HOW TO HIT YOUR GOALS

Goal smashing unpicked

We've all done that thing.  Set the goals, felt committed, started on the journey to doing the thing ...and then it kind of peeters out, stops happening, and life (or facebook J) gets in the way.

I’m not going into HOW to set goals here, that’s another Blog on What Makes A Great Goal. This is for those of you that set the goals and then give up on them. (IF you even managed to start!)

Lots of things influence our energy around a task.

We all encounter “stress” of various levels in our lives. Its not always possible to remove what’s causing the stress, but it IS possible to change our response to what’s happening.

Insitute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPec) identified 6 areas that can cause a stress reaction in our bodies and therefore drain our energy and leave us feeling like we can’t be ar*ed to do the thing today.

1.  Physical Stress detracts from your energy when you are not ABLE physically to do the thing.. You are overweight, underweight, ill, injured, unfit, sleep deprived or have poor eating habits.

2.  Environmental stress, when the environment prevents you from doing the thing in the optimal way. (I’m writing this in a VERY rainy winter and I know many riders have lost the motivation to do the thing with their horse due to No school, a flooded school, un-rideable bridleways and relentless rain.

3.  Spiritual Stress – detract from your energy if the thing comes into conflict with your values, beliefs, purpose or connection.

4.  Mental Stress, - detracts from your energy when you stretch yourself too thin, you’re distracted, when you try to multi-task or the thing is too boring or too challenging.

5.  Emotional Stress, detracts from your energy when you feel your needs, wants or expectations are not being met, or you encounter a bump that you don’t know how to navigate or how to effectively deal with emotions that come up.

6.  Social Stress detracts from your energy when you don’t have the right people around you. Or you love working alone but are surrounded by people (and vice versa). Or people that criticise you, or put you down surround you.

In order to set yourself up for success it’s worth checking in on these areas that can cause “stress” and see what you can put in place to reduce the drain.  For example, if Social is draining you because you like to ride with other people but you keep your horse at home, think about ways to spend time with others. (clinics, organising a regular ride out with friends and so on)

Most people just refer to “Motivation” however. (Or more importantly the lack of!)

Motivation is not your friend, lets just get that out there now.  It rarely shows up when you need it to, its unreliable at best and does NOT have your back.

The biggest influence on motivation in my experience is your THOUGHTS.

Yep, really. The thoughts you have affect your results. Period.

So if you whisper to yourself “you’re amazing and can TOTALLY do this” I’m telling you your results will be very different to thoughts of “You have no hope of EVER achieving this, you’re rubbish so don’t even bother.”

When you think about the Goal, if you think “mmm, yes one day that would be nice” vs “Yes lets make that happen” again the results will be different.

If you think “I need this to work first time” and it doesn’t, guess what happens to your motivation compared to thinking  “there will be set backs but I know I’ll figure them out”

Its not rocket science but learning how to manage and challenge your thoughts will DRASTICALLY affect how likely you are to achieve your thing.

Because our thoughts create our emotions which influence our behaviour which impacts our results. (you might want to read that again!)

So in order to achieve your goals, set yourself up for success, by checking in on the 6 influencers. Then go to work on your mind – Big time!

For help with retraining your mind, Book a free call