unless they recognise that it's likely to happen.

The secret is to stay focussed. Remember why you want to change, remember what you're trying to achieve. This is why goal setting its so important.

Without clearly defined goals, it will be easy to become disillusioned, demotivated and to top making the changes completely.

Make it a habit

Once you manage to do something for long enough, it becomes a habit. And once you have learned a new habit, you're well on the way to achieving your aim. remember though, keep an eye on this habit, you may need to make changes to ensure that you're still on target.

That reminds me of the story of an airline pilot that announced to his passengers "ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is we have lost our navigation equipment, The good news is we have a strong tail wind so wherever we end up we'll probably do it in record time"

Something usually becomes a habit after doing it frequently over a period of about 6 weeks, so if you can keep up an activity for that long, you'll be well on the way. The challenge is however when something interrupts your habit pattern, sickness or a holiday for example. That's when it's important to have a clearly defined goal and reason for that goal, as Anthony Robins says "you need to have a big enough 'Why'". Make sure that you understand and internalise the reason that you want to achieve something. It might be that you want to loose weight, or that you want a new car. In fact is is neither of these things that you really want, it's the feeling associated with that achievement.

You might want a new car so that you can show off, or so that you can drive in the country with the windows down feeling the rush of wind in your hair.

You might want to loose weight, so that you can find the idea partner and experience love. You might want to loose weight so that you can buy that suit that you've always wanted. My point is that there would be no point in losing weight if it didn't give you a great feeling.

So it's the feeling associated with the goal. not the goal itself that you should focus on.