Many of us have put together a list of resolutions or goals for this new and great year which is full of opportunity and promise. Some of you may have just one big goal or promise made to yourself. Some may have a long long list, in fact a large number of us have lists that are too long to be realistic and the overwhelm leaves us paralysed when we think of all that responsibility. So before you get to the point where you abandon your hopes of achievement, here are a few steps you can take to get those goals into perspective and ensure they are completed. Your most powerful resource in this situation is your unconscious mind. When you engage your unconscious mind you are more likely to overcome the challenge you are presented with. These steps will help you to create motivation around your goals and objectives. The motivation will be your own personal reasons for achieving these goals and that is very powerful when you get fed up or tired of the challenges your own promises and goals keep throwing at you.
First step, find a quiet place for ten minutes or so. That really is all the time you need to invest here.
Close your eyes, consider one goal at a time, take yourself to the day when you have achieved your goal, it is complete.
- Can you see yourself?
- How do you feel?
- Nothing has stopped you; you have succeeded.
- You have achieved your goal.
- Hold that picture in your mind.
- What is the date?
Write down the answers to these questions.
CONSIDER and answer these questions, they will help you know what your life looks like because you have achieved your goal.
- What is different about my life?
- What will this goal give me?
- How will my life be better because of this goal?
- How do I look?
- What difference is there in how I feel?
- What sounds are around me now I have achieved my goal.
- How do I feel now I have what I want?
From your answers and thoughts write out a statement that describes what your life looks like having achieved your goal. This is now your Affirmative Statement.
Some of you who are visual may be happier drawing a picture that represents this positive statement.
So now you have the picture of success in words or visual format. Keep this statement in a place where you can access it often. You may want to turn it into your screen saver. You could pick one key word from your statement and write it out on a sheet and put it up on your office notice board beside your work station. Do whatever it takes to have it accessible.
Accessing your own Motivation
You will have already given thought to the steps involved in achieving this Resolution, Promise, Goal, Objective. Keeping the commitment to doing each step will be the challenge and I am guessing that is where many are struggling right now.
You have created a very personal picture statement.
Reading it often will affirm, in your unconscious mind, your own personal belief in your ability to achieve it and make it real.
This statement will remind you of why you are working towards your Resolution or Goal.
It will help you stay focussed.
Read this statement and ask yourself if the things you are spending time on actually serve your purpose. Will they take you closer to achieving your goal? This will help create focus on the areas of priority in your life.
If what you are doing is not going to take you closer to achieving your goal, change what you are doing.
When you are struggling to stick to your plan, read over your statement. This will remind you of all the reasons why you are trying so hard and struggling to stick to your plans. It will put focus back into you daily activities.
When things are really bad and you think you might give up, it’s always easier to give up than to keep moving forward. Read this statement again, or move your picture to a new more prominent location.
Go to a quiet place, where you will not be interrupted. Quietly read your statement and feel again all the emotions which the success will promise you. Really experience the promise this statement holds for you at a very personal deep level.
This is how to engage your unconscious mind to help you remember your innermost motivation for the journey. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again! Good Luck
It is amazing how powerful our belief in ourselves can be. It is also surprising how often we don’t realise that many of our greatest difficulties come from our lack of belief in ourselves. This can be around our ability to get ahead and perhaps apply for a particular job, or go for the Board Room promotion, or take the plunge and make a success of our talents by starting up our own business. Actions like these are the more obvious areas to look for the difficulties created by this lack of self belief. Invisible and lurking behind situations, we can find lack of self belief strong and active and sometimes quite damaging.
Have you heard the saying, ‘The energy flows where the attention goes’? This one is quoted in so many circumstances from physical healing to emotional intelligence and habit management. Those of you who do Yoga will know how to direct the powerful oxygen you breathe straight into any specific area of your body. All the time you will be holding a picture of that area of your body in your mind and holding your focus on the physical position of the part you want to send the energy to. If you have a pain in your body you can send your energy, through oxygen, to that pain and the energy will clear the pain. When you are preparing your body for a sport and you are working hard to increase your physical performance, you will have a picture in your mind, again while you focus on your body. You will be sending the energy to improve your physical performance to those areas of your body that you want to improve. Always you will find that the improvement will follow your focus. This is all about having a positive impact on your physical body, it is a tried and tested way of healing and improving your body.
This is the sequence of events when we focus on the good things happening to us. Unfortunately our focus can very often be on the negative issues and feelings we are having and when this happens we immediately generate more negative feelings. So for example, when you are expected to stand up and do a presentation in front of a large audience, or some very important people, you get really well prepared, turn up on time, nothing should go wrong, until you stand up and look at these people. Right away you think about how you look, how you sound, how you feel so incompetent, how you are frightened, how you don’t want to look stupid, how you really hope they cannot see how nervous you feel. And so it goes on. As soon as your focus goes on the negative, right away that is where your energy will go and that is exactly what you will generate more of. You unconsciously will generate more of the same, simply by focussing on the negative.
Now, visualise the challenging task you have ahead of you. When you get to the most worrying part, stop and remember the positive and confident state you had brought up. Really take yourself back to that state and feel how being in that state can change how you would perform the challenging task. Visualise working through the challenging task while in that emotionally confident state. Now you can practice this before you have to deal with your challenge for real.
This price is also an incentive for employers to give serious consideration to investing in a member of your staff who you know will benefit from this Programme. Helping one person in your team in this way can really have an impact on the whole team. Just consider the amount of money it is costing your organisation because of the impact on the business of someone who is suffering from stress. This Programme will have a major impact on improving the situation. Think of the efficiency that can be created when your potentially great manager is given the tools to really make them achieve their greatness.
For many managers and staff there is an immediate cringe when the word feedback is mentioned. Lots of people have bad memories of feedback that was given in the wrong way or was hurtful because it seemed to be aimed at their core values and beliefs. Many have had their confidence seriously damaged by negative feedback delivered in the wrong way. That is why ‘Giving feedback’ is a module you will find in most management training programmes. Giving feedback is a very important management skill and results in many positive outcomes if and when it is delivered in the correct and appropriate way. The key in being able to manage the giving of feedback is to actually be skilled in the ‘Receiving of feedback’. You are not always capable of giving good feedback until you have a good understanding of how to receive feedback. Equally, it is also important for anyone expected to respond to feedback to also be skilled in knowing how to receive feedback.
When there is an understanding that being open to receiving feedback in a positive way makes any feedback useful, people will move their heads to that place when they know they are about to receive feedback. When the organisation has a culture were trust exists and feedback is for learning, then people will learn to be open to the opportunity for the learning that feedback presents.
A state of mind open to learning, in turn will be supported by a willingness to make changes where necessary. Curiosity and openness to change come when there is a willingness to learn. Feedback is about learning, it is about trust and honesty. It should not be received with suspicion or doubt. Expecting people to receive feedback in a positive way is a big ask if they haven’t been given the knowledge around how they can make feedback work for them. In a culture where 360° Appraisal is in operation receiving feedback is an essential skill. The most important aspect of it is that to be capable of giving feedback a person needs to be capable of receiving it, this system of appraisal can only work if receiving feedback is given just as much focus through training and coaching.
To receive feedback with an open mind and a willingness to learn is truly a gift.
They say it killed the cat but for us humans it’s the key to living a stronger more confident life. It is also the key to effective and improved communication with those around us.
