How To be Damned Serious About Your New Year’s Goals

You’ll undoubtedly read far too many blog posts telling you how to set goals for the new year.  I will not try to repeat anything that is covered there.

I am simply typing this (in between New Years’ Eve beers) to remind you of the two critical things that need to be present for you to reach your 2009 goals.  You can set goals any damned way you want, but you need to, need to, need to do these two things if you want to make serious headway, unlike all those other years where you go “Oh crap, I didn’t get it done.  Again.” (self, I’m talking to you about goals 1 through 3).

Those two things?  Simple.

• Write your goals down in detail (that means monthly or quarterly milestones) and look at them every single day.

• Take 10 minutes each day and journal your progress on those goals.  Every day.

Now, you won’t work on every goal every day.  But by checking in every single freakin’ day, you will remind yourself of what’s important to you and fire off those “get to it” alarms if you haven’t taken action for a few days.

Daily Check In = Staying Accountable

The reason you didn’t hit some of your goals this year is - more than likely - because you didn’t check in daily.  Think back on the year and ask yourself how things would have been different if you did the two things I mentioned.

You know they would be different.  I know they would be different.  I flubbed the tracking part for my business goals until after the mid-year mark, and my business made 70% of it’s money in the last 3 months of the year.  No coincidence.

Stupid mistake for this year - one I won’t repeat this coming year.

Daily Check In = Satisfying Sense of Balance

Checking in daily keeps you focused on maintaining a balance of action across all your goals.  This means you’ll be less stressed as you feel you’re not too “goal-heavy” in any one direction.

That’s all the advice I have for you on this December 31st.

Daily check-in.  Secret to success.

The end.

Happy new year.

The Survivor Mindset: How Role Models Create Opportunities

In the last post we were talking about the the survivor mindset and the value of viewing life as a game you could play to win.  For those just joining us, the “survivor mindset” is simply a term I was using to describe the unique psychology that allows people to go through brutally hellish circumstances, come out okay on the other side, and begin building a new set of circumstances that offer them a better shot at an enjoyable life.

Today we’re going to talk about choosing the right role models - basically the people you are going to want “on your team” to help you move past the circumstances you’re in and start moving towards more favorable circumstances that will get you closer to your goals.  This is a critical component of surviving painful times, because you’re not simply judged by the company you keep - you become the company you keep.

You Live According To The Expectations Of Your Peer Group

At some basic, psychological level, we all tend to gravitate towards the expectations of our peer group, because we want to be accepted by them.  We change our behaviors, our outlook on life, and our values in order to fit in with the people we like and the people we want to be like.  Even if we describe ourselves a “leaders” or “loose cannons,” there are still people we want to give us approval, and we take some level of action to live in that zone that we know will give us that approval.

When I say that, I’m not saying that we’re weak sheep (although there will always be people who follow their crowd blindly, just to be accepted).  Sometimes we alter who we are to fit our peer group for good reason - because we are inspired by our peers, and truly desire to become more like them. We hang out with them knowing that they will pull us in the direction that we want to go.  This is a powerful psychology that I discussed before in my post about choosing to associate with magnetic people who will “pull” you towards your desired goals.

Since we are so heavily influenced by people we like and people we want to like us, survivors use this to their advantage by seeking out and finding people who are good at surviving.

Survivor Mindset #2 - Choose Role Models Who Can Teach You To Cope And Thrive

There’s a reason why programs like Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous can be so successful for people who are struggling to change a destructive habit: When you surround yourself with people who are experiencing success overcoming their challenges, it reinforces the idea that surviving - and thriving - is a possibility for you as well.  You identify with these people because of your shared problem, but you also begin to identify with a shared sense of strength as well.

On the other hand, this can work in the negative direction.  Surround yourself with people who have weak coping abilities or an overly negative outlook on life and you’ll feel your hope-o-meter moving towards zero.  This is a dangerous place to be.  Survivors seek out other survivors and make them role models - and whether they associate with them one-on-one or just witness their actions, they use that as fuel to keep going and to not give up.  If you’re struggling with something, look at your peers - do they inspire you to rise above your challenges, or do they reaffirm the idea that “things are never going to get better?”

I’m not telling you to ditch your friends.  Just become more aware of how they are affecting you (both positively and negatively).  The more you associate with people who choose to deal with adversity in a positive way, the more those role models will help you do the same.

Survivors Band Together And Tend To Reward Each Other

Hang out with a core group of survivors and you’ll build a solid support structure that will not only help you cope with life, but also can help you start building more favorable circumstances.  Fellow survivors who are farther along the process than you are tend to look back at people who are walking the path, as they did, and will open doors for them. Because they identify with your struggle, they feel a desire to help.

I experienced this constantly as a young teenager, struggling to get myself in a position where I could get into college, since my funds were extremely limited.  Fortunately, I had focused on getting to know successful adults who were survivors - who had struggled through poverty and adversity during their childhood - and as we “clicked,” they helped me find opportunities for scholarships.

Survivors build networks of people they respect, and focus on providing value to those people - whether it’s a tangible value, such as doing something to help those people, or an intangible act such as simply looking up to them and being a friend. Those networks can open up opportunities for you that serve both parties - you, because you have had your circumstances shifted to more favorable ones, and for the other person, who can enjoy the satisfaction of helping someone whose need they can relate to (which is often a coping mechanism in itself).

I know this may sound very analytical, but it’s the approach I had to take at an early age to connect with people who would be able to help me get out dangerous situations.  Find people who have coping strategies worth looking up to, provide value to them as you emulate their outlook on life, and some amazing things happen.

(looks at watch) Looks like I’m out of time for today.  Next post will continue with another aspect of the survivor mindset, where I’ll talk about coping by helping other people.  I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to this blog and better yet, linking to or Stumbling this post.

See you next post,

Dave

The Survivor Mindset, Or How To Create More Favorable Circumstances

I had a conversation with someone this weekend who had a “dangerous childhood” similar to mine.  The events themselves were wildly different, but the same themes emerged - devastating family trauma at an early age, high levels of personal danger, and a lack of family role models who could steer us on a course where we could “turn out okay.”

Yet in spite of that, we both turned out okay.  Naturally, we have the same basketcase of issues that any other person has (we’re just as screwed up as the rest of humanity), but we didn’t break when all this bad stuff was going down.  We didn’t fold.  We didn’t bow out.  We didn’t implode.  We didn’t turn to pills, or the bottle, or to the barrel of a gun to take away the pain.  Instead, we turned our focus outward to create a life of challenge, a life of service (as best we can), and hopefully, a life that would inspire other people to see hope when facing their own darkest hours.

Again, we have our issues, and we have the same number of “days that suck” as anyone else, but we survived - and more than that, we’re thriving, despite all our baggage and hangups.

How Do Some People Survive Brutal Circumstances Without Imploding?

But I got to thinking … how the hell do some of us pull that off, when other people throw in the towel and say “screw it?”  I mean, it’s not because we’re exceptional people who have some coping gene.  So I spent some time thinking about the things I’ve seen in myself and in other people who escape some level of personal hell with their souls intact, and I’m going to share my mental notes about what kind of mindsets give “survivors” the psychological advantages they need to make it through to the other side.

Survivor Mindset #1 - Believe That The Game Can Be Won.

I’m not saying “life is a game” (that would be kind of flippant), but there are a lot of things about life that are like a game.  There are some general rules.  It pays to be on the right team - or to start your own one.  There are ways to get bonuses, upgrades, and lucky breaks … and most of all, the better you understand the rules, the more you can stack the deck in your favor.

If I haven’t killed you with bad metaphor overdose yet, you’ll see my point: People who treat life as a game discover they have the option to play to win rather than just take the cards that life hands them. While some things happen as a result of random chance, there’s a lot that can be done to increase the odds that favorable things will come their way.  Samuel Goldwyn once said “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” and that’s what playing to win is all about.

Horrible things can happen to people, and after the dust settles it may seem like they have lost all of their resources, all of their options, and all of their opportunities.  But survivors see it differently.  If they have “nothing,” they can find a way to gradually build up from that position rather than calling it quits.

Survivors Look For Patterns They Can Use To Their Advantage

Survivors look for patterns, for processes, for some kind of formula that explains how life works so that they can decide on a strategy to improve their position.  One of the most powerful patterns is what some people call “The Law of Reciprocity,” or basically “what goes around comes around.”

When I was 9, and my family basically imploded, reciprocity was a pattern I discovered and used to start stacking the deck in my favor.  I was low on resources, so I focused on helping people in every way that I could, without asking for anything in return.  Over the next ten years, this strategy created an enormous reservoir of reciprocity in my life, which gave me countless opportunities to get things that I needed when I needed them.  From high school teachers lending me their cars to anonymous donors helping me pay for college, what “went around” certainly came back around.

For me, this was simply the way I chose to view life.  I believed that “givers get,” and that if I gave enough, things would ultimately work out for me.  I used giving and contributing as my way to stack the deck in my favor so that I could survive.  Other people look for patterns that exist in areas of competition, or achievement, or talent … these patterns are everywhere.

Begin Creating Your Circumstances By Seeing Life As A Game

If you’re having trouble surviving the challenges of life, and you feel like you have nowhere to go, maybe you should try thinking in “game” terms.  There are more options to increase your ability to influence the game than you realize.  In chess, different pieces have different advantages and disadvantages - it’s the same way with people, and it’s the same way with yourself.

When you feel helpless, you’re like a pawn - unable to do anything but move forward, capturing only the opportunities that come by coincidence.  But as you look for the patterns that make up human psychology and turn your focus to understanding the rules of life, you open yourself up to different roles.  Suddenly, you may find yourself like the bishops, able to move diagonally at will and to move farther in those directions.  Other times you may pick up a knight-like ability, and find yourself looking at obstacles that would have stopped you as a pawn and jumping over them entirely.

The bottom line, it all begins with believing there is a way for you to have more, and that you can have more by using strategies that still allow you to respect yourself in the morning.  Survivors realize that the game is all about increasing your power - not your power over other people, but instead your power to understand the big picture and the opportunities that exist when you can start thinking a few moves ahead.

(looks at watch) Looks like I’m out of time for today.  Next post will continue with another aspect of the survivor mindset, where I’ll talk about choosing the right role models.  I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to this blog and better yet, linking to or Stumbling this post.

See you next post,

Dave