Are you someone who is an overachiever, and you feel like you have a lot of places to get to, but somehow you don’t seem to be able to commit to your goals? You find yourself jumping from a plan to another, then you end up not seeing any progress?
In this article we’re going to talk about the cause of this behavior, and some of the tips that would help commit to your goals.
Tip 1 :Prioritize your goals
If you are like me and you want to achieve a lot of things, we can both agree that it can get overwhelming and it feels like our focus is scattered all over different goals.
The best way is to sacrifice some of them, so try to prioritize 3 goals you want to achieve and focus on them :
- Goal number 1
- Goal number 2
- Goal number 3
Let’s say you reached goal number 2. Now you can replace it with a different goal and rearrange them in terms of their priority. This way you are going to notice that you are committing and hitting your goals faster than before and progressing more.
“the key in not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
Tip 2 : Practice committing to the small steps/goals…
Notice how babies start by taking small foot steps so that they’ll be able to gradually walk properly and eventually run. And we can apply this to our goals.
So to make action out of this metaphor we can pick habits or tasks that are small and easy to do and stay consistent with them like :
- Making your bed in the morning
- Applying sunscreen before going out during the day
- Washing dishes right away
This way you can warm yourself up to take on bigger goals, and you will find it much easier to stay disciplined and committed.
Tip 3 : Limit instant Gratifications
It looks like a lot of people are struggling to stay dedicated to their goals because it does not give instant results. Now hear me out, when we humans achieve something we wanted, dopamine (happiness hormone) gets released, which makes us feel good. This reaction is delayed when it comes to long term goals.
Nowadays we get hits of dopamine constantly, it happens by simply scrolling on social media, watching our favorite show, eating sweets, playing a fun video game… As a result our brain gets addicted to these things. Which makes it hard to commit to our goals in life because we don’t get any dopamine hits until it’s achieved, which might be boring and unmotivating.
So a quick tip to give, is to divide your big goal into small steps, and when you complete each step reward yourself with an “instant gratification” habit. This way your dopamine release will be related more to the completion of your step than the bad habit itself.
To read more about instant gratification check this link : Instant vs delayed gratification
Tip 4 : Find inspiration/motivation
We can find motivation in different things depending on our character and influence. For example, I like to watch videos of the lifestyle that I want to live, listen to stories of people who started from nothing and yet they were able to achieve many things, or simply wanting to live my life to the fullest and doing many things.
It’s so vital to identify things that keep us going, especially if we don’t have people to push us or encourage us. This is why surrounding yourself with at least a couple of people that have more or less the same vision as you, and want to achieve the same goals as you is always a plus.
Tip 5 : Understand that you need to give in order to receive
Here is one fact that most people neglect, it’s that in order to reach your goal, you have to sacrifice something, which could be time, effort, money, knowledge…
It’s like an exchange. In order to get a salary, we go to work. In order to get a car we need to pay, in order to have successful relationship you give your time, privacy, and part of your life to your partner…
Just make sure that you are allocating your resources wisely, so every bit that you give out to achieve your goal, it would be worth it.
Do not be afraid to give, to invest, to sacrifice or even to lose in order to get. So when you get into the habit of giving into your goals, you’ll find yourself having no choice but to commit to your goals.
Take these tips and try to apply them to your goals, but also keep in mind to prioritize them, depending on which tip you think is more important to you and which one will be able to help you commit to your goals the most. And remember to grow at your own rhythm.
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