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The Only Way to Reach Our Goals…… Keep Moving!

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Keep Going Graphic

Don’t Even Look Back!

Why in the world do we often fall prey to the same demons time and time again?! I mean, once we gain a little ground on them, wouldn’t you think we’d never go back?  Don’t reasonable people learn from their mistakes and never make the same one ever again?

They absolutely do!  In Fairy Tales.

The problem is, we’re all predisposed to certain pitfalls of life.  Some people are wired to have outrageous mood swings.  They can be laughing and joking one minute and angrily searching out a confrontation the next.  Others (Who….. Me?) are careless and footloose with money, then stare in wide-eyed wonder at the cobwebs in their piggy bank.

Some people procrastinate, seemingly for a living.  They’re so good at putting things off that it’s a wonder they manage to get anything done.  Their opposites are just as amusing, they are so hyper-busy, I’m convinced that they don’t actually fall asleep at night.  I think their family gets annoyed with them and knocks them out.

The bottom line:   All of the bad traits in the world have multiple owners and we have the title to at least one of them.

I can accept that.  I’ve come to expect my bad traits and habits to make themselves known on a daily basis.  It’s a game we’ve played for many years.  Keeps life interesting, I guess.  But what I absolutely can’t stand is when these traits get the better of me and I trip over them – falling into a pit…  A pit that’s all too familiar to me. I spend money the minute it’s in my hand, then wonder why I don’t have any.

I keep doing the same things I’ve been doing, expecting the outcome to be different this time.  Someone once said that habit was “crazy” and this would be me not exactly disagreeing.

In addition to money, I also struggle with consistency in eating healthy. I will go along, beautifully, for about a week and then… TROUBLE in the form of an order of French fries or a tall glamorous drink from Starbucks filled with calories (come to think of it, Starbucks spells doom for me on both fronts, healthy eating AND spending… uh oh, not a happy realization).

So, it’s back to step #1.  Time to start all over again.

The rest of this short, hopefully encouraging, dissertation will include you in the pit with me so watch for I to become we). Don’t worry… I’ll share my Starbucks with you.

We can’t just expect things to happen in life just because we want them to.  If we aren’t proactively pursuing our goals or personal improvements, we aren’t going to gain on them.  And if we let our guard down for just one second…. we’re done.

I don’t particularly like shining a spotlight on my weaknesses.  After all, it kind of goes against the stereotypical, average blogger, right?  Most people online lead you to believe they’re so close to perfection that you should pay them just to speak to them.  Actually, some are looking for ways to charge you just for saying their name.

They photoshop their lives along with their pictures! Was that mean? I apologize… I get that way when I know my fries and I are about to become strangers.

I’m not interested in coming across as perfect.  I’m interested in one thing – helping people, with my very humble efforts, to find the best in themselves and, thereby, getting the most from life.  Which is why I’m writing this post.  I’m giving you what I wish I’d given myself years ago.

If you have goals you are working toward, stop for a minute and ask yourself if you’re still fighting for what you want or if you’re on the verge of a “break” – take it from me, these breaks will break YOU.  Never stop – heck, don’t even slow down.  If you think you’re doing all you can to reach your goal, dig down and give it more.

If, like me, you’re closer to broke than breaking – keep your chin up. Very often in life, it takes that one final discouragement to get our attention and spur us on to success.  How many people do we read about who find their financial success after bankruptcy?

I did actually recently win a battle that I can’t help being kind of proud of. I had a HUGE obsession with chips (corn chips, Doritos, Cheetos, Funyuns…). I’d keep a bag in the kitchen and pretty much eat from it throughout the day. About a month ago, I decided to make a smart switch and began keeping Cheerios (my favorite is the blueberry variety) on hand to snack on during the day.

I lost 5 pounds!

Wherever you are on the road that leads to your goal, don’t stop chugging along.  In fact, pick up the pace!  If you’ve fallen, get up.  If you’re walking, run.  If you’re running… look out, I’m right behind you.

You’ll know it’s me when you smell the blueberry Cheerios! ~ Joi (“Joy”)

Goal-Setting Infographic: How to Write a 5 Year Plan

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Can you imagine setting off for a new restaurant without the address? Or taking off for a vacation without first mapping your route? We’d think either one of these scenarios were borderline nuts, wouldn’t we? Yet, if we have goals and don’t write down how we intend to achieve them, are we really all that far from the proverbial nut bowl???

Whatever goals you have, start taking them more seriously. If you don’t start treating them more as GOALS and less like WISHES, you may never get where you want to go, achieve what you want to achieve, or obtain what you… oh, you get the idea.

The first step to take when it comes to goal-setting is to make a plan. Write it out. The infographic below will help lead the way.

Infographic: How to Write a 5 Year Plan to Achieve Your Goals

Source: Essay Tigers

A word about the infographics you see on Self Help Daily: I do not create these infographics. They are created by individuals who send them to me to share with my readers, in exchange for the link you will always find below the infographic.

If you send infographics to me for Self Help Daily, thanks! I love them as much as my readers do – however, please realize that I am not always able to publish them immediately. They will need to fit into the flow of what is being published on Self Help Daily (or any of my blogs, for that matter). I try to space infographics out, so each one gets the attention and potential to be shared across social media that will benefit the sender and readers.

If you send the infographic, please know that 9-1/2 times out of 10 I have received it. What’s more, I have placed it into my Self Help Daily folder and will use it as soon as I possibly can.  As long as the infographic is useful to my readers, I will share it with them.  Thanks, again – there are some amazingly talented people out there making these beauties! ~ Joi

How to Write an Action Plan to Achieve Goals

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Achieving Goals Infographic
When it comes to goals, a lot of people have a tendency to call them by the wrong name: dreams, hopes, wishes… While there’s nothing wrong with any of these words (personally, I’m smitten with each one), when we use words like this we kind of take ourselves out of the equation. Dreams, hopes, and wishes – they more or less indicate that success will come at random.

Just by wishing for it! 

While I’m all for positive thought and believe firmly that we can produce more positivity in our lives by first being positive, ourselves, good things do not just happen because we want them to. Work and/or prayer produce desired outcomes.. and when the two team up, look out.

The infographic, above, is on the same page I am.

  • Identify your Goal
  • Write it Down
  • Make a Plan
  • Carry it Out
  • See it Through
  • Drink Coffee (okay, I went a little off track – couldn’t help myself)
  • Keep Your Cool – the best things in life aren’t always easy to obtain. But, boy, are they worth it!

~ Joi

Source: WriteThisEssay.com

How to Keep Your Resolutions

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Quote About Keeping Resolutions

I love Thursday Throwback posts on the Self Help Blog.  As a book lover, I get a special thrill out of reaching back into the distant past and retrieving a piece of brilliance left for us.  When they wrote these wonderful words, the authors, no doubt, hoped that the words would reach as many people as possible.  That’s why I LOVE to see others doing their best to keep old books that are in the public domain alive and well.   Riches untold lie in the books that are lying around in attics and musky used book stores.  The authors would want their words dusted off, revived, and put in front of a whole new generation.

Whenever I type in one of these articles or excerpts from great authors of the past, I always imagine them walking the earth today. I try to imagine what they’d make of our dress, the way we talk, our hairstyles, and cars!  Can you imagine what’d they’d think of today’s cars?  I’m obsessed with the idea of bringing these great men and women back to teach and inspire us, because they have so much to teach us. Even if their words and expressions are different from our own, their knowledge is priceless.

It’s a special joy for me to share excerpts from my personal favorite  authors like Grenville Kleiser.  The following article appeared in one of Kleiser’s books (from 1917), Inspiration and Ideals.  As always with Thursday Throwbacks, I’ll remind you that I”m typing the words in just as they are written in the book in 1917.

Put Your Ideas Into Practice

by Grenville Kleiser

Make more positive resolutions regarding the things you ought to do. Bring every available reinforcement to bear upon such resolutions.  Write down on a card the special things you resolve to do, and read it several times a day.  Repeat it aloud at frequent intervals.  Assert in vigorous tones of voice the thoughts you wish to establish as unconscious habits of your life.  The best means of impressing new resolutions upon your mind is by concentration, iteration, and vigorous assertion.

At the close of every day review your thoughts and actions, and know precisely what you have done with your new resolutions. It is a great thing to conceive a great idea, but it is still greater to put it into execution.

– From Inspiration and Ideals by Grenville Kleiser, 1917

It’s funny, isn’t it. When we think of the word RESOLUTIONS, we think of New Year’s Day.  Yet, resolutions are simply things we’ve resolved to do or keep from doing. We can (and certainly should) make resolutions all year – not just at the first.  If we, as Kleiser suggests, wrote these resolutions down on index cards and confronted them several times a day (as opposed to writing them down at the fist of the year, and never looking at them again!), we’d stand a much better chance of turning them from resolutions into reality.

Resolutions, or goals, should be made often and confronted daily.  The Grenville article above was plucked from a book in which he gave advice and motivation for each day of the year – much like devotions.  This particular one actually fell on the date March 7 – far removed from New Year’s Day.  Just a reminder that we need to think about self improvement and growth every day of the year, not just the first one.

“The best means of impressing new resolutions upon your mind is by concentration, iteration, and vigorous assertion.” – Grenville Kleiser

 

New Year’s Day: Self Improvement’s Holiday

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A few days ago, my youngest daughter Stephany declared that New Year’s Day was her second-favorite holiday (behind Christmas).  As visions of cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving Day parades, Easter bunnies and baskets, fireworks, and Valentine’s Day candy danced around my head, I asked, “Seriously?!”

Then the younger schooled the older.

She said that she just loved the whole premise of “fresh starts” and putting into action things you’d learned (sometimes the hard way) in the previous year.  As she explained it, even the Easter bunnies stopped dancing and listened.

As Thelma from Scooby Doo fame would say, “Jenkies! She’s got something.”   I’d have gone on putting candy hearts above New Year’s Day…. if not for that meddling kid.

The whole premise of fresh starts occurred to me a few nights ago.   As you know, there are few places I’d rather be than in my kitchen cooking.  I LOVE to cook and trying out new recipes (most of which I kind of make up as I go along) is a personal joy.  I wanted to make homemade re-fried beans a few nights ago to accompany cheese enchiladas, Mexican rice and guacamole with chips.  I was in a bit of a hurry, so I plucked a random recipe from an old cookbook.  It wasn’t an Authentic Mexican cookbook, so I had serious doubts.  I mean, if you want excellent re-fried beans, you have to go to the source of the most excellent re-fried beans ever.

Like I said, I was in a hurry and more times than not haste makes waste.  In this case, a waste of time.

The beans were a bitter disappointment – canned would have been better!

As I was cleaning up after the meal, I thought how I wished I could reverse time and have a “Do Over.”  I’d have backed time up a little bit and sought out a good, authentic Mexican recipe – as opposed to grabbing the first one I found.

Unfortunately, there are no do overs in life.

Or are there?

In a way, New Year’s day is all about DO OVERS.  What better time to think back over the past year(s) and ask yourself, “What would I like to DO OVER?”  Here’s our chance to get it right this time.  Take a minute to reflect over the past year.

  • What were some things you “got right?” Think of the great decisions you made and of the times you wowed yourself.  Vow to keep heading in the right direction and finish what you’ve started.
  • What’s the biggest mistake you made last year? No doubt you learned something from it – even if it was a whopper!  Our mistakes are like very strict teachers, there’s nothing remotely enjoyable about them but we learn from them like nothing else.  A lot of people say we should never think about our past mistakes – to just pretend they never happened.  I’m not so sure I’m totally on board that thought train.  Agreed, we shouldn’t dwell on them to the point of agony and we should NEVER allow ourselves to become racked with guilt or self-pity (neither’s attractive or productive). However, if we don’t acknowledge the mistake(s) and acknowledge the lessons learned, we won’t learn a single thing.
  • What areas of your life (personal and professional) have room for improvement?  Vow to do whatever it is you have to do to improve yourself… and thereby your life… in the coming year.

Here’s a little something I’ll share with you and only you.  I’ve admitted the re-fried beans gaffe, what else have I got to lose?!  Last year, thanks to a couple of my daughters who joined me in a great walking routine, I dropped some unwanted and unappreciated weight.  During the course of spring and summer, I lost 15 pounds!  When I went to my doctor, she asked me what I’d been doing and said she was impressed.  Always good to impress the doctor.

In August, however, I hurt my right foot.  I dropped a heavy glass jar right on the top of the foot (why oh why do we Kentuckians so rarely wear shoes around the house?!?! ). I’m certain I cracked a bone.  Anyway, as you can imagine, the walking routine suffered.  I tried, against better judgment, to keep walking but I ended up making the foot worse.  I’d walk through the pain, but I wasn’t able to walk as fast as normal.

If I had been as smart as I sometimes like to think I am, I would have made CERTAIN to adjust my diet accordingly.  But, noooo, I kept eating like normal and gained back 10 of the 15pounds.  When you’re on thyroid medicine, 10 pounds DO NOT COME OFF EASY.  Believe me, it’s a fight.  Yet, I managed to take them off anyway.  I felt great!  Unfortunately, it was all but a wasted effort because I didn’t devise a diet plan.  When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And fail I did.

It’d be really easy to get discouraged and say, “Forget it!” It’d be even easier to feel sorry for myself for what happened to my poor foot.  But I’m adamant that the elusive 10 come off again and would love if they coax about 10 more friends to follow them! Feeling sorry for yourself and allowing discouragement to take center stage get you nowhere, and I’m not interested in going nowhere!

The point is, my mistake was a painful one. It was infuriating and I still grumble underneath my breath at myself.  But I learned something in the process. One of my biggest flaws is that I tend to be flighty and assume everything will just take care of itself.  I tend to live in my own little world and am not proactive nearly enough.  While I do like myself,  sometimes I don’t make it easy.

As we head into 2011, think back over 2010 and ask yourself what you wish you’d done differently.  If you had the chance, what would you have done over?  While we can’t go back and take a second crack at it (oooh, my foot didn’t like that choice of words), we CAN arm ourselves with a valuable lesson and new-found resolve.  Who knows where that can lead us… but won’t it be wonderful to find out?