Wednesday, December 21, 2016

The Alternative To New Year's Resolutions


You probably saw Coach Ty’s post on how he was successful with New Year’s Resolutions.  By creating goals he was really able to make a lot of his dreams come true which is great and I for one am really excited to see some of the things he’s accomplished!  


As Ty mentioned, some people make New Year’s Resolutions and some people do not.  I personally do not. 


Throughout my life and career I have always been pushed by others to make goals.  In most cases focusing on goals for me has not resulted in success, especially the kind of success that others wanted me to have.  Isn’t the success I envision for myself most important though?  I have found that people find success in life via different pathways.  Many who are successful in corporate environments or mainstream culture, for example, are that way because they thrive on having structure and analyzing their behavior to identify whether it falls in line with social norms.  These environments are where goals (and in-turn New Year’s Resolutions) are most common and often most effective.


But not everyone identifies with that mindset.  If your motiv8tion is historically driven more by emotion and intuition connected to a sense of personal identity, you may find that the mentality you experience from goal-setting can be counterproductive to accomplishing what you want out of life.   


I used to make New Year’s Resolutions all the time then, one year I thought, “Why are you choosing now to make a change in your life that you haven’t chosen to make the other 364 days of the year?”  If I had the mindset to change something about my life right now in the moment why did I need to start in The New Year?  Why not START NOW?  I was always connecting a future action to a future date, meaning I wasn’t really ready to change.  New Year’s Resolutions were my way of trying to connect a lack of action to an outward factor that I had no control over.  I didn’t get something done over the past year or several years that I “needed” to so I decided that things will be different NEXT year.  But, everything GREAT I’ve ever done in life started by me JUMPING and making a decision right then and there to do it, not waiting for a sign or a meaningful time to start.  I immersed myself in the experience of doing it.  The time to start is NOW, even if it’s a tiny step just start doing the work!

New Year’s Resolutions are all about goals usually.  But goals often focus on what you don’t have.  Live life thinking that your worth is always in accomplishing the next goal and you never truly value your current state of existence.  I used to have a burning desire to have an attractive body, have people admire (or be jealous of) me, have accomplishments to brag about, have a high-paying job, have a brand new, custom-built house, have 3 cars in the garage, have nice clothes and jewelry.  Want to know what happened once I finally obtained those things?  MISERY…because someone else always had something better, because by focusing on what I didn’t have there was always a NEW thing I didn’t have but mostly because I never valued the process that it took to get there.  Instead I just made new goals for “more”.  I was never present.  See the trend there?


What about making New Year’s Resolutions TRULY made me happy?  My goals, much like others’, often focused on improving some part of myself that wasn’t a strength for me, which meant I was never focused on using my strengths to better my life.  I can tell you from my first hand experience that a life lived doing what society expects you to in order to be “successful” is a one-way ticket to UNhappiness.  I’ve lived that life…it was awful.  Goals give us the impression that what we have today isn’t “enough”.  We have to achieve more, we have to obtain more, we have to earn more.  Why can’t we give ourselves the respect to know that what we experience today can give us all the joy we desire!?


Check out the most common regrets after a long life.  Making sure these are never on my list is my basis for success in life, not whether I achieved a New Year’s Resolution: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/top-5-regrets-of-the-dying_n_3640593.html
    

Which brings me to my final point about New Year’s Resolutions.  What is your reason for making them in the first place?  Are you choosing to make a change that other people define a successful person by?  Or are you choosing to make them because it fits your values as a person and helps you follow your passion?  It should feel right to you, that gut feeling (your intuition) should tell you what’s best for you rather than analyzing your life to create a goal which may be arbitrary to developing into your best self. If you truly know your values and what you WANT out of life, you shouldn’t need a New Year’s Resolution to do the things you feel you “NEED” to do.  It doesn’t take resolutions or even goals for me to evaluate whether my actions fit into my vision of life.  That’s the beauty of knowing who you are!  Every time I’m pushed by others or by social pressure to make a goal I ask myself, “Does this fit with my vision for what I WANT out of life?”  If the answer is “no” there is nothing in this world that will make me accomplish that goal.  So, I don’t waste my time on it!

Steps to creating success for 2017 without using New Year's Resolutions:

1. Start NOW, there's no better time!  You're either ready or your not!
2. Identify your strengths and place attention on developing them rather than weaknesses.
3. Determine who you want to be, define values that support that person and constantly evaluate your behavior against them.


I have a confession to make:  I have been unhappy for much of 2016.  That unhappiness stems from constantly placing pressure on myself to create something that doesn’t exist in this current moment.  I have made goals for myself personally and for my business, telling myself that what exists now isn’t enough.  BUT, the reason I’ve made decisions for the past 5 years to live my “dream life” wasn’t to make a bunch of money or to be the “biggest” or the “best”, it was to share my wisdom to help other people that I know are struggling with the same life that I used to live.  I have allowed a constant life of “lack” to drag me down into a pit of despair over what I don’t have, not what I DO have that’s right in front of me today.  I have been so focused on making goals that it caused me to drop out of a race for the first time in my life, that it led me astray in prioritizing my business over my family and friends, that it removed my passion for the values I hold dear in my life in pursuit of a vision of “success”.


Unhappiness caused by focusing on what I lack or am not good at isn’t success to me.  It’s failure!  And if I truly want change in my life, the time is NOW, not in The New Year! J

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

How to Change Your Life in 2017

Whats Up Motiv8ers,

Today I want to talk to you about a tool that I have kinda forgotten about over the past 5 months.  I was going back through some of my old emails and I came across an email that I wrote at the end of last year entitled, "How I changed my life in 2015."

I clicked on it instantly forgetting I had even wrote it.  Reading it brought tears to my eyes because it reminded of just how passionate I was about setting goals and not letting anything stand in the way of what I wanted to accomplish.  It reminded me of how aggressive I went after my dreams in 2015.

Reading this email got me fired up to get off my butt and start getting ready for 2017.

Motiv8ers this email was about New Year Resolutions and about what I did at the end of 2014 to make 2015 such an EPIC year.  2016 has been just as special but over the past few months I haven't been following the steps below that I followed every day in 2015.  

Check out the story about my 2015 below....

How I changed my life in 2015!
 
 
All through out my life I have never been a person to set New Year Resolutions.  Every one around me just always complained about how they would set a few but would always fall off after just a few weeks.  So I labeled it as rubbish and went into each new year without much direction.  I just lived day to day just wondering what my future was going to look like not really taking control of my life.  Yeah I have accomplished a little bit.  Received two bachelor degrees, joined the Army, ran a few marathons and ultra marathons, and later became a group fitness trainer.   But I always felt kinda lost not really understanding what exactly I wanted to do with my life!
   
Then around the middle of 2014 something clicked.  I started paying attention to a ton of podcasts and self help audio books.  I used to think these things were rubbish as well but the people around me kept pushing me to pay attention to them.  So I did.  After a few months of listening and studying I began to notice that they all started to say the same thing! 
   
If you want to be successful and live your Dream life you have to first know what that dream life looks like and what is it that you want to accomplish.  If you don't know what you want.... how are you ever going to figure out what to do or how to be successful!
   
So I asked myself what did I want?  That was a really hard question.  It felt like I had never asked myself that before.  But for the Next two weeks I asked myself every day.  Then on New Years Eve, before 2015, I wrote all of those wants and goals down.  I took two big poster boards and wrote down everything that I wanted to accomplish and posted them up on my wall.  Check it out.....

 
These posters have been on my wall all year.
 
Then Motiv8ers over the next year I practiced these steps every day!
 
1. Decide what it is you want to accomplish in all areas of your life  
2. Write those goals down and put them somewhere where you can see them every day  
3. Review them every day for at least 5 minutes.
 4. Figure out what you need to learn and practice daily in order to accomplish your goals!
 
  So what happened?.........
 
2015 became my most productive, emotional, EPIC, painful, roller coaster ride, Enjoyable, Loving, rewarding, exhausting, Exciting....year of my whole life!...... 

NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I LIVED AS MUCH AS I HAVE IN 2015.
   
Crew I have made some friggin amazing relationships, I ran a 100 mile race, Been killing it in other races, went on some killer trips to the mountains, have met some of my closest friends, found a life that I love, I feel the drive to try and help as many folks as possible, and the biggest accomplishment so far is......Building a business with my closest friends.   

Motiv8 has been a dream come true.
 
Crew my biggest year ever in my life all started with me writing down my goals on two poster boards and posting it up on my wall and looking at it every day!
 
Did I accomplish every thing I put on my board.  No.....But that doesn't mean I am going to stop trying.  That goal just might take a little longer than the others.  =)

So take your 2016 New Year Resolution planning seriously.  I sure am. 
 
 I am going to put even more details and goals down this year and see what I can make happen in 2016!
   
Crew if you found this message helpful then please check out this quick video from one of my Idols Brendon Burchard on how to learn Faster!  Promise you will love it!  
 
   
So Crew are you going to SET some New Year Resolutions for 2017?

You should!!

But don't just mentally say to yourself on New Years Day I am going to do this or that.  Start now with reflecting on your year.  What went well?  What didn't go well?  Then over the next two weeks start writing out your dream life.

This is important.  What is your DREAM LIFE?  Ask yourself every day for the next two weeks and each morning for about 5 minutes sit down and write out what your dream life would look like.  Then write down what you would have to do every day to make that dream life happen.

Then, when New Years Eve comes, write all of those goals, dreams, and daily tasks down and once New Years Day hits, you take off running.  Every day for about 3 to 5 minutes remind yourself and look over those goals so you can generate the Motiv8ion you need to take action daily on making your dream life happen.

Motiv8ers that is what it takes to get Motiv8ed for 2017 and make EPIC SH$T Happen.  =)

Crew if you found this post motiv8ional then post below and let us know how you set your New Year Resolutions.

Lets Stay EPIC Together.

Crew Stay EPIC and Don't Forget to Be AWESOME!

Coach Ty Out!