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Last week, I talked about the 5 Components to Setting Goals Today, I want to share some simple steps to get you to those goals. These steps are not from a book that I read. They are not anything that I have heard from a seminar or conference. April and I originally formed what we called 8 Simple Steps which we talked about in episode number 50, and last week, I referred to them as 8 Simple Steps in the podcast, but…as I was forming this episode, I realized a few changes that could be made, so I decided to tweak them a little, and I changed it to 7 Simple Steps to Loving Your Life.
Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher, and poet said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
So, with the foundation of April’s and my collaboration, I am giving you 7 simple steps that I hope will help you get out of your desperation and on to achieving your goals. Whether your goal is to become a better person, change your circumstances, or maybe even your attitude, I hope these encourage you and help you to achieve it. My hope for you is that by giving you these steps and breaking them down one-by-one, it will help you get to your goal easier and create a vision for what needs to be done along the way.
So… Let’s get started. Shall we? The first step is…
1. Stop! Stop procrastinating. This is a chance for you to recognize the problem. This is a chance for you to take a moment to just stop the madness; stop and recognize what may be contributing to the problem. Stop lying to yourself. Stand Still and recognize the situation for what it is. If necessary Seek Silence for yourself. Take this time to pray and meditate. Identify what it is that is holding you back. What is it that is hurting you and keeping you from moving toward the life you love? Stop moving forward in the direction of destruction. Stop moving toward that thing that keeps holding you back.
You may not be able to immediately identify or know what needs to change or what’s holding you back, and that’s ok. You just sense that something or things are not right, and you need to figure out what that is. In order to do this, you need to stop where you are and recalculate your next move.
Think about it this way. You’re on a road trip when you suddenly realize that you are on the wrong road. You’ve been traveling for hours thinking that you were going in the right direction and would be arriving at your destination very soon; then something happens, and you suddenly realize that for quite some time now, you’ve been going in the wrong direction. You are totally off track and possibly even lost. You are not moving in the direction that you wanted to, planned to, or even wished to. But, once you realize this, what do you do? Do you just continue going in that direction and hope to arrive at your destination eventually? I mean, technically, the earth is round, so that should happen, right? NO! It doesn’t work like that! Andy Stanley says that “Direction, not intention determines your destination.” You stop! You pull over to the side of the road and recalculate your direction toward to way that you intend to go.
This actually happened to us one night. My husband was in a Christian music band, and I was their designated driver at the time. Well, one night he offered to give me a break in driving to the next city, which was about 8 hours away. This was before GPS and when we had to buy our maps from a truck stop. He calculated his route on this paper map and proceeded to our destination. About 4 hours into the trip, he stopped for fuel, and when he was filling up, he noticed that something didn’t seem right. He checked his map and realized that he had driven 4 hours in the opposite direction. He was going west instead of east. Yeah, he was pretty pissed about it, but there was nothing that could be done about it. There was nothing that we could do except to STOP going in the wrong direction. Yeah, that was not a fun night, but it does make a for a really great story now.
After you stop and assess the situation, you need to;
2. Step Back or Separate Yourself and your emotions from the situation. This could look similar to stop, but it is different. This is a chance for us to take a look at and recognize from a distance what’s going on around you. This allows you to see things more clearly. You can think to yourself about what you would see if you were having an out-of-body experience. This was what my husband did when we were traveling in the wrong direction. After he stopped, he had to take a step back and separate himself from the many emotions of the situation. This allowed him to see things more clearly and logically. Sometimes we have to move backward in order to move forward. I’ve heard people say that to move forward, you need to step back in order to get better traction. Take a few deep breaths while you step back. Stepping back also gets you away from the situation or madness and allows you to breathe. It allows you to gather your thoughts. And, if you are you an overthinker like me, stepping back allows you to see or put things into perspective.
After you Stop and Step Back, you need to:
3. Search your heart: What is it that you feel, and why do you think you are feeling what you feel? What is it that you want? What is your biggest heart’s desire? What do YOU want to do? If something needs to change, what is it? Be completely honest with yourself. What do you hope to gain out of these steps? What is your ultimate goal? Like I asked before, what is your heart’s ultimate desire from the change, or what outcome do you desire from this? What…?
I’m in the middle of reading a book called Visioneering by Andy Stanley. He calls this book “Your Guide for Discovering and Maintaining Personal Vision.” Three of the questions that he asks in this book are: “What breaks your heart? What keeps you up at night? What could be that should be?” In this book, Andy goes on to say, “Vision is born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be. Anyone who is emotionally involved–frustrated, brokenhearted, maybe even angry–about the way things are in light of the way they believe things could be, is a candidate for a vision. Visions form in the hearts of those who are dissatisfied with the status quo.”
For some of you, instead of searching your heart, you may need to search FOR your heart. You may simply need to learn how to love others. You already know how to love yourself well, and maybe you’ve been told that a time-or-two, but learning how to love others can lead to a love for life like you have never known before.
Maybe your heart is what got you in trouble in the first place. You’ve found yourself surrounded by other people who love themselves too much or so much that they cannot properly love you. No matter what you have been told, you deserve love. You deserve the love that you crave. Maybe you’ve known for a long time that you need to separate yourself from that particular situation. You know the one I’m talking about. Don’t lie to yourself or try to avoid it. This totally applies here. If you search your heart and find that you need to step away from a bad situation (or maybe you already know that you do, and this is just confirming that for you) then you need to search your heart and go to the next step.
Your answer to this can easily lead us to this next step…
4. State Your “Why” – Why do you want this? Why do you feel that change is needed? Our last step asked you to search your heart which could technically be a “what,” but now you need to figure out your why. Is this for you, or is this for your spouse, for your kids…your grandkids, your parents…for your entire family, for your work life? You need to know your “why.” When you start to get off course or feel like you’re not making progress, you need to remember and go back to your “why.” Your why will allow you to get back on track. Your why will allow you to stay focused toward your goal. Your why is very important.
If you want to achieve your goal and have your vision for your goal become your reality, you need to make sure that you clearly state your why, and in order to clearly state your why, you need to have a clear picture of what your end-goal really is. Your why will be what gets you through all those little goals along the way. It will be what picks you up when you fall. It will be what encourages you when you are discouraged.
This is one place where you may need to focus on your feelings. You shouldn’t always trust acting on your feelings. Acting on your feelings can sometimes get you into trouble, but this is one place where you can actually do this. Sometimes, we may ask, “what does your gut say?” You do, however, still need to proceed to do this with caution. If you are angry, you could state your why out of anger, which could definitely cause more havoc on your situation, or if you’re feeling guilty or a little too much empathy, it could lead you to find yourself deeper in a bad situation all in the name of quote-unquote “empathy.” Don’t confuse empathy with compassion. It is not the same thing. Compassion is “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others,” and empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another;” to be able to put yourself wholly in someone else’s shoes. Also, you can still have empathy and compassion and still have boundaries. Having too much can cause havoc on yourself and others. I’m going to put a link in my show notes to a great video that explains the difference between the two, so if you’d like to watch that, go to teaoflifepodcast.com, and click on this episode.
In another video titled How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Simon Sinek says, “Every single person on the planet knows what they do. Some know how they do it…, but very few organizations know why they do what they do.” He goes on to say that “by why I don’t mean to make a profit. That’s a result. It’s always a result. By why I mean what’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why do you get out of bed in the morning?”
5. Say NO! (to the things that do not line up with your why) In episode 56, Brandon and I talked about the benefits of saying no. We said that saying no actually allows you to say yes. Say no to the things that do not line up with your why. Doing this allows you to say yes to everything that does line up with your why. Whether we say yes or we say no, there’s always an opportunity cost involved. What we need to figure out is which opportunity cost we’re most willing to give up or live without. Are we willing to give up loving our life just so we can say yes to the things that are not beneficial to us or that do not push us in the right direction?
Leo Babauta says it this way, and I’ll put a link to this in my show notes. “When I suggest that people simplify their day by saying No to [some]thing, I often hear people say, ‘But I’d rather say yes!’ Of course — saying Yes sounds so much more positive! I’ll say Yes to yoga, and wonderful projects, and gardening! But where does the room for these beautiful new things come from? We have to admit to ourselves that there’s a limit to how much we can do in a day and that our days are already full. We have limits. So we have to say No first. We have to clear up some space by saying No to things we’d like to do, but that are taking up space in our lives — space that could be used by something we really really want to do.”
So, if you really, really want to create a life that you love to live, you are going to have to learn to say no to the things that don’t line up with your why. I must give you a warning though! There will be people around you that won’t understand your no; especially if you’ve always said yes to them. They may get mad at you for saying no to something that they want or want to do or even something that they want you to do for them, but you have to stick to your guns! Only you can do this for yourself. Maybe it’s time to move on and find new friends who can help inspire you toward your goals instead of holding you back or even holding you to their goals.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you’re going to need to learn to say no to the things that hold you back from that, but just remember that every time you say no to something, you say yes to something else. It’s impossible to just say no or to just say yes. You cannot have one without the other. There is always an opportunity cost.
I’ve also made this easy for you. If you have trouble saying no or just don’t know how to (especially to those who you’ve always said yes to) go to my show notes for this episode on teaoflifepodcast.com, and you will find a link to 49 Ways to Say No to Anyone (When You Don’t Want to be a Jerk), and this will at least give you a place to start.
Start practicing on your friends who you know will not get mad at you for saying no. Build your confidence that way, and then move on to those who you know will rebel when you say no to them. This is what I had to do. I had a situation where I found myself saying yes to all the things that I didn’t want to do. These weren’t bad things. In fact, to an outsider, they may have even looked like the right thing to do. When, in reality, it wasn’t what God had for me to do at the time. I was actually foregoing my own desires and goals so that I could make someone else happy; when, in actuality, the other person was super miserable, and it was spilling over onto me. I knew this was the case long before I began to say no to them. I continued to say yes to all their wishes, even when it affected my relationship with my husband and kids; all because I didn’t want to make this person mad at me because when this person was mad, it was plain terrifying. However, after a few practices, I mustered up the confidence to say no, and sure enough, that person got so mad at me that she stopped talking to me for a time but not before telling me how selfish and self-centered I had become. I was completely heartbroken, and it hurt bad, but then I began to realize that the silence was golden. It gave me the space that I needed to heal and to grow and to think about my future beyond this person.
She is speaking to me again, but it looks different now. Our relationship is different. I am different. She is different. She has seen the changes in me and no longer tries to cross the boundaries that I have had to put in place. Ahhh… Boundaries! I love boundaries, and I think a talk on boundaries would make a super great episode in our future!
Moving on to number 6…
6. Step Forward (into the things that DO line up with your why) You have to seek and say yes to opportunities that allow you to move forward toward your goal. You have to make this first step toward your goal, or you will never get moving. Without this first step, there are no other steps. You cannot have a second, third, or fourth step without this first step. Remember that progress is progress and cannot really be measured. What I mean is, you don’t have to meet a certain milestone or criteria in order for it to be called progress. Progress is anything better than what you are doing now or anything that gets you closer to your goal. Even is you measure your progress by percentages and say that you only got 1% progression accomplished today, that makes you 1% closer to your goal. Any progress is progress.
Failure can also be considered progress. Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
7. Start Your Journey to living the life you love; to creating the life you love to live. Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but wise, making the most of every opportunity…”
So… Just to quickly recap all the steps… We have:
- Stop!
- Step Back or Separate Yourself
- Search Your Heart
- State Your Why
- Say NO!
- Step Forward
- Start Your Journey
That’s it for today. Thank you so much for joining me, and I really pray that you found value in today’s message. Please leave me a comment and let me know how this episode or this podcast has helped you move forward toward your goals; toward creating the life you love to live. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and meet me back here next time. Until then, I’m going to leave you with this quote from the author, Howard Thurman, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
