The fifth (and final) blog seeking to encourage, enthuse, and energize YOU to create your life plan for the new year!
The new year has begun and lies before us, full of potential. How about your life plan? Did you write your goals for the upcoming year? Is it specific, time-bound, and aligned with your values and interests?
If you did not write out your life plan, or if you started and did not finish, I share an important truth, one that has served me well throughout my life: Want power usually trumps will power.
Or, to put it another way, desire often overwhelms discipline.
I’m in favor of will power and discipline. I regard them as good friends and fine allies. Will power and discipline have helped me many times in my life.
I am suggesting you get two incredibly powerful, high-leverage allies on your side: want power and desire. Teach yourself to WANT your goals, teach yourself to WANT to do the things that catapult you toward your goals.
How do you teach yourself to desire something? Same way you learn to want anything. Instead of the desire taking root by chance or from peer group conditioning or being programmed by advertising to consider something desirable, YOU become the programmer. You take over the conditioning, you take control of the sensory inputs.
What you focus on, expands. Thoughts held in mind attract in kind. Look where you want to go.
When you dwell on the benefits of achieving your goals, when you focus your energy there frequently and with enthusiasm, when you think about how neat and cool it would be to be the kind of person who has what it takes to achieve those goals, when you start to think through the process, the steps necessary to get to your goal, the valleys and plains you may have to trod to get to your mountain top, when you center your thoughts on role models, you admire those that have done what you wish to do, you will arouse within yourself an eager want, a burning, powerful desire that will fuel your efforts and turbocharge your motivation.
Congrats! You have just learned how to write your own script, how to practice mood management, how to direct and focus your emotions. Someone once wisely said that the key to success is not so much time management as energy management. I know this to be true; I am in awe of what I accomplish when I manage to be at my peak productivity all my waking hours.
When we talk about vividly visualizing our desired results in emotional detail, about deliberately focusing our thoughts and energies, we are talking about developing mental muscles. We all know that it takes multiple visits to the gym to build physical muscles. So, too, does it take sustained effort to create mental muscles. And we all know when we finally get fit, entropy sets in the minute we walk out the gym door. We must continue to work out to maintain our fitness. It is not “one time and done.” Mental muscles are the same. You must refresh and renew yourself on a regular basis.
You are worth the effort, your potential is awesome, your future is bright!
Start getting those powerful allies, want power and desire power, on your side. Start today by visualizing, by dwelling on the benefits of achieving your goals, and the pride and sense of accomplishment you will feel about molding yourself into the person who can do such wonderful things.
Start small——baby steps are fine——that’s how we ALL started. Create successes, no matter how minor. Celebrate them and build, build, build!