Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.
Author | Photographer | CG Artist | Filmmaker
Achieving personal goals: Make a commitment to yourself
Make a commitment to yourself to make what you want happen. And then make a plan on what you are going to do to achieve your goal.
Understand your “triggers” and where and why you have failed in the past. Find an alternative positive action that you can take to avoid falling into the same traps.
Then take action, be consistent, persistent and determined and follow through with your commitment.
Achieving personal goals series:
Fuel your desire by visualizing your results.
“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.” — Napoleon Hill
If you can’t picture the results you want in vivid detail, then there’s a good chance that:
1. You don’t have a well enough defined goal or
2. You don’t truly believe it’s possible.
The answer to 1. is easy — keep refining your goal until you can vividly picture what you want. If you have to, break it down into smaller steps.
The answer to 2. may have to do with the fact that what you want isn’t congruent with something about you.
Contrary to the saying, “You can do anything you set your mind to” — NO YOU CAN’T.
Some people would call this “being realistic” — but I agree with Will Smith who says, “Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.”
I think lofty goals that some people might think you are crazy for believing you can achieve are worth aiming for — because I think people are capable of achieving far more than they believe.
But there are some limitations — mainly, you cannot control things that are beyond your control.
Yes, you can learn to play the piano — perhaps sensationally, but you can’t turn back time and learn the piano when you were three years old and take that experience with you through your life.
Yes, you can learn to sing better, but you cannot entirely change the essence of your voice to sound exactly like someone else.
Yes, you can improve your fitness and dramatically change your body composition, but you cannot change your bone structure or will your body to grow a foot taller.
However…
You can always maximize what you already have to improve your health, habits, and skills. You can always find ways to better yourself. And by doing so, you can get results that others might not even believe were possible. But to do this, you have to have a very clear idea of exactly what it is you want to accomplish.
And when you know what you want to accomplish, then vividly imagine the changes you would like to see and how you will feel when you’ve reached your goal.
And don’t just do this once, do it often! What you imagine should inspire you. Use that as fuel and motivation to propel you towards your goal.
Achieving personal goals series:
Achieving personal goals: Do it for YOU.
Know why you want something and make sure you want it for the right reasons. If you’re doing things to try to impress or elicit a change in others, then you’re putting your efforts into getting results that are ultimately beyond your control. You can’t change other people.
While your actions may influence or even inspire others, you can’t make people do anything. And while you may achieve goals that make you more appealing to some, you can’t make people like you. You can only set a good example for others to follow or be attracted to.
If you’re going to do something, do it for the changes it leads to in you — and to a larger degree, your life.
Achieving personal goals series:
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Achieving personal goals: Take action
The results of your actions speak louder than words. You can read a million motivational sayings to pump yourself up — or echo them to others until you’re blue in the face — but that won’t change anything unless you take action and consistently change your behavior.
Don’t just read it or preach it and expect it to make a difference in your life.
Knowing something is not enough. Knowing what you should do is not enough. You have to use what you know and take action. This is the ‘DO’ in ‘JUST DO IT!’.
View the image version of the above point.
While you are still waiting to find an easy way (or a perfect time), someone else is already getting results because they decided making progress is more important than making excuses.
View the image version of the above point.
Achieving personal goals series:
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What I’ve learned about achieving personal goals (in 837 days)
“Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is ‘built that way’ he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function—as a goal-striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together, but each enhances the other.” — Maxwell Maltz (from Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life)
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Your world will change dramatically once you stop giving yourself reasons why you can’t do the things that are holding you back and you start giving yourself reasons why you can.
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An honest enemy is better than a false friend. When in doubt, pay more attention to what people do and less to what they say. Actions not only speak louder than words, they are more difficult to fake.
“Lieber ein ehrlicher Feind, als ein falscher Freund”
“Better an honest enemy than a false friend” — German Proverb
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Excerpt from: Fearing change is counter productive.
Extraordinary doesn’t just happen. If you want something “spectacular” or “extraordinary” — you either have to make it happen, go out and get it, or let it into your life when it knocks on the door. If it feels the same and looks the same as everything else, it’s not extraordinary.
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Accept who you are. Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop worrying so much about what other people think. We all have strengths and weaknesses. One day you will realize how beautiful you are. Why not make that day today? It is only when you accept yourself that you will truly be free.
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Life is hard enough already without blaming yourself for things that are beyond your control. And even when things are within your control, we all make mistakes — it is an essential part of being human — it’s how we learn.
Mistakes happen and there’s no stopping them. “Live and learn” is the best we can do. You can’t change the past, you can only affect the future by resolving to do better next time.
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