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Focus on Your Feelings

What are your goals for the year? Take a minute to focus on how you believe your goal will make you feel? Are you hoping it will help you FEEL a certain way?

Do you believe losing 50 pounds will make you confident?

Will making this much money make you happy?

Getting a promotion will help you be respected?

I’ve gotta shatter your world for a quick moment –  we do not need to reach the achievement to gain happiness and confidence and respect.

Here’s the good news though: YOU CAN GAIN HAPPINESS, CONFIDENCE AND RESPECT RIGHT NOW!

Because of the way our human brains work, when we do reach the achievement, we find ourselves on the Hedonic Treadmill. It’s enough for a moment, then it’s not enough anymore. Now we need the next best thing to feel happy, confident and respected.  When we live our lives this way – nothing is ever good enough. We could achieve the world – and none of it would be good enough. 

Face Your Shame

Before we can work on ourselves and improve we need to accept WHO WE ARE and WHERE WE ARE. And have love for that person. 

A major problem that arises when we are goal setting is shame. 

Instead of seeing who we are and how we can be the best version of ourselves, we see a person we are ashamed of.

A person who shouldn’t have done this and shouldn’t have done that. We have shame for not being good enough parents, shame for not making enough money, for not giving enough, for doing things with the wrong motives, for eating too many sweets, for spending too much time on social media.

Shame is when we fall short and decide there is something wrong with us for that.

In Rising Strong, Brene Brown says the difference between shame and guilt is this:
Guilt says “I screwed up.”
Shame says “I am a screw up.”

To hear how before and after photos are the perfect example of feeling shameful in the beginning of an exercise program or weight loss program, click here.

It is important to know before  you begin your goal that you are worthy TODAY.

You are worthy today. You're not going to achieve that worth on the other side of a goal because you already have that worth. Click To Tweet

Measure More than Your Outcomes

There are a couple issues with creating goals around outcomes alone.

1. It becomes all or nothing. If I want to save $10,000 but only save $1,000 I give myself the label of a failure. I am now $9k short, instead of being $1k closer to my goal.
2. We can’t control all outcomes. I was thinking about one of my biggest goals in life – winning an Emmy. The year after I won the first Emmy, I was nominated again. I did not win that second Emmy. I had no control over what the judges voted when they watched my coverage.

To fix this problem, we can measure our GROWTH as well.

In the first example, how did the person grow who saved $1k? Maybe she learned some skills to earn extra money on the side, maybe she sacrificed her weekly movie night, maybe she cut cable. There was a lot of GROWTH that happened there.

zIn the second example, when I didn’t get nominated the first time I submitted for an Emmy… I studied, I watched winning entries, I continued to push myself each day. There was a huge amount of growth there.

But that second nomination that did not turn into a win was not because I’m a FAILURE. It’s just simply that I did not win. There’s no shame – and I don’t really feel like I was a loser at all.

Check out the full podcast for four questions to ask yourself each week to measure growth.

It's better to do less than you hoped than nothing at all - #AtomicHabits @JamesClear Click To Tweet

When we don’t follow through with our goals, it only means we didn’t follow through with our goals. It’s not a statement on your personality or character. Just get back up – and try again.

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