A dear friend of mine posted this comment on my Facebook in response to the last blog post. Let me first say that I find this friend more valuable than I can express. In this journey and especially when I write, I need this kind of stuff. Sounded like a breeze to incorporate all that shit didn’t it? Well, it wasn’t – {{laughing}}. Let’s talk about the “goal” journey because what I need to make clear is that it was a 5-year process.
2012. I bought my first goal book from Amazon – it was called “My Shining Year” (If you guys out there want one less frilly I can recommend a different one that’s a little more bad-assy). I filled the whole thing out and tossed it into a book bin in my living room only to discover it that winter. I thought it was fun, and even though I had accomplished nothing in it, I figured I would give it another try.
2013. Same thing as before; I filled the book out with gusto, but it found a place in that dusty corner like the first year. I did have one small win because one of my goals was to incorporate a daily gratitude practice. I just think of ten things I’m grateful for, say them out loud, and them send it out to the universe. By the end of 2013, I accomplished no large goals, but I was pretty solid on the routine of doing daily grateful.
2014. I made a valiant effort to look at the book more often throughout the year when I realized that tossing it into the corner wasn’t really working that well. I put events on my google calendar to remind me quarterly to set time for a goal book review and also incorporated “Ritual Days.” These are those specific things that you do once a week. My favorite day was “Adventure Saturdays.” This was also the first year I started to incorporate daily meditation. It didn’t work that well in the beginning because I originally had a daily goal of 20 minutes. By minute 10 (or maybe sooner) I was asleep in my chair. I would go really good for 5-10 days and then blow it and miss nine days. I wasn’t very consistent with it, but I did try. I discovered by year-end even the quarterly check-ins weren’t working out that well. I would look at it and constantly tell myself, “shit, I was going to do that this quarter wasn’t I”?
2015. I was a bit frustrated. Other than writing my goals down, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do. I didn’t know how to do it. I was getting really good at incorporating the daily habits, but I was not moving any mountains. By the end of this year, I got frustrated and didn’t end up buying another book for awhile. 2016 was the year that I convinced myself that having surgery was my only way out and I was convinced the goal setting shit didn’t work. I didn’t buy a book in 2016. I thought I had given up on these dumb goal books.
2017. It’s hard to describe, I call it divine intervention but something just clicked when I finally decided to buckle down and get my shit together. This is a conscious decision in case any of you are wondering. I knew what I needed to do because I had failed so many times in previous years that simple goal setting wasn’t working. Getting to this point is trial and error. I knew that for me to accomplish the big goals, I would have to build a plan for them. I purchased ANOTHER goal book that first week in January and tried again. This time was a bit different. I took my mountain goals and broke them down into steps. I wrote down everything I would need to do on a daily and monthly basis for them to work and it required “daily habits.” The key is to work them in one at a time.
By the end of January, I had proper eating on lock, and I was drinking my water. Anything more than that would have been too much. I was pretty good about my one day a week “Ritual Days” as well.
I didn’t incorporate exercise until March. The first quarter was only dedicated to moving around my house better and trying to get to 2500 steps a day. Seems like a tiny number but this was HUGE for me. By March I started getting pretty diligent about wearing my Fitbit, tracking my daily activity, and getting my daily step goal met. I was also getting my water consumption on lock.
By March we were incorporating exercise, but it started with one day a week. ONE. I wouldn’t be at the gym 4-5 days a week for several months. I am hoping that you’re seeing a pattern here because it will help you. If you try to tackle too many things at one time, it won’t work – you’ll get overwhelmed, and you’ll ditch. Once you have a habit formed, you can start working on another one and so on.
By the end of the year, I was working out 4-5 days a week, tracking all activities, drinking my water, eating right, doing daily meditations, daily devotional, setting my MIT’s, doing daily cleans, writing thank you cards, setting reminders and quite a few other things. It took a total of 5 years to get here. I had to work in one thing at a time.
Are you going to get frustrated? Heck yes. I failed many times because I would try to bite off more than I was capable of handling at one time. Changing your life and setting a bunch of goals might take time. Look at me, it took me 5 years to get it right and even then, it’s not perfect. It changes all the time. You’re going to have days you slip off track. You will have items you don’t check off because you run out of time. But every single day you need to wake up and try again it’s that simple. If you fall 100 times, you get back up, and you KEEP getting back up until you get where you’re going. Look at me, I’m a work in progress. I have to fine tune and change my stuff all the time to keep it manageable and motivating for ME. Along the way, you will discover the magic water bottles or APPS that keep you on target. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you keep moving forward.
This last part here is when I’m just going to get brutally honest. Either you want it, or you don’t. It’s hard ass work. It’s f**ing hard, and you may have feelings of wanting to burn your goal books or just saying screw it all the time. If you half-ass anything, you will get half ass results. Whatever you say to yourself is what will be. If you say you “can’t” do something, then it will become your truth.
If anyone wants to know how to start? Just start SOMETHING. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Once you have that ONE thing on lock, bring in another one. Once you have TWO things on lock, bring in a third. Keep going until you have developed that habits you need to climb YOUR mountain, whatever that looks like. My favorite excuse is “Athena, I don’t have time for that.” Bottom line, you have time for whatever it is that you make a priority. You want a place to start? Get real; with YOU. Stop believing your own horseshit.
If you fall…….. get back up again, dust your ass back off and keep moving.
Lovingly,
Bean
What habits did you incorporate for 2018?
*smile*. 2018 we took it high-tech and we have a dashboard (Goals On Track). You build out the goals step by step. This year my weight loss plan has 30 different action items. Depends on how much you want to break things down. The smaller you break things down, the more manageable it becomes. Tackling 2.75 pounds for me at a time sounds a hell of a lot better than 10 or 30. Every 2.75 pounds I get to check things off. WIN! Small wins…. keep you going.
There have been a few others. I go to bed earlier… because I have to wake up earlier to make space for those priority things.