5 Steps for Achieving your Goals — Follow Your Own Rhythm

STEP 2: Attach meaning and a feeling

Once you’ve identified your top 3-5 goals, the way to actually make them stick is to attach meaning to each goal, and identify how you’re going to feel once you’ve achieved the goal. 

So basically, for each goal that you have, ask yourself “why is achieving this goal important to me? What is it going to do for me? How is it going to change my life? What will achieving this goal allow me to do in life?”  

Make sure that your reasons are strong, powerful, meaningful, and internally satisfying, not superficial and externally based.  The reason for this is because when you get weak and feel like giving in or giving up, if your reasons for this goal are inherently driven, deep and meaningful, you will be much more likely to keep going.  If you’re driven by something more shallow, than it will be easy to give up when things get hard. 

In addition, you have to attach a feeling to this goal.  Our subconscious mind (the part of your brain that is going to help carry out this goal) is driven by emotion and feeling, not logic and rational thinking, therefore the goal has to have a positive feeling attached to it so that you will be more motivated to achieve it. 

So you need to ask yourself “how is achieving this goal going to make me feel? How will I feel once I become ___? How will I feel once I have ___? Since I will be able to finally do ___, how will that make me feel?” 

For example, if your goal is to lose weight, and one of your main reasons for doing so is so that you can have more energy to play and engage with your kids (which is already a really meaningful reason), give your WHY a little more umph by identifying HOW it’s going to make you FEEL once you’re able to play with your kids.  It’s probably going to provide a sense of fulfillment and joy, make you feel good because your kids are happy, and make you feel like you’re actively present in your kids’ lives which makes you feel proud and content.   

Once you’ve identified the feeling that achieving this goal is going to create within you, it’s important to keep this feeling ALIVE.  You need to live and breathe this feeling. You need to be able to picture yourself being thin and healthy and playing with your kids and FEEL the feelings of happiness and fulfillment.  

You need to check in with yourself every day, remind yourself of why you’re doing this, imagine yourself already there, and tap into those positive feelings associated with your reasons. If you do this each day, achieving your goals will be so much more effortless, easy and enjoyable.

STEP 3: Believe

As mentioned earlier, having the right mindset and belief system is crucial for achieving your goals.  The right mindset starts with believing in yourself, believing in the process, believing that you deserve it, believing that you’re capable, and believing that it CAN and WILL happen. If you don’t believe in any of this, then it simply won’t happen.  Your outer world will always reflect your inner beliefs.  

So if you tend to experience self-doubt and lack of motivation 2 weeks into a new goal, then that’s a good sign that you have to change up your belief system by shifting the thoughts you regularly think. 

When you allow self-sabotaging thoughts such as “I’m not good enough, I can’t do this, I don’t want this, it’s too hard, I don’t deserve this, who am I to do this, people will judge me, I’m going to fail, I’m too weak, I’m too stupid, it’s too scary, I don’t have enough skills” overpower your desire for achieving your goals, your outer reality will start to reflect these negative beliefs. 

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where because you think you are going to fail, you will become clumsy, disorganized, and end up making mistakes that set you up for failure.

Your positive thoughts about yourself have to be stronger and more frequent than the negative ones, and you can do this by telling yourself positive messages on a regular basis.

Replace every single “I can’t” statement with “I can,” and reframe every negative and demotivating belief with a more empowering one. And then, whenever these negative beliefs creep up, just make sure you don’t give them your energy and attention, and immediately replace it with it’s empowering opposite.