Goal Achieving
It’s that time of year – goals, resolutions, and planning. We talk about it every January and most of us come February are back to our old trick. Not all of us – but most of us – myself included.
I recently started thinking long and hard about why that is. Why is it that when we really want something, are earnest in our striving for it, we lose our way and end up back where we started.
Can you not teach old dogs new tricks? Not according to neuroscience, we can change our brains.
Can you not motivate yourself properly? Depends on how you’re approaching motivation.
Do you just not have the willpower? We chose to do what we do every time we do it – regardless of what it is. Make a different choice.
My thinking is that we give up too easily. “I tried. It didn’t work for me”. We don’t experiment enough to find out what does works for us. We don’t dig deep enough to really know what we want and why we want it. In other words, what is the intention behind what we want to achieve, really.
Forming a new pattern, habit, routine that is no longer something you have to consciously think about doing, but just do because it is now part of who you are taking practice, experimentation, and celebration.
Start small
Practice – if it’s now working
Try something else and practice again smarter
Celebrate – it reinforces success in your brain
Before you know it, you’ll be making new neural pathways in your brain shifting from thinking about doing something to just doing it – a new pattern, habit, routine is formed.
Of course, none of that works if you’ve not dug deep enough to uncover my intention…. I’m digging in – how about you?