Okay, so we all fall victim to creating goals around what we think we “should” be doing. STOP it! As soon as you hear yourself thinking “I should______ (work out, eat better, put more effort into myself, meditate etc…),” you’ve already blocked yourself from finding the best solution.
But don’t worry, you already have part of the question that will actually help lead you to your real authentic goals. All you need to do is swap out ” I should” with “Why am I not already doing _____?”
f you are creating your goals based on a fantasy life built from “shoulds,” then those goals won’t work in your real, nitty-gritty, messy life. The fact is, we all have complex lives, which don’t stand a chance against our hypothetical wish-list versions.
I have accepted the fact that my house will inevitably be showered with Husky glitter, AKA dog hair. If I were to set a goal to have a perfectly clean house all the time, I would fail miserably. I would probably stress the hell out of myself for a few weeks, vacuuming 5-10 times a day like a madwoman, just to ultimately feel like a failure when I realized that the goal I had set was unsustainable.
Read on for tangible steps towards reconfiguring your authentic goals.
3 Steps For Reworking Your Authentic Goals:
- Spend a few minutes creating the goals that you want to achieve in 2017 and circle the ones that are based on “shoulds” (See Stop Shoulding Yourself for more on taking absolutes out of your vocab).
- Replace ” I should” with “Why am I not already doing _____?” Then you can use your answer to see what your real authentic goals are.
- Now that you see what was keeping you from already doing the goal, set the first steps to break through the barrier.
