5 ways to achieve your goals

5 ways to achieve your goals

Over the years I have had many conversations with people, who on discovering I’m a hypnotherapist, told me “I tried hypnotherapy once, and it didn’t work‘.
This used to REALLY wind me up and I would jump to the defence of hypnotherapy and try to convince them of how powerful hypnotherapy was and that it really did work if you were working with the right therapist!

Fast-forward several years and in such conversations I simply smile and ask ‘did you learn to drive after only one lesson?‘.

In The Principles of Success by Jack Canfield (brilliant book btw), he writes that if you were to take an axe to a tree every single day, take a swipe at it, eventually the tree would topple.
I love this analogy because it reminds us that if you do something everyday towards achieving a goal, you will eventually get there.

You wouldn’t expect to run a marathon after only going for a jog once would you?  Or be able to speak Spanish after attending one class?  Or learn to Tango after one dance?

So why is it that in life we sometimes fall at the first hurdle and declare ‘tried that and it didn’t work!’?

Anything you want to achieve, you will achieve, when you apply consistency to the mixture.  Add to that these 5 principles for success and whatever you want to succeed in, you will.

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1. Why?

What is your why?  Why do you want something to work? Why do you work in your chosen profession or business? What goal do you want to achieve and WHY?  Write down ALL the reasons WHY you want something to succeed.  When you establish what your ‘WHY’ is, you’ll discover, or rather reconnect, with the emotion behind it – and it is emotion that drives behaviour.  This is a big part of why most people fail to achieve their goals, because they don’t have any strong emotional connection to the goal.

If you want to succeed in something, you have to REALLY want it!  Being self employed for over 6 years, I can resonate with this.  There have been plenty of times that I have lost my mojo, my drive and my determination.  During these times, I take myself back to the reason WHY I set up my business.  I remind myself of the excitement I felt when I discovered the power of hypnosis to transform people’s lives, and I relive that memory, that emotion, and find my way back to my why and it gives me the burst to keep going.

2.  If at first you don’t succeed…..

I’m sure that you have heard the saying ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again‘.  You have already proved to yourself that you can achieve so much!  You have learnt to walk, write, read, dress yourself, speak, feed yourself…you never started to walk, fell over and thought, nope can’t do that!

You picked yourself up time and time again until before long you were walking, skipping, jumping and running all over the place.

As Aristotle said (big Greek Philosopher chap – very clever) “We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then, is not an act, but a habit”

3.  There are no failures in life, only an opportunity to learn

I hear so many times from people, like you, who have given something your all, and the outcome perhaps didn’t match your expectations.  Or you didn’t achieve your goal in the time you wanted and have therefore declared yourself a failure.

An old boss of mine once said to me ‘Sara you don’t need to change the world in 90 days‘.  I used to be the worlds worst for giving myself a hard time if I hadn’t achieved world peace in less than 90 days!

Maybe you didn’t achieve a goal in the way you fully intended, but before you decide you have failed, ask yourself ‘what did you learn from the experience?‘, ‘how have you grown as a result?’; ‘what did you learn about yourself that you didn’t realise before?

4.  Focus on one thing at a time

Have you ever had a day when you’ve been busy but not really achieved that much?  Or experienced a time when all you are doing is going around in circles and not moving forward? I’m sure we can all resonate with this!

A laser beam is powerful because it is ‘focused’ energy.  We cram so much into our lives these days, often spending our time doing things because we think we ‘should’ be doing them.  If you have something you want to achieve then focus on that one thing to the exception of everything else – as much as you can.

I was reminded recently of the need to focus.  I discovered that running a private practice, a wellbeing training company, my day-to-day life, creating a 21st century patient pathway for tackling mental health on the NHS and house hunting simply didn’t go well together!  So I looked at what my priorities were and what I needed to focus on to achieve my goals.  I reached the conclusion that as passionate as I am about getting complementary therapy recognised on the NHS, I would be no good to anyone if I were homeless!

5.  The 5 second window

Mel Robbins wrote the book The 5 second rule.  I’ll save you the cost of buying the book by summing up the principle of the book.
Anything you want to do, you have a 5 second window of opportunity to do it.

For example, if the alarm has gone off and you had the intention of getting up to go for a run or get to a yoga class, you have a 5 second window to leap into action before your brain kicks in and says ‘ah go tomorrow, you really don’t want to leave your warm cosy bed, it’s fine, have another 30 minutes in bed, you need that extra sleep…..’
Recognise that? I do!

Whether it is making a call that you have been putting off, doing the ironing, making it to a yoga class, going for a walk, attending a meet up group – ANYTHING.  Do it within 5 seconds before your lizard brain kicks in and comes up with a host of excuses why not to do it!

In conclusion…

Depending on what your goal is, you may need to apply all of these principles or you may just need to apply one.  My current goal is to find a lovely new (and affordable!) house to buy in Edinburgh, so I am using all of these principles to keep me going!

Like wise, if you are looking for a new relationship, you may need to apply all of these principles to keep you motivated to finding love.

Equally, if your goal is to get the mountain of ironing done, then you may find principle 5 is enough to get you off the sofa and into action.

Either way, no matter how big or small your goals are, you can achieve them!

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