Dangerous to your true goals, your true ambitions … because the new year doesn’t mean anything at all. You’re still carrying the same you from this year into next year.  You’re still carrying the same habits and hangups that held you back over the last 12 months into the next twelve months.

Hoping the new year will be a magical fresh start is well … naive.  Because the shift from December 31st to January 1st is no different than June 17th to the 18th.  There’s no magic.  There’s no “new.”  There’s the same you tomorrow as is present today.  Even if you do get a temporary psychological boost from a “clean slate” attitude, it’s temporary.  Your old habits will take over unless you fight like hell to change how you respond to your daily patterns.

In other words, no one is coming to your rescue, and nothing will change until you do.

There’s no “new year” that matters – the only thing that will make a difference in your life is new actions.  New mantras you repeat to yourself until you take them seriously.  New patterns you establish through hard work and the pain of readjustment.  New strengths you develop by becoming aware of how you let others program your behavior every day.

If you want to have a hell of a year, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot of work.

A hell of a lot of work.  On the inside.

I’m not saying this to discourage you.  I’m telling you this so you’ll go into the new year with both eyes open and an awareness of what it will take to get what you want.

If you’re serious about doing things differently in the new year, start doing them differently today, before the new year starts.  Get a head start.  Prove you’re serious.

A goal is nice.  But things won’t happen just because you want them to.  You’ve got to prepare yourself for the discomfort of changing your patterns and tell yourself that’s a price you’ll be thrilled to pay.

Pain is temporary.  Pride is forever.  Make yourself proud this new year.

That is all,

Dave

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.

Old And Busted: Thinking “Of” Your Goals

If you spend too much time thinking about where you want to be, you open yourself up to overwhelm and the dreaded “paralysis by analysis.” Why? Because you’re essentially focusing on one thought: “I’m not there yet.” That’s a pretty draining thought, and it hampers your ability to take action.

Now, keep in mind I’m not saying you shouldn’t do any thinking on your goals – you need to. Planning activities, brainstorming, strategizing, that’s all good (and finite) work. What I’m talking about is the constant wheel-spinning “When I reach X, I’ll be happy,” or “When I finally have Y, everything will be easier,” kind of thinking. That gets you nowhere. It certainly got me nowhere when I was treading water, trying to start a coaching business, but stressing about how I was going to make a name for myself.

In fact, over-thinking and worrying about your goals gets you worse than nowhere. It causes you to backslide. You begin to worry how you’re going to manage everything. You begin to second-guess strategies to the point of not taking enough action. You focus on small-time worries rather than big picture activities. You let your business run you, instead of running your business. And ultimately, you take less action – and weaker action – than you really need to.

Sound familiar? Everyone on this earth goes through these feelings sometimes, to some degree, as they head towards their goals. But they don’t have to.

The New Hotness: Thinking “From” Your Goals

If you want to really boost the level of motivation and satisfaction you get out of taking massive action to make your goals happen, think from your goals, not about your goals. Imagine that the goal you’re after is inevitable, that you’re going to have it eventually no matter what. In fact, imagine that you have it right now. Identify with it. Act from it.

Here are some examples:

• If you’re telling yourself you’ll save money “one day” when you have more, start saving now – even if it’s $1 a week. Instead of saying you’ll be a saver someday, do it now, and you’ll have ten times the motivation to take actions that will let you put more money away every week.
• Conversely, if you want to pay off debt faster, don’t wait until you have more money. Pay $1 more per payment this month. See yourself as being a debt destroyer now, and you’ll take more action to accelerate the pace.
• If you’re a blogger, don’t tell yourself you’ll write more when you have a larger audience. Imagine you have that larger audience now and act the way you would if you had 1,000 people a day reading your site. You likely soon will.
• If you want to lose weight, don’t tell yourself that you need to lose 30 pounds. Ram it into your head that deep inside, you are the kind of person who is supposed to be 30 pounds lighter. Identify with that, and you’ll boost your motivation now to do the things that will help you lose weight.
• If you are building a business and are just starting out, imagine yourself as an authority in the field, and immerse your thinking in the mindset that you’d have if you were already there. Take action now like you’d take it then.

This isn’t positive thinking or some law of attraction nonsense. This is about making a shift in psychology where you view yourself as already having the result, and so you act according to it. It’s the same technique Olympic athletes use when they visualize winning. Once they make that picture in their minds of winning the event, and they make it vivid enough, everything they do supports making that happen. They don’t say “I want to win …” and just hope it goes well. They say,“I am a winner,” and their body and mind work together to match their results with their perception.

The Psychology Of Certainty: Why This Trick Works

There is an enormous psychological difference between how our brains process hope and certainty. Hope allows us to feel the euphoric sensations that come with what might be, but it also triggers a lot of stress around what might happen if we fail. We all know this feeling. Think of how you feel when you “hope” you’ll get a raise. When you “hope” the customer will commit to you. When you “hope” something will go your way.

There’s joy, to be sure, but there’s stress as well. Should you go all out? What if it doesn’t pay off? What if despite your best efforts, you fail, or the customer decides to take her business elsewhere, or nobody responds to your ads … what will you do? These kinds of questions can paralyze you.

On the other hand, acting from a position of certainty gives you great motivation. If you know for certain that doing X, Y, and Z will 100% guarantee you a raise, damned right you’ll do it with enthusiasm. If you know for certain that by doing A, B, and C, the customer will be yours, you’ll do it. If you know for certain that investing in Stock XYZ will give you a 100% rate of return, you’ll do whatever it takes to get all the money possible to invest in it.

Certainty drives the willingness to take action, in spite of the work involved. Knowing that a payoff exists is the motivator that causes you to take massive action and keep a productive attitude despite all the challenges you face. Being certain means making that reality part of your identity, because you act according to what you believe about yourself.

Your Identity Is Your Mental Thermostat

Years ago, when I was trying to get from 215 tubby pounds to my muscular college weight of 185, I couldn’t get motivated because I just didn’t believe I could do it. I believed I was destined to be 215 pounds forever. I just couldn’t see myself ever breaking past 200. But a runner friend helped me focus on identifying with being 185 pounds, by forcing me to remind myself that I was an in-shape person, deep down … I’d just gotten off track.

Once I saw myself as 185, it became a lot easier to start running and lose weight. I’d look at the trail ahead of me and while I knew it would be exhausting, I knew it would get easier every time. It was just a matter of showing up, dealing with the work, and walking out lighter. I started getting irritated with the things that were keeping me overweight, and I almost subconsciously began to change my behaviors to line up with the 185 person I knew I was supposed to be. I had sealed my identity – I had succeeded in thinking from my goal, so I was acting in accordance with it almost naturally.

Your identity is like a thermostat – you’ll take whatever action you need to in order to get to where you think you should be. But most people don’t consciously set that thermostat – they just let it happen. So while they hope they’ll make more money, they have this inner sense that they won’t rise above their income level. Or they hope the next diet will work, but they see themselves as fat. Or they hope their blog will grow, but they see themselves as a small-time player.

Wherever you’re doing this in your own life, please realize that the answer doesn’t start with working harder. It starts with adjusting that thermostat, consciously changing what I call your success identity, and acting from that, rather than trying to get to that. That one distinction changes your life forever.

How To Tap Into This Certainty Today

You can start tasting the fruits of this strategy today – you simply don’t have to wait until later. All you have to do is think of where you want to be in your business, when you’re finally “there.” What does success mean to you? How will you feel? What kinds of activities will you be doing on a day to day basis? Who will you be interacting with? What standards will you be living by? How will you treat other people? How will you treat yourself? What will be making you feel fulfilled?

Before you do anything else today, stop and think about this. Where are you letting stress and overwhelm hold you back from taking action because you feel you’ll fail, or you feel you’re not good enough? Invest what could be the most valuable few minutes of your life and start putting yourself in a state of certainty that you will achieve it, because that’s who you are.

Share Your Certainty With Us

I encourage you to take a moment and post your new certainty – and how it will affect your actions moving forward – in the comments below. Writing things out can be one more step in making things real to you, so do it now. And if you found this post helpful, subscribe to this blog for more life-rocking tips in the future. I’ll see you in the comments!

You know what to do,

Dave

The #1 Reason Why You Don’t Achieve A Goal You’ve Set
Obstacles, setbacks and unexpected circumstances can certainly slow you down when it comes to reaching your goals, but ultimately failure to reach a goal comes down to one deadly decision:

Goals die when you don’t re-commit to them every single day.

In other words, if you aren’t looking at your goals every day, reminding yourself why they are important and focusing on what you’re going to do to take action on, nothing is ever going to happen to get you even remotely close to achieving them. Ever. Period.

It’s harsh but true. Your goals are your compass. Pilots don’t take off, aim for their destination, and hope to get there. They constantly look at that compass to see if they’ve gotten off course, and they make the necessary corrections. The longer they go without checking that compass, the farther off course they get.

How Often Do You Recommit To Your Goals?
If you’ve set a goal for this year, here’s what’s going to happen:

1. You’ll say “Yay, goals!” and take some action to achieve them.
2. Life will get in the way.
3. Life will still get in the way.
4. “Oh ****, life’s still getting in the ****ing way!”
5. ???

Guess what #5 is? It’s up to you. If you’re not recommitting to your goals every day, by the time you get to #5 you’ll be saying, “Well, you know, I’ve been busy … you understand, right? I can only do so much …” And you’ve gotten nowhere.

But if you are recommitting to your goals every day, when #2 happens (yeah, go ahead and laugh), you’ll be saying “I’m going to take care of this urgency & get back to goal-stompin’ action.”

When #3 happens, you’re going to be saying “**** that, I’ll handle that emergency and and work a little later tonight to stay on track.”

When #4 happens, you’ll say “Nice try, life, but I’m still fighting. No excuses coming from me … I may be running behind schedule, but I’m damned sure I’ll keep moving forward.”

Then when you get to #5, you’ll be saying two words: “Hell, Yeah.” (Note: Your two words may vary.)

For All You Skimmers, Here’s The Summary
Get your specific goals on papers/PDA/textfile/whatever and review those bad boys every. single. day. Without fail. And without fail, you’ll move a lot closer to your goals, a lot faster than you think. And that, my friend, is serious leverage.

I was listening to an audio program today and the narrator told a story of Jack Canfield (of Chicken Soup For The Soul fame) being asked how he had accomplished so much. His response was to pull a 3 by 5 index card out of his pocket. His top 5 goals were on it, and he reviewed them every day. And you know how much action he took as a result.

How Do You Keep Your Goals In Front Of You?
How do you (or will you) make it drop-dead simple to keep your goals in front of you every day? Let us know (and share any tips you have) in the comments below. And when you’re done there, subscribe to this blog to get more kick-in-the-a$$ tips all through the year.