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When you set a goal do you find yourself getting overwhelmed trying to figure out how you’ll reach your success?
You turn it over and over in your mind, anticipate all that can go wrong and decide it will be hard because it will take time.
If so, you are not alone.
It is a human tendency to try to rely on our left brain–intellect, reasoning, facts–to help us achieve our goals.
At first thought this may seem like a good idea. After all, there are certain steps and strategies we must follow to accomplish our dreams.
But trying to figure out every step, every turn toward your goal will only create that overwhelmed feeling and will not move you toward your goal any quicker.
As a matter of fact, the more overwhelmed you get, the more you paralyze yourself into inaction.
When we depend on our intellect alone to navigate us to our goal we get overwhelmed because we are often required to do something we’ve never done before.
To get where you’ve never been, you’ve got to be willing to do something you’ve never done.
The left brain deals in what is visible, obvious and tested. But if you only did what you knew would work or what has been tested it would be like marching in place: a lot of movement, but no forward progress.
There is a reason we have a right brain–creative, intuitive, imaginative. It is the part of us that gives us the vision for our goal in the first place and that fires that passion that will ensure our success.
Having all the facts and reasoning, but not the passion and imagination may lead to a form of success, but not the joyful, wonderfully satisfying and fulfillling success we wanted.
Having passion and imagination, but no facts or reasoning will have us arrive somewhere, but perhaps not the success goal for which we were aiming.
Working your left and right brain to work together, here are three steps to reaching your goal successfully.
1. Hop to visualizing your goal.
Visualize what you want. Since this is happening in your mind you can be as elaborate and expansive as you wish. Daydream like you did as a kid and don’t stray into trying to figure out the details of how you will accomplish your goal.
Don’t let what you see in front of you be your guide, and by all means disregard sensible advice.
2. Skip over the fear thoughts.
As soon as you begin to imagine a dream that’s bigger than your current circumstance, your left brain will start throwing facts at you to scare you and making you afraid of the unknown.
Fear has been described as an acronym
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
Dr. Clint Pearman, author of The Gift: Twelve Ingredients to Improve Your Life, gave an example from his personal experience when I interviewed him recently. He was driving in his car and heard a song that began with the screeching of tires. He immediately began to feel the fear, tightening and impending doom in his gut and checked his rearview mirror searching for that out of control car. When he realized that it was not real, but was the intro to a recorded song (one he had put on to play,) he was able to relax and diffuse the stress. ( Listen to Dr. Pearman’s inspring and motivating interview to hear four steps to diffusing your stress.)
Some of us live in constant stress from many situations that are not real, but imagined, but have the power to stop us from moving toward our goals.
3. Jump into action.
Waiting for the perfect answer, the perfect mate, the right time will
paralyze us. Why, we could waste our entire lives just…waiting. Each
choice requires some element of risk. Only those willing to risk will enjoy
the rewards. Those who don’t want to take a risk are not spared, though.Even inaction is a risk. Unfortunately, if you choose not to take a risk, the
results probably won’t be to your liking.No matter how much we plan and study, there will always be some
uncertainty in life. Get comfortable with this truth. It will help strengthen
your confidence and belief in your ability to handle anything that comes
up. From Chapter 3 of Color Your Life Happy
Take action toward your goal, even a small one. Commit to your goal, be willing to do whatever it takes to get there and you will discover the energy and courage to move forward. Each successful step forward gives you more confidence to take the next one.
When you proceed toward your goals with the three steps you will be following the strategy that has worked for so many others.
What goal will you start toward today?
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