Weekly Evaluation and Planning

Hey guys!

Hope you’ve managed to get some clarity in your goals for 2017 and how to reach them, as this week has been about, finalizing our goalsetting & planning.

This week we’ll implement the new habit of the weekly review, now that’s nothing new for this channel you might say, but in this particular shape it is! Because what I’m talking about concerns your personal development – your weekly evaluation! If you have been listening to my goal setting videos & workshops, you know that I’ve been talking about the importance of having a weekly evaluation to follow up on your goals – a pulse check and course correct if necessary!  But this weekly process doesn’t only concern your goals, it’s a time to reflect on the week that has been and re-ground yourself and get ready for the next week that will come – to schedule!

From now on Every Friday will be a live stream where I firstly go through the challenge of the week in brief, highlights and downers and what the big learnings that can be drawn. That’s the first part of the livestream, the second part is instead focused on each individual – that’s you among others –  effort to reflect on our goals and plan ahead for the week that is to come.

Now there are TONS of different schools on how to go about the weekly evaluation, what questions to ask and in what order to process it. I’ve researched and tried out a bunch of different ones, and In the end, I just think it’s very personal and the only way to find a system that works for you is to start with something, try it out, tweak it, get inspired and eventually you’ll land with something that is perfectly adapted for you. The main idea is simple, elevate yourself from the actions and look at the week and your goals from a bird view perspective. Ask yourself what progress you’ve done and what you haven’t done, and tweak if necessary.

Now to establish a good habit like this, we are using “the habit loop” to design it in a way that will make us crave the habit in the long run:

Weekly Evaluation HABIT:

Que: A time and a place scheduled every week.  (for me it’s going to be Fridays at 18.00 Swedish time, ECT+1h) some people prefer Sundays, but Fridays works best for me. So as soon as I get home from work I’ll be starting to prepare – this will be a holy time scheduled every week!

The Routine: The weekly evaluationGoing through 7 Key area goals, and other important things that may have accord and we need to reflect upon. This Routine will be without any snacks or distractions, the same Album ( TRON – Daft Punk ) and it’s going to be in a maximum of 2 hours. See down below for detailed game plan.

The Reward: Make an awesome dinner with EXACTLY what I want to enjoy to my favourite FUNNY TV-series or with a friend – anchoring the habit with great emotions. I will want to crave this evaluation

 

Based on a few of these I’ve come up with a structure that covers what I think is most important, now this may not be the way that suits you, but your welcome to follow it as a starting point, if your sceptical I’ve put together a playlist with some videos & links that has inspired me to create it the way I have.

 

So the outline for ME today will be:

 

7 Key areas – goal evaluation

  • Have you done what you planned to do this week?
    • If so, why not? Is Course correction necessary; how can you adjust?
    • How did it feel, are you enjoying the process, is it giving you what you hoped it would?
    • Remind yourself of what the Outcome, be specific as specific as possible and then WHY you’re pursuing this goal!
    • What are the next actions and things you’ll do for next week – schedule these!

 

General weekly evaluation:

——————————–

  • Go through you mind and EMPTY YOUR HEAD, get things out that you’ve carried around
  • What were your top 5 moments of the week
  • What 3-5 learnings have you experienced this week – growth comes from reflection and adaptation!
  • Plan you schedule for next week, PUT IT IN BLOCKS OF TIME FOR; socializing, workout, etc ( if you havn’t done it already as part of your goals)
  • Is it something in the upcoming week that has been scheduled earlier that isn’t important anymore? Can it be removed?
  • What could throw me of this week, look over the schedule and make time to be mentally prepared for it.
  • Are my priorities in order, or is there something I need to adjust?
  • Empty your planning system from old notes and clutter that’s not relevant, if you want to keep them, store them in a way that doesn’t clutter your daily activites.
  • Celebrate – you just made it through your first weekly evaluation!

 

Links to other guides:

Weekly Planning Workbook

How to Plan Your Week | The Art of Manliness https://youtu.be/KNxLNY6yxRI

David Allens Getting Things Done (GTD) Weekly template

How I Plan My Day Using Evernote (Tony Robbins RPM Method)

 

Plan an EXTRAORDINARY 2017! Here’s how

A Weekly Habit That Will Help You Stay Motivated All Semester

Planning Your 2017 Goals – Weekly Challenge #40

Hey guys!

Week 3 of 3 in this 2017 goal setting challenge :
Finalizing our 2017 goals & Strategy

It’s Christmas day and many of us are spending a lot of time with family and friends – it’s busy time, but hopefully in a nice way! But it is also an important week that we have ahead of us, as it’s the last days leading up to this great breaking point THE NEW YEAR! The chance to leave the old behind and start fresh – igniting the journey towards our new goals!

Now, for the last two weeks’ we have – ideally – come up with our 2017 goals and with that an action plan for how to reach those goals. But, I know that going through this process takes can be hard and often takes more time than we think. And the importance of preparing and creating a good strategy how to go about our goals and making them last more than a couple of week’s requires that we do this properly – it will dramatically increase our chances of reaching those goals.

That’s why we are giving ourselves one extra week of getting clarity with our goals and finalizing our plans for how to reach them. That means that there still is time – hurray!

So basically nothing new this week and by the end of the week you’ll (IF YOU HAVN’T ALREADY, then great job) have seven goals in in the seven life key areas:

• Spiritual (The area which is hardest to grasp if you haven’t done any active work on previously, but the area that makes the most difference. DON’T neglect! Breathing, meditation, stress-management, finding your true self or any religious believes you may have. Find your path, but start actively looking for it)
• Health (improve your fitness level, eat healthier and better, sleep more?)
• Social: Romance, Family & friends (Want to get a partner, hang our more with your friends and family?)
• Personal development (developing skills, reading books, learning a language or some other project that you just know you have to go after – maybe starting a YouTube channel!)
• Business/career (Do you have a clear direction of where you want to go?)
• Finances (Planning on making a bunch of money? Long-term investment plan?)
• Have Fun (What fun things do you want to do this year?)

( The video for that you’ll find here: http://alexandernilsson.nu/how-to-cre… )

And also a written plan, in some kind of planning system like OneNote or Evernote, for how you are going to reach theses goals. Writing down your plan is a must, you need a place where you can actively work with and frequently update and log your progress on your goals:

• Define the conditions of the goal
• Create an action plan; outline all the relevant alternatives for how you could reach the wanted outcome. Break it down to multiple progressive goals with clear measure points/milestones.
• Among all these alternatives, decide upon the one strategy that (and fits your personal preferences best) will take you towards that goal in the most efficient way.
• Set milestone goals; Every week, 30 days, 90 days, etc.
• Define the first three actions & schedule when you’re going to do them
• Schedule a review & planning session during the weekend and make it holy
• Take the first step on you plan!

(The video for that you’ll find here: http://alexandernilsson.nu/2017-goal-… ) So, good luck and make sure to ask if there are any questions!

/Alexander

Posting schedule:
SUNDAYS: New Weekly Personal Development Challenge
WEEK DAYS: Depending on the challenge, but at least one Video/Vlog at the Wednesdays
FRIDAY: Evaluation of Week Challenge

Join us, raise your standards, and start the journey to become the person you’ve always wanted to be,

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/alexande…

YOU FIND ME AT:
Mail: alexander.s.nilsson@gmail.com
Homepage: www.alexandernilsson.nu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alenils/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alenils
Snapchat: alenils

/With Love, Alexander

How To Create An Action Plan For Your 2017 Goals – WC#39

 

How to reach your 2017 New Year’s Goals

This is a practical step-by-step guide for how create a plan to reach your goals.

So it’s time for part two of this three-week series in this goal setting process of 2017. Last week we made sure to come up with the goals we want to peruse this year. So, if you haven’t seen that video, make sure to do that first (https://youtu.be/U9nYoDhizuQ). Or if you feel eager to get started, make sure you have one goal and apply the process I present. Because this videos are going to be all about HOW TO SET UP A PLAN FOR REACHING YOUR GOALS. Spoiler, it’s not a long to-do-list, because that’s not what’s going make you reach that goal.  Next week will be all about anchoring our plans, taking first actions and having our first weekly goal evaluation process.

To give you a brief idea how that process actually looks like, here’s condensed plan:

  • Review all the goals
  • Prioritize them in order of importance

Starting with the most important one

  • Define the conditions of the goal
  • Create an action plan; outline all the relevant alternatives for how you could reach the wanted outcome. Break it down to multiple progressive goals with clear measure points/milestones.
  • Among all these alternatives, decide upon the one strategy that (and fits your personal preferences best) will take you towards that goal in the most efficient way.
  • Set milestone goals; Every week, 30 days, 90 days, etc.
  • Define the first three actions & schedule when you’re going to do them
  • Schedule a review & planning session during the weekend and make it holy
  • Take the first step on you plan!

“…never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.” – Tony Robbins

So here we are, we have our 8 defined goals that we feel excited about. Because if you don’t, don’t even bother. So that’s why I really want you to ask yourself one last time before you get started, why did you really chose these goals? Be honest. Be truthful. Remember this is all for you, no one else but yourself is going to make this happen. Can you deeply relate to these goals, to you truly believe them. Can you visualise yourself in one year standing there having achieved them. Are they daring enough? If this would be your last year you had the freedom to set your own goals, would they still be the same? Maybe this is the year when you actually make the leap to follow your true dreams. True motivation and drive from within – clarity with your why – is absolutely key.

Setting goals is the easy part, but to actually follow through and start to move in a direction towards them, that’s when it could get really tricky. But it doesn’t have to be! First, you need to have a vision of what direction you want to go, the clearer the better, but that’s not a must. The big picture goals may be vaguer naturally, because you haven’t figured everything out yet. Faith can take you long, but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ll use progressive goals to incrementally take us towards the direction we want to go. Weekly, monthly, every 90 days; measuring points – milestones – to check our progress. One big goal one year away without checking the pulse until that date, that’s dumb goal setting.

And that is also why it’s so important to have a second look at the goals you’ve determined to follow. Because before you get started, I want you to review your goals and prioritize & rank which are the ones that is most important to you. At least to a quick overview ranking in your head. And then start this goal planning process with the goal that top that list. Perhaps “starting to dance” is a funnier and easier goal to focus on, compared to “Boost social confidence and be able to talk to anyone anywhere”.

8 goals are a lot of goals to give weekly attention to, and you’ll have to divide your time and efforts among them. Perhaps the easiest goal isn’t the goal that will take you closer to who you really would like to become. I’m not saying you can’t have multiple goals; I’m just saying be aware of how you divide your available time – give the most attention to what needs it most. A prioritization which only is possible if you take the time to sit down and think about your life areas and rank your goals thereafter.

What we need to remember is that the goal itself isn’t what will matter, to be able to say that you’ve read 52 books, to walk up on that scale and get a confirmation that you’ve dropped to X amount of kilos, to have earned X amount of dollars – that’ just one euphoric moment that will pass as quickly as a fart in the wind. What will matter is the person you become in the process by perusing these goals, how it is going to shape you and all the possibilities you’ll have when you reach that point. That’s what matters. That’s the real outcome. Logically, what then is equally important is how you choose to peruse that goal.

Let’s get started!

So we now have peace in mind and a bunch of goals, that means it’s time to strategies in how to make that happen. Firstly, you have to realise that there are tons of ways for you to reach your goals, and this is key. You can drop x amount of kilos by restricting your diet and basically eat nothing, you can also keep eating just the way you have been but just add enough exercise to lose that weight. There are many ways of reaching a goal – but the path we choose will determine how we feel about doing it.

So how do we now what way to choose? Well this is trickier, but if we start with defining some sub conditions we need to fulfil, it will thin out the selection some. If we say we have to “drop x amount of kilos and enjoy the process of doing so”, the focus becomes different in contrast to “I’m going to drop X kilos”. If we choose to create a positive association to what we want to accomplish, it will greatly increase our chances of succeeding. Maybe it will exclude jogging as an alternative since you find that to be the most boring activity in the world, a direct violation of your sub condition. Luckily there are other ways to move around! We want to outline a plan that makes us enjoy the process – it may sound foolish and banal, but it’s a detail many oversee or even consider to be an option.

There’s still tons of way for us to reach our goals, so now your task is to write down all the ways you know for how you could go about reaching that goal. And this phase may actually be to plan to plan – that is planning to research for how to lose weight. If you don’t write them all out; WHAT WAYS ARE THERE FOR YOU TO REACH THAT OUTCOME? And try to open your mind, because you’ve properly already locked yourself in one way – but ask yourself first if it really is the best way to go about it? Remember to think in terms of your preferences and context, you may not be work the same way as the person you got the advice from.

But so let’s say you have a bunch of different alternatives, go through them, think about them and decide on one way to take – the path you believe at this current state is the path that suits your context the best. Take in consideration the time you have available, what resources you have, support from others, and how it should be prioritized in relations to your other goals. Remember your amount of time will always be the same, what really matters is how you chose to spend it. SO, spit it all out, and then choose the direction you want to in.

REFLECTION: I first put up a goal of doing meditation every day for a year, but then I realised that what I’m really are after is to be more at peace with my inner self, to able to distance myself in any situation and keep calm. To be able to reach a relaxed state even If had no possession of anything. I know mediation is one way of reaching that state, but I’m sure there are tons of other ways. And to break it down further; there are thousands of different ways of meditating. So what I’ve done is that I’ve said that I have to do some kind of meditation for at least 10 minutes every day for 30 days.

Creating habits that takes us towards our goals and connect emotion to the goal; asking myself at the end of every meditation session – what can I be so grateful for that it almost brings me to tears; 50 minutes after every meditation – how do I feel right know? This may seem fluffy, but it actually shapes a habit with an emotional reward that gets deeply rooted within us if we do it continuously. If you don’t get some kind of affirmation of result of what you’re doing, if you’re not anchoring an emotion – a reward – you’ll quit the habit, unless the reward is very obvious and has that clear connection. So think about what habits you can shape that aligns with your goal, maybe 10 minutes of meditation each morning on my morning commute, or it could be to always take a 30-minute window every evening at six o clock to practice the guitar. Learn about how do design habits that stick (watch here, or read the power of habit), have a que, could be the alarm going of every evening, do the routine (play the guitar) and then have a reward, (the reward can be generated by the routine itself; the feeling of nailing a song, but it it’s a struggle in the begging, create an external reward; maybe one-piece sweet fruit, you get to have dinner or some other emotional release.

Because we need to brake our goals down, “never set one single goal” ( -Brendon burchard). Have progressive goals, we can’t wait one year with actually doing some kind of pulse checking; we need clear milestones and part goals. Not only to keep sight of what we’re going after, but to make it able to course correct if we’re doing something that isn’t’ working. Maybe the training exercise program you’ve chosen doesn’t fit your working ours, maybe the morning meditation is just stressing and would suit you better after lunch since you’ve been at it for quite some time and feel the need for a moment of unplugging from the world. So just to get started, at least write down a 30-day goal, and for this week: creating a plan and taking one action.

Because before you get started you need to realise that having goals like these requires continues follow up. And that won’t happen unless you take the time – PLAN – to have a sit down and do a review of the week that has been, and plan for the week that will come. So sometime through the week, preferably Sunday, you make sure to schedule in a review session in your calendar and make this holy. I’m telling you, all your plans will start to fade away. You may be able to have one or two simple goals clearly in your head.. but that’s it. Also this weekly process will act as a reminder for you, some week’s you may actually haven’t moved ahead on some goals, we all have those week’s! but that why it’s’ so important to constantly review our goals and remind ourselves of them – super important – read through, don’t miss your WHY: remind yourself of why your pursing the goal.

I know this is a rather complex matter at first sight, and I don’t claim to be any expert myself, I’m but a student to the great teachers like Tony Robins and Brendon Burchard, and it’s there work I have presented here.  however, I have toons of experience of applying this, and I’ve learned by so many mistakes. And I’d love to discuss the matter with you. So the idea is that throughout the week you will create a plan for each and all of your goals in the 8 key areas and take one action on one of them.

SO now you’ve got all you need to get ready to create an amazing plan for how to reach your goal!

Here’s the sum up:

  • Before getting started on the plan, get clear with your current situation; will you have time to peruse your goals – how can you make time? Are your goals more important?

The plan:

  • Taking one last look at why your pursuing the chosen goals
  • Ranking your goals in the order how they should be prioritized

Working on one goal at the time, in order of importance:

  1. Define the conditions of your goals “lose 20 pounds” vs. “Lose 20 kilo and enjoy the process”.
  2. Create an action plan with all the ways – adjusted for your conditions and capabilities – for how you could reach that goal. Write a list of all alternatives that are relevant to you! Think in terms of multiple progressive goals to use as milestones/measuring points – one goal in one year is too distance to get excited about! There are 1000 of different ways to implement a meditation practice – or the bigger goal; to reach mindfulness.
  3. Pick one strategy to start with and break it down a few first actions that you could start with right now; “google training centres close by me” “go buy a pair of jogging shoes”. Set clear measuring points / milestone so you will know if you’re progressing or not. Every week, 30 days, 90 days.
  4. Design/find a suitable habit that relates to the goal and decide exactly when you are going to incorporate regularly.
  5. Write down your three next actions in detail and plan in your calendar when you’ll do this. Always make sure to have a next action defined, never leave it open-ended.
  6. Have a weekly evaluation & planning session (Preferably Sunday)
    1. Check how you’re doing on the measuring points you’ve put up. If not, fine tuning and adjusting to do so. But remember, implementing new habits takes at least 30 days and some results doesn’t show immediately, so have patience and don’t give up too quickly! Don’t draw the conclusion that the goal is wrong just because you’ve chosen the wrong strategy or lacked the effort to make it happened!
    2. Plan the week! If it’s not in your calendar, it’s not going to happened. Put reminders that will go of, plan. If you don’t mark time out for you to progress on your goal, everyday life and other things will happen.
  7. TAKE ACTION – do one small action that will get you started on moving towards your goal!

SO THAT’S THE PLAN! The objective of the week is to create this plan for all of your eight goals. Now I know that’s a lot to ask of you, and kind of goes against my mantra of keeping the challenges quick and easy, but this these goal setting workshops are the expectations. It’s just the foundation of the so much and will determine how we chose to play the year that is to come.

Beside creating the plan, you will also take one first little action on each goal, it may be super small, but just something to get you started!

In order to help you as much as I can, I am going to do a longer livestream on Tuesday, we’re I’ll be working on my own goals, so I thought we’d just sit together in silence and work on creating these plans and if any questions come up, we can try to straighten them up right away.

Also, Make sure you by now have it in a planning program of your choice, I recommend OneNote 2016 (included in the office package, but OneNote APP o preinstalled on Windows 10) also Evernote should do the job ( https://evernote.com/intl/sv/).

Hope you feel excited, and if you have any questions, hit me up!

It’s going to be a legendary week!

/Alexander

2017 Goal Setting: Week 1 of 3 – WC#38

2017 Goal Planning: Week 1 of 3

The new year is right around the corner, and for many of us that means setting new goals. It’s a perfect opportunity to go into a new phase; you feel excited and eager to change. However, most of the times that’s all it turns out to be, empty words on a piece of paper, if even that. Success rate: 5%. Because it’s hard, really really hard, to follow through. At least if you don’t have a strategy for how to make it happen. Still, it’s important seize this rare opportunity; the feeling of a fresh start, momentum and a strong driving force. Only this process of sitting down and write down a bunch of new goals is hard enough, but to actually make them happen is a whole different story..  It’s so easy get overwhelmed by all the things you want to do, no matter how excited determined you felt at the time. That’s why we are going to take our time with this one, doing it properly, which means that the coming three week’s will be all about getting clear with our goals and laying out a plan for how to reach them.

The basis for this goalsetting is a combination of Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, and some other Gurus that now their stuff. The big difference being is that they do it all in one sitting, and that’s one way of doing it. But I know we all are busy folks, especially in these times, and seldom take the time to do this, so that’s why I’ve spread it over three weeks so we can take time to digest and build up some real motivation. The outline is as follows:

Week 1: The first week will be about narrowing down one main goal in seven different key areas, and also deciding the order of priority of these. We’ll also be getting clarity for why these goals will be pursued –  defining our purposes.

Week 2: The second week, we’ll take time to develop a plan for HOW to go about making this happen, we’ll also start the habit of writing down these seven goals each morning to remind ourselves.

Week 3: The last week, we are only going to write down the goals each morning, but also start to make one small thing happen to take us towards those goals, so we get started with each of them!  And then, when the new year comes, we’ll be as ready as we’ll ever be to put in some real effort to reach our goals!

Setting Goals is a powerful thing, so I beg you, don’t underestimate the power of this challenge. Remember that the time you put into planning and doing building the base, is going to determine both the direction and the outcome of your future to an incredible extend. Are you really going to be reactive and let what lands in front of you dictate your actions yet another year? Why let randomness control the direction of your life, when you have the capability of taking control and going where you want to go.

HOW:

So the idea of this week is to create a goal list in seven different areas and find the one important thing in each area to focus on. If we don’t make this prioritization, we’ll just get overwhelmed and nothing will happen! Then later on, when we have gotten started and the routine of actively working on our goals, we can extend what goals we’re going after.

The Seven key areas are:

MONDAY:

  • Spiritual (The area which is hardest to grasp if you haven’t done any active work on previously, but the area that makes the most difference. DON’T neglect! Breathing, meditation, stress-management, finding your true self. Find your path, but start actively looking for it)
  • Health (improve your fitness level, eat healthier and better, sleep more?)

TUESDAY:

  • Social: Romance, Family & friends (Want to get a partner, hang our more with your friends and family?)

WEDNESDAY:

  • Personal development (developing skills, reading books, learning a language or some other project that you just know you have to go after – maybe starting a YouTube channel!)

THURSDAY:

  • Business/career (Do you have a clear direction of where you want to go?)
  • Finances (Planning on making a bunch of money? Long-term investment plan?)

FRIDAY:

  • Have Fun (What fun things do you want to do this year?)

 

Action: So take 5-15 minutes, or just keep taking notes and think about it throughout the day, you’ll probably come up with tons of things, write it all down! But at the end of the day, look through what you’ve written down, and highlight the five most important goals, and then chose the one you want to focus on. Finally, perhaps the most important part, write your reasons for WHY you should peruse this goal. The Purpose of investing your time and energy into this. Ideally you write as much as you can, reasons for why you CAN make it happen, reasons for why you MUST make it happen, and all the GREAT things that will happen if you actually make it happen! It will pay of to not get lazy here.

Setting goals is actually super fun! So let your inner child come out and play, and don’t think about HOW you’ll be able to make it happen, that’s for later. Dreaming is about having faith and trusting in yourself that if you put your mind to it, anything can happen. There are actually two viewpoints to this, some think you should keep your goals realistic, and some say go crazy. From my own experience, I’m with the later. You want to go big, you better dream big. But the key is to divide it into different time horizons – the realistic (S.M.A.R.T) goals are for the more specified HOW planning, the incremental steps to take us towards our dreams, while the big picture is to fill us with deeply rooted motivation and direction. Eating healthy, just because “it’s good for you”, can never compete with the driving force of “turning 100 years old while being in a great physical and mental condition”! Again, that’s why it’s super important to very clearly define to yourself WHY this is so important to you, because if it lacks clarity and purpose, it won’t happen.

So, all this means that in the end of the week, you’ll have seven lists with a bunch of goals, but with one main goal for each area with a clear WHY statement.

You’ll need a place to document and were you later can work with you goals, a place that you store all your things in. Personally I recommend “OneNote 2016”, and honestly don’t know how I would go about living my life without it. There’s also another version only called “OneNote” which is simpler and can be found in Windows store, or you can go with Evernote which is another free, as the others, alternative. Either way, you are going to need a place to store and document all your projects and lists. I see no way around it. It’s also a great place for journaling and logging any kinds of stuff. However, for the initial process of just getting your goals out of your head, a piece of paper and a pen will do the job!

That’s all we’ll do this week, it’s busy times now in Christmas seasons, but I want you to really try to understand the tremendous pay off you’ll get if you invest a few minutes each day to do this. Going through this process in step by step will make us really ground ourselves in the goals that will be the foundation for the entire year – perhaps life – that is to come. If you still find it hard to find time to do this, you can join me, as I’ll be doing an approximately 15-minute live stream each day when I’ll be going through this process, which of course you can look at in replay mood and use only as a timer if that suits you!

And, as I said in the beginning of this video, this will be a three-week series to really make our 2017 goals the real deal and not just some faded dreams to feel bad about a couple of months later. Let’s do this!

/Alexander

You’ll Find OneNote 2016 here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-the-difference-between-OneNote-and-OneNote-2016-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f

 

Getting Rid of Limiting Beliefs – Weekly Challenge #37

Getting Rid of Limiting Beliefs – Weekly Challenge #37

New week, New challenge – and this week we are all about changing our mind-set and the handicapping story we are telling ourselves. The challenge is divided in two parts, where the first two days is about taking notice of our thoughts, what we tell ourselves and how it’s affecting us and the actions we take. Having an active radar turned on to pick up on the limiting things we say. The second part of the week is focused on changing these believes, but I’ll be posting a new video for that on Wednesday.

The objectives: Start with observing all the liming believes you have, turn on the radar for negative self-talk and take note of how much it affects your way of living, choices and opportunities. That’s all I want you to do for the first two days before we actually start changing it. Building up a deep understanding of how it affects us will make for a greater why to motivate us to do something about it. Then on Wednesday I will post the next video for how we will deal with this.

 

How much would you pay for a pill that would make all those things you tell yourself you can’t do possible; whether it’s dancing, controlling your urges, being comfortable in a social high stake environment – 1 000 $? 10 000 $ ? How about a couple of hours of your week to condition your mind for some long-term change? Just like when Roger Banister ran 1 mile (~1,6km) under 4 minutes, something that up until that day was said to be humanly impossible, all of the suddenly changed the mind-set of thousands of people, because someone proved them wrong. Because after that historic happening loads of people has done what was said to be undoable. However, Roger never thought it was impossible, he believed, he visualised, he was determined & he did it. He embraced a growth mind-set and refused to put up any limiting believes.

 

The concept of limiting beliefs is nothing new for most of us, yet we keep letting it affect our life to the tremendous extent it has. I got reminded of this last week when I was reading up on memorization techniques, and Jim Kwik, a memorizing guru, said “our brain keeps eavesdropping on you, if you tell it you can’t remember names, you won’t be able to”. In other words, what you tell yourself becomes a self-fulfilling prophetia. I got even more into this topic when I a couple of days ago started reading Kelly McGonigal’s book the upside of stress ( http://kellymcgonigal.com/books/), where she in the first chapters of the book talks about the potential of changing mind-sets in the areas that have potential to fundamentally change our lives. Her research shows how most people let the negative idea of stress make it way worse than it has to be, because when instead a positive mind-set of stress is embraced there is a whole lot of upside to it! And this change in mind-set doesn’t always need huge interventions and actions, it could actually happen by just watching a GOOD informative video on the positive effect that stress can have – sometimes insights that gives us a whole new perspective have the potential to snowball into tremendous change in the lives we live and the actions we take.

 

In her book, she highlights this phenomenon by referencing to a bunch of studies on aging, and how people that has a positive association to the aging process in terms of getting wiser and becoming happier, in different studies has shown to have a profound effect, for instance one study showed that these people live 8 years longer, another showed that there was an 80% chance of decreased risk of heart attack, another that the recovery after an accident was significantly better, etc. Now, again, it’s not magic dust that makes this happen, but it has to do with how we change the filter with how we look at life which in turns translates to the actions we take and how we live our lives.

 

If you have a mind-set of “I can’t dance” when someone asks you if you want to come dance with them, you’re properly going to say no. But if you with the same coordination and mind got that exact question, but you just somehow had “forgotten” about that mind-set of yours, the likelihood of you joining that activity would be much greater, and in turn you would practice dancing which could lead to you actually developing that skill and getting better and better at it. You see, when we buy into a mind-set it does not only affect your state; “…It’s the mind-set effect, alters your present experience, but it also influences your future behaviour”. It’s the snowball effect, when you believe that growing older is going to benefit you, it will shape the actions you take daily and how your take care of yourself. When we buy in to a mind-set that has the ability to change the course of our lives, the snowball effect can be tremendous.

 

  • Enough with the why; how are we going to do this challenge; what’s the objectives?

 

The first part of this challenge is about scanning our thoughts and realizing where we have these limiting believes. This is a very important process to go through, so we can grasp the full extent of how much this affect us. It will build up that deep rooted cause for change, making it a must, motivating us to the core. So really turn on that radar and observe how your thoughts are going, listen to yourself talk when you interact with people, often it’s something we share openly, as a part of us, who we are and what we identify ourselves with. “Oh I’m so bad with math, oh I can’t dance.”

 

  • OF COURSE YOU CAN’t WHEN YOU KEEP TELLING YORSELF AND OTHERS THAT THAT IS WHO YOU ARE! It’s you and no one else that determine what you can and can’t do!

 

The second part of this challenge is to actually do something about it, but you can start right now by firstly stop telling yourself and others out loud that you are permanently limited somehow. Just ad YET! I can’t dance, YET now that’s the easy part, controlling our impulsive thoughts can be trickier, but when we start to become aware, it’s absolutely possible. I won’t go more into details for how we will try to make this change more permanent, that’ll come on Wednesday. But in brief, it’s a simple process of adopting a growth mind-set and abandoning our limiting believes for good. But don’t neglect the power of this first step and scanning your thoughts. However, if you can’t contain yourself, here’s how you adopt a growth mind-set:

 

“..recognize that the growth mind-set is not only beneficial but it is also supported by science. Neuroscience shows that the brain changes and becomes more capable when we work hard to improve ourselves. Second, learn and teach others about how to develop our abilities. Learn about deliberate practice and what makes for effective effort. When we understand how to develop our abilities, we strengthen our conviction that we are in charge of them. And third, listen for your fixed mind-set voice, and when you hear it, talk back with a growth mind-set voice. If you hear, “I can’t do it,” add, “Yet.” ( source: https://youtu.be/pN34FNbOKXc )

 

I wish you the best of luck, commit to me and the comments if you like to, and make sure to tune in on Wednesday for the next video! Best of luck guys, see you on the other side.

 

/Alexander

 

Playlist I put together on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tqq66zwa7g&list=PLxw2jMXwRfsliFby2voOcma8QFVGKSQhe