We are just about half way through January. How are you doing? Did you set goals for yourself? Have you done any work on them? Made any progress? Are you where you wanted to be at this point?
If you said yes then Congratulations! Keep doing whatever it
is you are doing because it’s working for you. Seriously, you are doing great. Even
baby steps, in the right direction, are better than staying still.
Two weeks into the New Year is when the bulk of resolution
makers lose their oomph. Ask any of the regulars at the local gym and they will
tell you that this is the time of year when they get their gym back.
A handful of those New Year gym members become regulars. Those people broke the code. If they are reading this they answered Yes up there in the first paragraph. They have a strong why, they found their discipline, and they put their inner petulant child in a corner somewhere while they got on with the business of effecting change.
When you want to make a real change in your life the first thing that has to change is your thinking. Not just your thinking about the thing you want to change, but your thinking about yourself. Who you are is a product of your thinking.
Always.
To be a different version of yourself requires you to think
of yourself differently. Thinking of yourself as an overweight couch potato
will keep you an overweight couch potato. To see the possibility of a lean,
strong, fit you and to think of yourself as that lean, strong, fit person currently
inside a chubby body is the way to move toward that reality. To remind yourself
you are broke, in debt, and underemployed, is to keep yourself there. To see the
possibility of yourself working the job you desire, making the money you want,
and being debt free, and to understand you are that person, currently working
through some hard stuff, is how you move toward that reality.
Two weeks is about all you can get out of sheer willpower. If nothing develops to bolster it, when your willpower falters you will fail. If your New Year’s goals are flagging perhaps what is missing is a shift in thinking about yourself and your life’s possibilities. Who is it that you want to be? Do you have a clear image of her in your mind? You need to know her well enough that you can judge your behavior by her standards. That’s how you move from who you are to who you want to be. You follow her lead. What would she do right now to get back on track? Do that.
