Achieving Personal Goals

A New Year’s Gift

Mike Warren — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:25:50 +0000

Before you start out making your New Year’s goals and resolutions, take a minute to watch the 9 minute video below.

It will put you in the right frame of mind to make decisions that will guide you in 2013. I promise you’ll be glad you did.

Enjoy!

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Lose Weight with Software for Your Healthy Lifestyle

Mike Warren — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:06:19 +0000

Research shows repeatedly that keeping a food journal or otherwise tracking what we eat is a consistently successful activity to help you meet your weight loss goals.

If weight loss is top of your goal list for 2013, check out the website Weight by Date. It’s purpose is to give you a place online to track your activity and nutrition, and has alot of good information to support this approach.

As always, start VERY small by making a habit of recording your activity just once or twice a day at specific times. Building that ‘keystone’ habit will get you started on the way to your weight loss.

Habits to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Mike Warren — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:15:01 +0000

It’s no secret, and I’ve written about it here many times, that habits are a very powerful tool to facilitate reaching a goal.

The simple act of automatically (i.e. unconsciously) taking a particular action every day has powerful effects, IF they can just be established.

I found this article at LifeHacker.com this week that describes one guy’s progress creating the habit he chose using the “start small, very small” technique.

Leo Babuta also advocates the “start small and simple”‘ approach at his ZenHabits.net blog (highly recommended) and has used it with great success.

Check out Joel Gascoigne’s article here, I think you’ll enjoy it.

Know What Produces Action Toward Your Goal

Mike Warren — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:48 +0000

Taking action toward your goal on a regular basis is essential to reaching it. We’ve seen repeatedly that the ability to pursue a goal consistently over time produces consistent results.

But “sticking with it” over the long haul (what Psychologists call ‘Grit‘) is not an innate characteristic that we all share (more about Grit).
What are the ways we can help ourselves produce this behavior? What is it that keeps us on track over the long haul?

Habit

The simple act of pure, unconscious repetition, without thought of outcome or even reason, is not a literal form of motivation, but . We brush our teeth every morning knowing it’s a good thing to do, but we certanly don’t weight the benefits each time. We do it out of pure repetition. Many people have incorporated their fitness routine as a habitual part of their day (stop at the gym every day on the way home from work).

Pull Motivation

A/k/a positive feelings. The satisfaction that comes from a sense of accomplishment, improving your social or financial situation, increasing your sense of self-worth or praise from peers or co-workers all serve as positive motivators.

Push Motivation

A/k/a negative feelings. Most push motivation comes from fear, such as fear of losing your job, being broke, being criticized, getting embarrassed or being left out. None of these are pleasant emotions you would seek out, so the avoidance of these feelings can be a powerful motivator.

You can determine the pros and cons of each method and which is “best” for you. My objective is simply to raise your awareness of encourage you to find whatever approach will best enable you to reach your goal.

I’m Too Busy … Not

Mike Warren — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:16:11 +0000

A professor stood in front of his philosophy class and with various items in front of him. When the class began, he picked up a large, empty jar and began to fill it with golf balls. He asked the students if the jar was full, and they each agreed it was.

The professor then picked up a box of small rocks and poured them into the jar and shook the jar gently. The pebbles found their way into the open spaces between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full, and again they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a small bucket of sand and poured it into the jar. The sand proceeded to fill up the remaining gaps, and once more the students determined unanimously that the jar was full.

The professor then produced two Diet Cokes from under the table and poured the both into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter faded, ‘You should recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—-your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—-and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—-the small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.

Take care of the golf balls first—-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

What Would Steve Jobs Say?

Mike Warren — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:42:58 +0000

Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no.”

~ Steve Jobs

Look familiar?

Mike Warren — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:27:08 +0000

The image below is just a sample of the interruptions that we all get every day, but it makes the point.

Unfortunately, these have little if anything to do with our goals, but they compete for our attention.

If we don’t say “no” to these distractions, our goals are likely to suffer.

I know I’m working on it.

Information Overload: Will It Kill Me, or Will I Survive?

Mike Warren — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:04:15 +0000

I think this is going to be the first in about a 5 post series on my latest struggle – Information Overload.

This dilema has become almost amusing (but not quite).

The problem I encounter daily is the massive volume of information I receive which I want to consume, yet there is obviously not enough time to consume it much less digest it! I don’t seem to have the skills or discipline to deal with this problem effectively. Yet!

Email stories I want to read (dozens of really good ones)
Google Reader feed
Tweets from people I follow and care about
Physical books on my “I want to read” list
Daily news outlets (WSJ, NYT, USA Today, etc)
Blogs I want to keep up with (e.g. Seth Godin)
And more…

The interesting thing is that I think we all know what the solution is: Triage. Pick the important stuff, and ignore the rest. Unfortunately knowing and doing are two different things. My own ambition as a goal seeking, growth pursuing, improvement focused person make me my own worst enemy.

Add to my own weakness for interesting information the skills of great marketers, copyrighters and editors to come up with titles and headlines I can’t resist. “The solution to [my most pressing problem here]“, or “The 3 keys to [the project I just started and am having trouble with]“. How can I skip THAT, or press the delete key, or bookmark it behind the 500 other things I haven’t read yet. But I can’t read it now. Damn … It!

I’m working on an image that illustrates my problem, in the hopes that seeing it will provide some insight into my own insanity, maybe help you determine if any of this applies to you, and possibly to serve as a starting point for the lofty objective of getting a handle on this. If not, maybe you can enjoy some comic relief watching me deal with my demons!

I think this is going to be similar to the alcoholic’s struggle, a ‘day at a time’ approach that means I can’t let my guard down and can’t ever consider myself free from temptation.

Check back tomorrow to see what step one will be. I wish I knew.

What’s Holding You Back?

Mike Warren — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:16:51 +0000

You’ve got a goal in mind (weight loss, career change, whatever…), you decided on it weeks ago, but you haven’t started working on it yet?

Why not?

What’s the one thing that’s holding you back? I’d love to hear from you!

How Marine’s Handle Stress

Mike Warren — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:00:24 +0000

Anyone who is pursuing a personal goal is bound to experience stress at some point in time, if not frequently.

This is a fascinating article on how Marine’s in far more stressful conditions that most of us ever encounter handle it very successfully:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mindfulness-in-frantic-world/201207/meditate-just-the-us-marines