Dangers of Goal Setting for Women
How do you know if you have experienced and fallen prey to any of the dangers of goal setting? As an ambitious and busy woman, I have no doubt that you’ve fallen into a few of the following goal setting traps at one point or another. Here are some of the goal setting pitfalls to watch out for.
1. The Achievement Addiction
Have your goal setting efforts turned into an achievement addiction? Are you pursuing and working on your goals 24/7, without taking a break? The danger here is that you end up avoiding other important parts of your life including your health, relationships or leisure time. One danger of goal setting for women is when they cut themselves off from the people whom they are closet with. Women’s healthy relationships are a key element of their positive identity, and when they start isolating themselves from others for prolonged periods of times, they can feel depressed or irritable, or as though something is lacking in their lives.
2. Spiritual Starvation
Another danger of goal setting is that if you go overboard with achieving your goals, then you can experience a sense of spiritual void or starvation, or a sense of emptiness or loss of meaning and purpose in your life. This is interesting because isn’t goal setting supposed to be about increasing meaning and purpose in our lives? If you are filling every last minute and hour of your days or weeks with achieving your goals, and you’re feeling as though something is missing, then you should double check how much down time you’re giving to yourself.
3. Identity Confusion
One pitfall of goal setting gone too far is that women begin to base their identity on the results they are achieving through their goals. All women have goals that they are really serious about, and when something interferes or blocks the achievement of those goals, they are at risk for feeling down, ill, or unhappy. For example, a woman who’s goal is to have children, but cannot meet a partner or who cannot physically have children may suffer when her sole identity has been built on this picture of herself building a family. Likewise, the woman who invested her entire life only into her relationship with her partner and not her career can suffer when she experiences the transition of going through a divorce. The key is to have goals in various areas of our lives that we focus on – not just one area of our lives.
4. Goal Setting Failure
When we repeatedly try to achieve a goal or various goals, and we fail to reach those goals we are at risk for experiencing “failure”. This in turn can lead to a drastic drop in our self-confidence, or even our self-esteem (how much we like ourselves). Be aware of this goal setting pitfall. Have you noticed a difference in how you feel about yourself just because you haven’t achieved a goal that was important to you? If so, perhaps you should check how realistic your goal is. Are you expecting your goal to be achieved in too short of a time line? Do you have the right team of people in place? Are you basing your identity, pride, happiness and life satisfaction on the achievement of this goal? If so, you’re making a mistake, because there is always a chance that we might not achieve some of our goals. Remember, goals are meant to enhance our lives and our happiness, not detract from it.
5. Goal Setting Idolatry
Another drawback to goal setting is that sometimes we pursue a goal for the sake of the goal itself (idolatry), when in actuality that goal might not be important to us or congruent with our life values. For instance, sometimes a person sets a goal of making a certain amount of money, and you see them pursuing all these random business ideas that are not even aligned with who they are. I fell prey to this goal setting trap before. I wanted to make a lot of money and I had chosen real estate as the primary channel to pursue this goal. While there is nothing wrong with this, it eventually began to feel meaningless, and as if I was chasing an end result. While there was nothing wrong with my goal to make a lot of money, the means by which I was pursuing this goal wasn’t the most ideal. Another example of this would be a person who sets a goal to run 5k every day. If you ask them why they’re doing that, they might respond by telling you that their goal is to lose 10 pounds. But what if they get a knee injury? You might see them continue to run each day because they are so committed to losing those 10 pounds. However, if they were smart they would change their approach to achieving their weight loss goal. They are getting the ‘means’ of achieving their goal confused with the result that they are after. Stay attached to your outcome and the result that you are seeking, but be flexible in the means, approach or the ‘how’ behind your goal. Don’t just pursue a goal for its own sake. Ask yourself, “Why am I pursuing this goal?” “Is this goal still meaningful?” “Is there a better way to achieve this goal”?
6. The Goal Setting Marathon Lifestyle
After too marathoning on our goals for too long without taking a break, we are prone to goal setting burnout and stress. All big goals are likely to give us some stress, or even a lot of stress for short periods of time but if your experience of stress becomes prolonged over too many weeks, months or years, then your physical and psychological health is going to be in trouble. When was the last time you de-stressed and took a break from all your goals? I know I’m guilty of not taking breaks myself, and sometimes I pay the price. If you don’t keep your goal setting efforts in check then you will eventually feel as though you are exploiting your mind, energy and time. So, avoid the goal setting marathon way of living. It’s not healthy!
7. Overly Ambitious Approach
Are you setting too many goals and trying to achieve them all at once? While I’m all for capturing your many dreams and goals on paper, I’m not a big fan of trying to achieve them all at once. Some women go bonkers with trying to do, be and achieve everything all at once. What kind of lifestyle is that, and how are you supposed to enjoy yourself? Watch out for this goal setting trap.
These are some of the dangers of goal setting. Be aware of these goal setting pitfalls and traps so that you can take preventative measures to ensure that goal setting enhances your quality of life as opposed to decreasing it. For more resources and theory of goal setting click here.
How Do We Change our Limiting Beliefs?
How do we change our limiting beliefs?
1. Examine the state of your life right now. Where do you feel blocked with respect to your goals? What is stagnant? What isn’t working for you? Which results and goals are you having the most difficulty achieving? Here is one example, “My goal is to go on a warm tropical vacation, but I can’t seem to allow myself to do it.
2. In order to change our limiting beliefs, we must define our problem and what the block is in one or two sentences. Be as specific as possible. For example, “I can’t go on a tropical vacation every year because I simply don’t feel that I have the money in my budget!”
3. Write down how this limiting belief or problematic way of thinking is helping you in your life. How does it support and protect you? To continue the above example, “This belief protects me from spending money foolishly, and it prevents me from going broke” Examine this statement further though. Is going on one vacation really foolish spending? Is it really going to make you broke? Your goal is to question your limiting belief, its validity, and how supportive it really is.
4. Next, how is this limiting belief preventing you from achieving your goal? How is this limiting belief actually holding you back? In order to change our limiting beliefs, we must notice that while our form of thinking is an attempt to protect ourselves, it is also a form of thinking that is blocking us from achieving our goals. Here’s an example: “By holding onto the belief that spending money on a vacation is foolish, I’m excusing myself from being able to have what I want. Despite the reality that it might break my budget a bit, thinking this way blocks me from taking any action or examining any potential solutions that could help me achieve my goal.”
5. To change our limiting beliefs we must brainstorm solutions to overcoming our limiting ways of thinking. Learn to ask yourself more empowering questions. “How can I find a way to go on my vacation without breaking my budget?” Then, create a list of ways that you might do this. For example:
- Stop buying daily coffees and cut back on groceries by $20 every week for 6 months, to save enough money for my vacation. Put the remaining bill on my line of credit, and create a budget to pay it back with.
- Shop around for deals for vacations. Maybe they don’t cost as much as I thought they would.
- Can I go for a 4 day vacation instead of a full week? What difference will this make?
- Can I borrow money from a relative?
- Can I pick up a few extra shifts at work to make up for the difference of what money I need?
- What other creative ways could I temporarily earn more money to cover the cost of this trip?
When you learn to ask yourself good questions about how you can actually reach your goal, you’ll start to see the possibilities for how you can break out of your limiting belief. By simply repeating your limiting belief through self-talk, it doesn’t help you get past your reality that you are on a tight budget.
Just because something is your reality, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a limiting belief. Limiting beliefs are what create the realities that we are trying to escape from. Thus, we must monitor our beliefs closely in those areas of our lives in which we are experiencing results that are less than satisfactory.
Also, ask yourself why you want your goal? For example, “Why do I want this vacation so badly?” When you can create a strong enough “why” behind your goal, you will be more motivated to identify and change your limiting belief systems.
What are some of your habits that need to be changed in order to support this new way of thinking? Be sure to focus on changing habits to support your goal as well.
Finally, if you’re unsure of whether or not your belief is limiting you, ask yourself how well your belief supports your life vision?
These are just a few ideas of how we can recognize and change our limiting beliefs. I would suggest going back to the basics if you haven’t already, and completing the goal setting and motivation program which helps you align what you want with the right beliefs and behaviours.
Good luck!
How to Instantly Motivate Yourself
How to instantly motivate yourself is a concern that many of us goal seeking women have on our minds. Here are some quick tips that always help me when I’m in need of instant motivation.
Instant Motivation Requires Starting with the End in Mind
1. Start with the end in mind. What is your ultimate vision that is guiding you and your decisions? What is the end result and long term goal that you are trying to achieve? I highly recommend that you sit down for a few hours and reflect on this. Gaining clarity on your ultimate vision will help to instantly motivate yourself when you need it.
What is the Instant Gratification to Pursuing Your Goal?
2. Do you know why you want your goal in this moment? Why do you want what you want now? How will you benefit in the next few days, week or month? What are your short-term rewards and satisfactions? In order to instantly motivate yourself you’ll want to make your reasons for wanting your goal as tangible as possible. What are your sources of positive motivation and negative motivation for the short-term?
Know Your Short Term and Long Term Motivations
3. Review both your short term and long term motivations behind your goal. When you combine both of these together, you will have a big enough “why” or “purpose” behind your goal and you will be unstoppable. Be sure to also review these reasons regularly, because your sources of motivation will change every few months or so.
Instantly Motivate Yourself by Having a Plan
4. Do you have a plan on how to achieve your goal? Having a plan will account for almost 75% of your success. Knowing the many different options on how you could achieve your goal is another great way to instantly motivate yourself. Star planning now by brainstorming what all your options are.
Try the Goal Setting and Motivation Program now to Instantly Motivate Yourself!
Myths about Women’s Success and Leadership
There are many myths about what make women happy, successful and great leaders. Read this fantastic article by Marcus Buckingham, posted in Bloomsberg Business! Click here to read the Ten Myths about Women’s Success
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Goal setting for Women Over 50!
Everybody has dreams to achieve big goals, even more mature women over the age of 50. Just because you’re over the age of 50, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to achieve your life goals. I’d rather achieve something later rather than never.
Often times, women over 50, finally find the time to focus on themselves. Their children are grown up, and now they can focus on their own dreams and goals again.
Try watching this fantastic video by Susan Tolles, all on the power of goal setting for women over 50! Regardless of your age, you will be inspired by Susan Tolle’s fresh ideas on goal setting. Click here to listen to Susan Tolles on Goal Setting over the Age of 50
Cheers,
Ali
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Managing your Evolving Achievements Binder
Have you captured all your goals, dreams and ideas for your future on paper? Are they organized in a meaningful way to you? If you haven’t heard of this idea, you’ll want to read my blog post on the Evolving Achievements Binder. Hopefully your many goals have been captured on paper, and you’ve been inspired to take further action.
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After you’ve put together your Evolving Achievements Binder, you’ll still need to manage it. There are a few good reasons why you should regularly review, dust off, clean, and re-organize your evolving achievements binder (aside from the fact that it’s fun to do!).
When I was reviewing my binder just the other day, I came across my health and fitness section, and noticed that it had literally exploded in size. I had inserted so many different resources, and pictures of all the new weight lifting exercises that I had been doing at the gym. I actually ended up taking out the majority of that section, and I started a whole new resource binder for my health and fitness. Now, my binder is much more organized again. I can easily go through and read what my future goals are with respect to my health and wellness, without getting distracted. I also realized, that I’ve probably accumulated more than enough information to write a small e-book on this topic! Perhaps I’ll have to start another blog just on that topic alone.
When I was reviewing all my goals, it was interesting because I noticed myself saying out aloud, “Oh I’ve already done that”, and “I just started doing that!”. Unless I reviewed my goals, I wouldn’t have realized all that I had accomplished. Also, I had never made those goals my key priority, and had never consciously set aside time to work on those goals. I think that demonstrates the power of simply writing goals down. Somehow, the act of writing down our goals must communicate with our subconscious mind, and as a result we automatically begin taking action, and attracting those people and resources into our lives to make things happen.
I also realized the importance of translating all our goals into habits. Daily, twice a week, weekly or even biweekly habits. If you can’t make something a habit, then rarely would those goals ever turn into reality. The areas where I felt I was having the most progress, e.g., career and fitness goals, were the areas where I had done significant planning around how to turn some of my action steps into habits. For instance, I set the goal of spending two times per week writing in my book, and in doing so, I almost doubled the length of it.
Each time you read about your dreams, you’ll notice that you will read with a new sense of clarity, because your ideas have had more time to crystallize. Or, you might have had more time to think about developing actual plans to take further actions steps.
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I’ve also discovered a few little ‘goals’ and ideas that aren’t even important to me at all. At first, when I jotted them down, they seemed like good ideas, but in retrospect I’ve learned that they are meaningless. So you’ll also benefit as you discover your authentic self, and more of your values. Likewise, I also read over a few goal categories that made me feel really scattered and overwhelmed. Clearly, those goals need further development. So, I’ve planned a time to go back and prioritize or rank all of those goals. Over time our big ideas evolve into something more serious. What we value will come into the forefront of our mind, and that which isn’t so important to us, will fade out a bit.
Finally, regularly reviewing your Evolving Achievements Binder will constantly remind you of what is most important, and it will help you stay on track. Just think about the people that don’t write their goals down at all. If you seriously review your goals each month, you are going to speed up the entire learning process around who you are, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to do it. More importantly, you’re going to be unstoppable because you’ll constantly find yourself in action!
Cheers,
Allison
Invest in Yourself!
“Invest in myself? Are you kidding me? I have no time!” I know I’ve said this many times over and over to myself. Everyone is busy taking care of multiple responsibilities, all at once. Sometimes it feels like we are running on a wheel or treadmill of life, constantly going, with no time to invest in ourselves.
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And now, here I am telling you that you should invest in yourself. I had an interesting, little epiphany the other day, when I was feeling frustrated about the lack of time that I had, and how I had used that as an excuse to continue writing my new book, Evolving Achievements.
Then, what popped into my head, was the 10% rule on investments. The golden rule is to always pay yourself first. Pay yourself first, pay yourself first….the message never grows old. And the rule works. Almost everyone is able to save some amount of their pay cheque, even if only a few bucks. So, I thought, could we not apply this rule to our personal goals, even if we are really busy women?
I don’t think we really have a choice. I once read in one of Bob Proctor’s books, that time is never the real barrier behind achieving our goals. The real issue is our failure to prioritize our time effectively.
So, how can we all use our time more effectively? A mentor recently reminded me that the most successful people became that way because they learned to break down their large goals into small tasks that could be done on a daily or weekly basis, in such a way that those tasks never interfered with the rest of their life.
I can remember several years ago, I was in Edmonton at one of Dan Poynter’s book publishing seminars. There was a lady in her early 40′s who was so determined to complete her book that she woke up at 4am every morning before work, and wrote until 5:30am. Then, she went to the gym to exercise before heading off to work. I remember asking her why she didn’t pursue her workouts in the evening (assuming 4am was too early), and she said that early in the morning was the only ‘quiet’ time where she could fully concentrate. How’s that for self-discipline, and more importantly, finding a habit
So, how will you find time in your schedule to work on the things that are most important to you? Will it be early in the morning? Do you have time between running errands, or while waiting to meet a friend or colleague? What could you do on your lunch break? One thing that has worked wonders for me, is simply making to-do lists all the time, and thinking or planning ahead about what I will do in my next block of time, whenever that might be. A lot of time gets wasted simply thinking about what to do next.
Another realization that I continually experience over and over again, is how it is a necessity to invest in yourself first. I can remember one weekend, having a major work assignment to prepare for, having two social obligations to attend, an entire house to clean, and a few appointments that I couldn’t miss. I was feeling a bit stressed out, and then I reminded myself about the importance of taking care of myself. So, each morning, I was up an hour earlier to workout, and then, I came home and gave myself time to write – something that gives me absolute joy, and fills up my ‘buckets’. That joy, that energy and vitality carried itself all the way through to all the other tasks that I needed to finish that weekend.
The point then, is to think of investing in yourself, as just that, – an investment. Don’t look at the achievement of your personal goals and habits as a chore, because those activities are what fill you up with expansive, positive energy, and drive you to maintain an excellent attitude and vigour in everything that you do.
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Here’s an excellent exercise that I’d suggest. Pull out a sheet of loose leaf paper. Make a list of all the small time blocks that could possibly be used to work on some of your important goals. Identify some times when you could truly get yourself into the habit of working on the pursuits that are most meaningful to you. This will ensure that your achievements continue to evolve as opposed to desolve.
Cheers to your success! that works.
Personal Improvement Review
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What is it?
What is a personal improvement review? A personal improvement review involves you reflecting back on your past and outlining in detail every single achievement, improvement, or positive effort that you’ve put forth in your life. I personally recommend doing this every three months, or possibly every six months. The more often you do this, the greater your chances for accelerating your life success and satisfaction.
I’ve focused on the word “improvement” instead of “achievement” because achievements consist of many improvements and efforts that build upon each other over time. If I asked you to only outline your achievements, you might feel a bit disheartened because you didn’t accomplish everything that you’d hope for.
The truth however, is that you’ve probably taken many deliberate efforts and steps to turn your dreams into reality. Although you might not see the final tangible outcome (if there is one), you must train yourself to all of the small or large amounts of time, energy, resources and efforts that you’ve invested into your goals. Those investments deserve to be noticed, celebrated or at least acknowledged in a positive manner.
Don’t simply wait for the grand finale when your entire goal is realized. This could take many days, weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. It’s best to congratulate yourself on the mini-steps you’ve taken, and all the learning lessons that occurred along the way. After all, with each learning lesson, you’ve moved yourself closer toward your goals.
Who is it for?
Who is the personal improvement review for? Anybody who is completely serious about enhancing their personal growth, continuously improving their life satisfaction, along with achieving their life goals should be reflecting back on their personal improvements and achievements.
Benefits
What are the benefits to doing to a personal improvement review?
- Enhanced self-esteem. When you see how far you’ve come and how much you have invested in yourself, you can’t help but feel good about who you are. You’re essentially telling yourself that you’re worth it!
- Realization of how intelligent you are. When you reflect back and understand just how much you’ve learned, you feel a sense of relief that you haven’t been remaining stagnant, and that you are actually moving forward, and closer to your goals.
- Increased locus of control – you begin to see the correlation between your personal actions and the outcomes in your life, even if those outcomes are simply learning lessons
- Gives you a reason to ‘celebrate’ or to do something positive for yourself
- Increased motivation to stay persistent in working toward your goals. Therefore, you are less likely to feel discouraged, and give up because you don’t see the final outcome that you are looking for
- Learn from your successes what is actually working, so that you can continue doing more of it. Learn from your mistakes so that you can identify what areas of your life require sharpening.
If you never reflect back on your life performance, how will you know what areas of your life are improving, and, if you are improving, how will you get a better sense of how you’ve improved? You might even find patterns of strengths or weaknesses developing. For example, I knew a woman who made such great strides in her career when she opened up her own business, but as a result her health suffered drastically. Within a year, she had gained over 25 pounds as a result of stress eating. She also had high blood pressure, and was diagnosed with diabetes. Even though her bank account had grown in dollars, her weight had grown, and her health suffered. Imagine if she had sat down, and done a review of her performance in each area of her life? Perhaps she could have nabbed this weakness as soon as she gained five or ten pounds, compared to the 25 pounds.
Likewise, I once had a client who was achieving many of his travel and leisure goals, but it happened all at the expense of his savings, and he wasn’t ok with this. He was able to nip this one quickly, when he sat down and took the time to actually reflect on the negative consequences to his net worth.
Often times, we know what is working and what isn’t. We know what is going well, and what isn’t. However, unless we sit down to strategically think about all the different areas of our lives, and how our actions or lack of actions are affecting us, nothing truly sinks into our brains, and we don’t do anything about it. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to get into the habit of consistently evaluating how far you’ve come with your goals in each area of your life. Overtime, you can’t help but get better. Wherever attention goes, energy flows, and then the results will start showing up.
How?
I recommend pulling out your evolving achievements binder, and starting a new section just for your personal improvement reviews. Start one page to list all your improvements and achievements, and start another page where you’ll list what didn’t go so well. It is beneficial to examine all areas of your life, including health/wellness, finances, career, leisure, personal growth, relationships and spirituality.
Some people prefer to evaluate their success by the area of their life, or some simply brainstorm all their achievements on the same page. If you choose this latter approach, you may even wish to go back and the organize your achievements by life area. You could even formalize the process further, by typing it up on your computer and printing if off. Organize yourself however you’d like. As long as you do the exercise.
Where?
Complete your personal improvement review preferrably in an inspiring, uplifting, or comfortable environment, one that also gives you enough privacy so that you can fully concentrate on reflecting back. One of my friends James, checked himself into a nice hotel in his home city, so that he could celebrate the entire process of not only documenting his improvements and accomplishments, but also so that he could celebrate the fact that he was even doing the actual exercise! To this day, James is one of the most successful people that I know, – both financially and in terms of pursuing what he is most passionate about. I’ve seen him make dramatic improvements and changes in his life, all for the better.
Good luck getting started!
Cheers!
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Try the Dynamic Goal Setting and Motivation Program for Women
Step 2: Prioritize Your Goals
Step 3: Writing Goals Down
Step 4: Positive Motivation
Step 5: Negative Motivation
Step 6: Identifying and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
Step 7: Changing Habits and Behaviors
How to Set Goals: Brainstorm and write down all your goals!
When it comes down to how to set goals, you don’t need to worry about various categories. When you are in the “idea” phase and brainstorming out all the possibilities for what you might want to pursue in your future, you need not get caught up in categories or the “types” of different goals. Simply write down as many things as possible for what you’d like to do, be or have.
Remember, the sky is the limit! Also, let me give you a very cool tip for this first step on how to set goals. Spend as much time as needed, or as much time as possible on this exercise until you feel as though you have really captured many of the goals that are important to you. Don’t feel as though you have or need any goals? Hmm…Think again, and Read all about what goal setting really means!
Why wouldn’t you want to take your time on this brainstorming exercise? Hey, if you are feeling as though you want to skip this step, let me use my power of comparisons talk on you again… First of all, how many hours a week do you spend watching television? I’m guessing you spend at least 1-2 hours on average. So, why couldn’t you also invest a minimum of an hour on this particular exercise? Do you go to the movie theatre each week, every other week, or even once a month? I guarantee you that, the few hours you invest in this exercise will return much more than the few hours you’ve spent watching shows and movies. And, let me also say, that you’ll have just as much if not more fun!
Here are some awesome motivational goal setting questions that will help you identify all the things that you want to do, become or achieve (you don’t have to answer these, but they will stimulate a lot more ideas for you)! Go nuts, and make a nice big long list! As you learn how to set goals be sure to keep the process fun! After you complete this brainstorming process, you will move on to step 2, which is prioritizing your goals.
Goal Setting Questions to Help You Brainstorm!
1. What things do I want to do with my life?
2. What kind of person do I want to become?
3. What do I want to become known for?
4. What is my life purpose or mission?
5. What material possessions would I like to have?
6. What do I want to move toward?
7. What would I like to have in life?
8. How do I want to focus my time and energy?
9. What does my ideal lifestyle look like?
10. What do I want to experience?
11. What sorts of activities am I so passionate about that I would gladly get up at 5:30am to start them?
12. What do I find myself daydreaming and fantasizing about all the time?
13. If a genie could grant me one wish, what would I wish for? 
Congratulations for finishing step 1 on how to set goals! If you now have a nice, long list of your goals, you are further ahead than most people! Most people figure – “what’s the point” and don’t even bother. You are now ready to move on to step 2, which is prioritizing your goals.
Using my motivational questions, you’ll have no problem buckling down and deciding what it is that you want to focus on! Are you still wondering how to set goals? You are well on your way!
Step 2: Prioritize Your Goals
Step 3: Writing Goals Down
Step 4: Positive Motivation
Step 5: Negative Motivation
Step 6: Identifying and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
Step 7: Changing Habits and Behaviors
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Evolving Achievements: What Savvy Women Know
Throughout my journey of personal development, I’ve realized that great achievements are comprised of a series of small steps, efforts and actions that have evolved over time into what are often perceived as big, notable achievements.
As a woman who is very passionate and ‘obsessed’ with her personal development, I would describe myself as overly ambitious, and often times frustrated by anything that resembles status-quo living. Just like you, I’ve had the tendency to want ‘more’, or ‘different’ in my life now, as opposed to later.
Interestingly, we live in a culture in which we are continually bombarded by success stories in the media that misrepresent how people actually achieve their goals.
We typically hear about the “rags to riches” stories of a people making millions of dollars in the marketplace, turning a home-based business into a multi-million dollar company, suddenly becoming a famous actress, and so forth.
The media always focuses on the end-result of the journey, – the destination. No one ever hears about the complex journey that often times comes before.
This is not to say that huge achievements cannot happen within a short period of time, because they can, and they do. For most people however, achievement is something that evolves and grows with time.
The journey is not about a race, it’s about setting and sticking to your own pace. My personal motto has always been, “one step a day is the only way!”
As you approach your goals remember to exercise patience. If you’re obsessed and passionate about your personal development, you’re probably quite busy working toward your goals, and, probably feeling quite inpatient.
One of the side effects to being a savvy, ambitious woman who is overly passionate about her achievement, is something called cognitive dissonance. While creating cognitive dissonance is necessary to make your goals a reality, it can also make your life a living hell if you aren’t careful.
Once you create a clear, detailed picture of your dreams, things can get pretty hectic. You constantly think, talk and act on your goals consistently. As a result, even though you haven’t achieved your goal, in some small way it feels like it has already happened, and that it is already a reality.
The only problem, is that it hasn’t happened yet, and there is a gap between your current reality and your expectations. This is called cognitive dissonance. While experiencing this gap ensures you stay motivated and in action, if you’re not careful you can become quite impatient and frustrated with yourself.
In my own experience, I’ve described this feeling as exploiting my intellectual and spiritual resources, and feeling empty inside. There have been times where I’ve felt quite productive and proud of my efforts, yet it came at the expense of living unconsciously.
Remember the story of the tortoise and hare? Slow and steady will win the ‘race’. It’s about being consistent, and developing the habits that will make your dreams a reality! As much as your passion might be your strength, it can also be your Achilles heal. There is wisdom in knowing when it is time to make leaps and strides versus when it is time to stick to your ‘baby steps’.
Think about some of your character qualities that you are proud of. You probably didn’t become a different person overnight, but rather you honed and developed your character over time. Think about some of the most meaningful things you’ve accomplished in your lifetime. How did they unfold? Was it suddenly, within a few days, months or even years?
Regardless of whether you are at a point in your life where you are taking baby steps, leaps or great strides, and regardless of how quickly you take those steps, – remember this:
Your journey to achieving your dreams is a process as opposed to a single event that happens ‘overnight’.
No doubt that as a busy, savvy woman, there will be times when you will need to take comfort in knowing that you are moving forward, period. Sometimes, baby steps are good enough.
Each step you take toward your dreams, is a step forward. Move toward your dreams with confidence, power and pride. Step forward consciously, and enjoy the journey!
Cheers,
Allison
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