Are You Not Growing?

Feeling stagnation for me is the most frustrating feeling in the world. That said this concept is completely in your head and is a byproduct of focusing on the problem and negative emotions associated with it rather than the steps that it will take to get to goals.

Be positive and don’t let your mind beat you even when things seem like they’re not going in the direction you want. The first step is to get yourself to a positive place where you can think clearly to achieve your goals and feel a sense of excitement about a positive vision of the future.

Now that you’re positive set a goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. A detailed goal is important as if you don’t know what specifically you are trying to achieve how will you know when you have achieved it and can move onto the next goal? Create affirmation statements associated with your goal to compound your positivity and believe in goal achievement.

On the other side of this though is a disconnect with your current reality which you want to avoid. Facing your reality and accepting it is the third step as you will want to identify the needs gap to get to your future positive vision. All this said though you cannot let your reality pull you away mentally from the vision that you have and must have faith that your vision will be a reality. Don’t let anything – other people, situations, or more importantly the thoughts in your head become barriers to your success. Do not tolerate this from anyone including yourself in a positive way that promotes growth rather than tear people down.

Once you’ve identified your positive future vision, your current state, and the gap between your current state and your positive future vision then create an action plan down to the daily level that will allow you to experiment with different approaches and measuring results to try and fail in an iterative loop as you get closer toward your goal. Schedule these actions on a calendar and focus solely on those. Turn off your TV, your phone, your email and chat notifications and just focus completely on the present task as you refine your actions and plan closer to your goal. As you become better at this you will develop a habit and it will be easy.

During this process you will have negative doubting thoughts that will distract you from your activity. This is great because it give you the opportunity to reinforce the belief in your future vision and strengthen your resolve to act. If you develop a habit to think about how to take a positive step towards your goal immediately after a negative one then you can achieve anything that you desire. This process is simple and repeatable. What it will do for you is to reduce the uncertainty that you feel. Given that we live in an uncertain world you have to be self assured that you can and will get what you want out of your life. For me the most important thing to success is faith.

This all comes back to self talk and you have to analyze a few different things. How do you talk to yourself? How do you guide yourself along the way and coach yourself to get to your goals? I notice that the way I talk to myself and the way I treat myself is the same way I do with others. So be kind to yourself. Help yourself to break down barriers to achieving what you want.

When you start to get the wheel spinning in the right direction it is now time to get other people to come with you. Other people will always be willing to help if you let them. Use the same steps you use for yourself to create a collective vision and get the wheels spinning towards that eventuality. You’ll start to find that once you get your momentum going you can literally see yourself in your future state as if it has already happened. This feeling is one of the best you can feel.

Once the wheels are spinning it is imperative to focus on logic. Capture interaction and activity through recordings to find patters that are successful and how to minimize the unsuccessful ones. Get feedback from multiple believable people who have done what you are trying to achieve. With your team start to understand their current state and the barriers they are having. Incrementally improving will ultimately get us to our collective vision.