A belief in yourself and your ability to accomplish great things will place you on track for success. However, confidence alone will not suffice. To rise above mediocrity, you must have a solid mindset, worthy goals, and a strategic system.
How you see yourself, how you spend your time, and who you hang around with matter.
The Power of Goal Setting
Goal setting helps motivate and move you in a forward and upward direction. It helps organize your time, plan your day, and galvanize your resources to maximize your life. Goal setting provides a short- and long-term vision for what you want, and sometimes more importantly, what you don't want.
Initially, directly after setting a goal, there will be a strong sense of motivation. Whether you decided to complete an academic degree or certification, lose weight, run a marathon, launch a business, lead a work team, or live a calmer, more peaceful life, it starts with a spark or an inspiration and the setting of an intention. The intention will become the goal. Sometimes, the goal is to expand upon a currently available skill. Perhaps you would like to take athletic, musical, or theatrical talents to the level of a world class athlete, musician, or actor. You may be a physician who wishes to create a life-changing device or perfect a life-saving technique or procedure.
There is no limit to what you can achieve once you put your mind and time to it. What you do and how far you go are on you, and within you.
While there are a few elements required for success, one that is non-negotiable is the investment of countless hours in deliberate practice in pursuit of a worthy goal or mastery. If it were easy, you would have already achieved it.
And so would many others!
You're motivated to start but are you motivated to finish? This is where things get tricky. Success requires tedious repetition. Performing a skill over and over is the path to flawless execution. How many hours do Super Bowl winning quarterbacks practice throwing footballs, academy award winning actors rehearse their lines, or elite top chefs work to perfect their culinary skills? The answer? A LOT! Over and over. Boredom and tedium were part of the equation as their paths led to expertise and success.
3 things will happen after you initiate a goal:
1. You may conclude that the goal was not worth the countless hours and time required for its achievement and decide to allocate your resources elsewhere.
2. You may give up, but the desire to attain the goal remains (and moves to the back burner).
3. You accomplish the goal.
Options 1 & 3 are desirable. Discernment requires knowing yourself well enough to move on when something is no longer right for you and hold on when something is (even if it means trying again after a succession of failed attempts or temporarily quitting). Option 2 is the challenge as it will keep nagging at you until you transfer it to either Option 1 or 3. If it remains in 2, it will take hold of your psyche and express itself as a missed opportunity, regret, or unfulfilled desire.
Success comes down to 2 basic premises:
1. Your ability to delay gratification; to put off giving in to an impulse now in lieu of achieving a larger reward later. Impulsivity is inimical to the achievement of success.
2. Your persistence in the achievement of the goal; your stick-to-itiveness, no matter how fast or slow you're going.
There is no doubt that when you are in the beginning stages of initiating and develop a habit, there will be times when you just don't "feel" like putting in the effort. You're too tired,it's too boring, or you're just not inspired today.
How you handle this "feel"ing will be the determining factor
in your path to either excellence or mediocrity.
Professionals practice, train, or push through whether or not the feeling, inspiration, or motivation surfaces. Amateurs, on the other hand, will wait for inspiration or motivation. This, in and of itself, is not a problem if mastery is not the end-game. For example, playing tennis when you feel like playing tennis is fine as a recreational sport, but this schedule will in all likelihood not lead to participation at Wimbledon.
Decide your aim and adjust your mindset accordingly. The following questions can help in your decision:
Clarity is paramount to goal achievement. Being consistent and remaining on course is largely a result of clearly defined goals or a clear vision of your desired outcome(s). Write your goal(s) in your productivity planner and visit often. Visualize a specific end-point. What you see in your mind's eye is truly powerful. The process of picturing or imagining things increases the likelihood of manifestation.
2.Maximize Focus and Minimize Multi-Tasking
Focus, an important mental asset, is directed attention. It's your primary pathway to entering into your flow state or getting into the zone. When your attention is in the present moment and on task, you experience optimal cognitive functioning and peak performance. When you are pulled in multiple different directions, consistency starts to weaken. Soon, it will abate altogether. In our ever growing complex and distracted world, our ability to focus is diminishing dramatically, and this is affecting finishing what we've started.
Bombarded by interruptions throughout our day from notifications, pings, and vibrations emanating from our digital devices, we barely can settle down and approach a task long enough before becoming interrupted. This consistent shift in attention is creating executive functioning fatigue, which in turn compromises our decision making abilities. In order to accomplish great things, discerning between productivity and busy-ness is crucial. Productivity requires clarity, while busy-ness does not. Busy-ness generally has no end goal in sight.
3.Create Routines & Rituals
Create a schedule or plan to help you stay on track. Allocate time weekly to attend to the goals that matter to you. An added bonus would be to find an accountability buddy. This would be someone who has already achieved the goal you're desiring and can show up for you as a mentor or this can be an individual on the same path as you, and together you move forward, supporting and encouraging one another to the finish line. Energy flows where intention goes and the thoughts and actions you spend a large chunk of time on will strengthen, whether you want them to or not. Be careful of how you think and spend your time. They are creating your future.
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
-Bruce Lee
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