January 1, 2012

Okay, do I go for another month of blogging daily? I could, I think - no travel on the calendar, etc. I'll go for it.

My 99 cent book about goal-setting (see previous post) said several things that really resonated with me. I am paraphrasing a lot here, but what I got from it so far is:

Your goal has to really make you feel PASSIONATE. You have to have a damn good reason for it, and it has to be a reason that will get stuck in your head and make you a little obsessive and crazy until you will work as hard as you must to achieve it.

Many of us are conditioned to set our goals to "realistic" and "practical," and it's really damn easy to lose interest in a goal that doesn't really excite you all the way to your toes.

We are products of our conditioning and if you are like me, you were told a million times growing up to "Stop Daydreaming and Be Practical!" I internalized that message really, really well: "Think small, so you won't be too disappointed when you fail, because you probably will." I have to figure out how to reprogram myself to consistently think outside that little box of conditioning. And that is my goal for this year.

That's a really personal process, nobody can give you magic words to do it, just ideas to work with, and a gazillion self-help gurus have emerged to explain it in their own ways, but it still boils down to you have to have a goal that makes you excited enough to do the work to achieve it. The rest of that motivational stuff is fluffy marshmallow cream on the hard little whole wheat cracker of making it happen.

So, to generalize this beyond my own self-absorption:

Your goal has to be basically your obsession, and it has to be yours. It can't be assigned to you by somebody else, or your inner self will fight it. You have to see it in your mind, which is where visualization comes in, you have to believe you can do it, which is where saying those affirmations comes in, but ultimately, if your goal isn't clear, none of that shit will work.

You can have more than one goal at a time, but they need to mesh together somehow and not conflict, or it won't work. For instance, you probably shouldn't decide to run a marathon, get an MBA, get promoted at work, knit an Orenberg lace shawl and have a baby in 2012. (I'm not going to do any of those things, just FYI.) That's not goal-setting, that's beating yourself up for not doing things you think you should be doing.

But when you have goals that eat at you because you really, really can see your life after you reach them, you'll do it. You won't just "try."

And I am putting myself out there with this stuff, though not with my specific goals yet because I'm still drawing the maps and collecting the data. 2012 is going to be a lot of work, but I think rewarding and fun. I am determined not to "try" but just to DO.