3 Steps To Refresh When You Feel Stalled In Reaching Your Goals
The splash of refresh to your life when you feel stalled in reaching your goals.
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Remember back in December and the beginning of January when you pulled out your journal and planned your goals and actions for the year? If you didn’t start by writing them down and planning, then learn why writing goals (repeatedly mind you!) is an essential step in reaching them.
But let’s say you did, and now it is mid-February and perhaps you feel stalled. The progress is slow - or not happening at all. You see your goals and energy whizzing by as you consider compromising on those big plans that you made at the beginning of the year.
Believe me, I get it, and I’m here to offer help by sharing my refresh plan comprised of three tips to get you (and me) back on target.
A quick search on the web and the article, “How to Get Unstuck And Back On Track To Achieving Your Goals,” by Laura Leigh Clark of LifeHack, talks about finding your flow and understanding where your pain points are with tasks you don’t like doing.
Clark suggests you create two lists: one of the activities that flow easily for you and another of the tasks that you procrastinate and push against which signifies pain.
I thought her list idea was useful, but her conclusion was to spend more time on those things where you have flow and consider outsourcing those things that cause you pain. But in this world, I AM THE TOOL TO MY CHANGE, and I can’t pass off the work. So I took Clark’s idea of flow and came up with these three ideas here.
1. Step back and review your goals and what you’re doing each day to reach them.
Look at what you originally wrote down for goals and see if they still resonate. Then make a quick review of your daily activities that you’ve logged in your bullet journal to see how often you are meeting daily tasks and how those align with the larger goals.
I’ve created HUGE and frightening goals for the year, but there are lots of little steps to take to get to the big ones, and I’ll be pleased if I keep on track with the little ones at the very least.
Part of stepping back was to look at the space where I spend most of my time working to achieve these big goals. I knew my office was messy, but then I surveyed it from a distance. When I took pictures, I realized it was an unmitigated disaster. How can I create good work in such chaos? The space has got to be impacting my flow!
So, I went right out and signed up for Get Organized Gal’s 7 Days to An Organized Office. The first day was the biggest investment where I pulled everything out and started to assess it for keep, shred, donate, and toss.
Once I stepped back I realized I let my home office get out of control. Yikes!
My messy desk.
Maybe for you, the “step back and observe” phase wouldn’t involve your work space, but check in with yourself on those goals and see if what you do each day is working toward them.
2. Get tough tasks done first!
As per Clark’s article, sometimes, you can outsource the things you don’t want to do because they cause pain and don’t work within your flow. But I think the root of pain is in the thinking (a hard thing to manage sometimes!) and the timing.
I recognize that timing has a great deal to do with getting the challenging stuff done, just as I’m certain that French fries and sriracha are wonderful. If I don’t do the hard stuff first, then the likelihood of doing it diminishes with each passing moment.
For me, this means if I sit at my computer before exercising, I will have sabotaged that goal. The mini habit is only 10 minutes. Certainly, I can do that for 10 minutes before I start clicking on the keyboard.
If you don’t have the option to outsource the things you don’t want to do, examine doing them first, and get them DONE. Then you can feel very good about yourself for the REST of your day and enjoy the flow of other activities.
3. Be diligent; be realistic. Don’t slay yourself for sabotage just acknowledge it happens.
As I said at the beginning of the post, I have a HUGE goal. It’s one I’ve only shared with my journal, but I’m trying to do everything in my power to reach it so that at least I can say I’ve tried.
There is extra motivation because I spent the last two years joyfully caring for my grandson, which limited how much I could work. My precious little guy is now happily engaged in daycare and I’m ready to burn into my goals ferociously.
But there are lots of smaller steps to the bigger goal. They are about changing habits incrementally, and that is slow work. I think turtle here and try not to get bummed with slow progress.
Give yourself a chance to make small steps toward the progress you want and remember that your brain and your very human nature will try to undermine your conscious efforts. Just acknowledge primal brain actions are brewing and take that next step forward. Your life of moving forward is your adventure, and you can get there.
There is no magic elixir for hard work, but doing it bit-by-bit, over-and-over again each day works. Remind yourself you are a work in progress, and the goal is to move forward. January has passed and now we are in February, but each day is a fresh beginning to reevaluate and start all over again. Join me!
All stuff is out after day one of taking the Get Organized Gal course. Onward to day two!
Sherry is the founder of Storied Gifts a personal publishing service of family and company histories. She and her team help clients curate and craft their stories into books. When not writing or interviewing, Sherry spends loads of time with her grandchildren and lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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