This month’s Goal Setting Tip is:

It is very important to have a goal in your life that is difficult for you to achieve and will challenge you. If you don’t have a difficult or challenging goal in your life it is possible that you will feel like you are not moving forward.

Here is why: Have you ever thought what happens to a plant that is not growing? You guessed it. It is busy dying. We, like the plants, have an inherent need to grow. If we ever feel that we are not growing, it actually gives us a sense that we are stuck or moving backwards.

The other thing about growth is that we do not grow without resistance. It is like training muscles in the gym. If you use a weight that is too small (i.e. there is little or no resistance) your muscles will not grow. Muscles – like our emotions – need resistance to grow.

So…if you don’t have a goal in your life that is stretching you, or challenging you, or making you feel uncomfortable; then it is time to start thinking about (and getting clear on) what it is that you really want, which will cause you to grow.

And remember to write it down when you have it!

"You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming." – Jim Rohn

Obviously for a deeper dive on all thing Goal related, check out ELITE Goal Setter.

The Kaizen Way

"When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens-and when it happens, it lasts." -John Wooden (American Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and as a Coach)

I just finished reading a fantastically practical book by Robert Maurer Ph.D. (a psychologist and clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine) where he talks about how to apply the ‘Kaizen Way’ to people’s lives. How to use the principles to overcome fear, achieve results and find more success in your life. Like me, you have probably heard the term ‘kaizen’ before, but not sure of what context it operates in. So let me first explain it, and then show you how you can use it to change or achieve some amazing results in your own life.

The first time kaizen really got noticed was when it was applied in the USA during WWII. At that time the government decided that to enter and effectively assist in winning the war, they needed to greatly increase the production of wartime machinery. The manufacturing plants were already very productive, but they needed to take them to a whole new level. So enter Kaizen…or continuous improvement. The other time it was very effectively used was in Japan after WWII when it was rebuilding its industry to a pre-war high.

In very simple terms Kaizen is making small incremental improvements over time. Whereas innovation implies a major change, kaizen implies small consistent improvement over time leading to a major shift as an end result.

The science behind kaizen and how it applies to the human situation is described by Maurer as follows:

"All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play."

Maurer suggests that if a goal or task is too scary or overwhelming – like starting a regular exercise program when you are juggling kids, 2 jobs and mounting bills – then the following is likely to happen:

• For starters the major change can be ‘frightening’
• When we are frightened, we are hard-wired to react with a ‘fight or flight’ response (activated by our midbrain or mammalian brain at the amygdala)
• To be able to fight or take flight effectively, a number of normal functions are slowed down or stopped – which also includes rational and creative thinking

So in very general terms; in our modern times, every time we need to change or deal with a challenging situation, our fear causes our best resources – our thinking to slow or shut down. What can we do?

Maurer suggests that if we undertake small, incremental and consistent steps we are less likely to experience ‘fear’ and therefore not trip the ‘fight or flight’ response. Meaning we can continue to think rationally and creatively.

An example by Maurer:

He had a client that had a number of health issues that could have been very effectively overcome if they exercised 3-4 times per week for about 30 mins. The only problem was that the client was a single mother, with 3 jobs and was lucky to have 30 mins spare time at the end of the day. The idea of a full-blown exercise program was very likely to overwhelm her and have her decide before she even started that it was just too hard. So Maurer applied the kaizen principles.

What he did sounds ludicrous. He asked her to walk on the spot for 1min each day while she watched her 30 mins of television at the end of the day. It might seem like nothing, but because it was so small she stuck with it. And then extended it to 3mins and then 10 mins and over the following months eventually got herself to a stage where she was actually of her own accord doing (and enjoying) 20-30 mins of exercise on a regular basis.

By not creating a fear response in the client, they were able to get started and create momentum without feeling overwhelmed. This also fits in with the principle of success building on success and another great principle called the 80/20 principle – that suggests that 20% of the actions we do account for 80% of our results. Or some small actions have a disproportionate positive effect, for the amount of energy or time input.

In Summary:

If you have a goal that you want to achieve or a change you need to make, rather than starting too big and ‘falling off the wagon’, you might like to try a very small action that you know you can definitely commit to every day.

For instance if you have a fear of making cold calls for work – instead of trying to make 20-30 in one day, start of making just one call a day. Do this for one or two weeks and then take it up to 2 calls per day. Then after a month make it 3-4 calls and by now you have momentum, you have success, you have experience and you also have amassed a reasonable number of calls.

Would you like to understand how knowing the difference between thoughts and thinking can make a HUGE impact on your life. I am also going to show you how – regardless of the craziness of your thoughts – you can get more of the stuff that you want in life. Because it is not about your weird and crazy thoughts, it is more about your thinking.

Let me explain how I describe thoughts and thinking:

Thoughts

The stuff that comes and goes. Generally they come unbidden and quite often they are completely unwanted! Like the thought that ‘I am going to lose all my investments any moment now’ or ‘I bet I will fail at this’ or any number of other pictures that would be best in someone else’s head.

Thinking

This is the stuff that you guide. The stuff that requires the expenditure of energy. The stuff where you have the remote control and laser pointer to make it real clear what you want to watch and then focus on.

So what the heck does this mean to you and me? Well it means a couple of really important things. So this is the bit where you pay a lot of attention and read on as if you need to fully understand what I am going to say so that you can later teach someone else. Just setting that intention of teaching changes your focus and ensures you get even more out of what you read.

The key points are:

1. You cannot really control your thoughts. They will come in of their own accord. Some good, some bad, some crap and some great. The thoughts are not the important stuff. So don’t worry about them and don’t define yourself by your thoughts. Thoughts do not determine your results or feelings.
2. You choose what you focus on by thinking.
3. Thinking is the process of creating the images you want in your mind. Of focusing on what you want. Of creating the story you would like to see happen. And even getting emotionally involved with the picture.
4. Thinking requires practice. The more you do it – that is, consciously choose the movie you are going to play in the theatre of your mind – the better you get at it. Just like the more you lift weights, the stronger you get.
5. Your subconscious mind kicks into action when thinking is involved. It will see what you want, and then be on the lookout (with a much greater and broader field of vision than your conscious mind) for exactly what you need to make the thinking picture come into physical form.

I think one of the main things I realised when I started playing with this thought and thinking stuff is that when you accept that you will occasionally have ridiculous or shitty thoughts and they are not you, then you relax a lot more. And the more relaxed you are, the easier the creating and thinking becomes.

Just because I had the ‘thought’ that I wanted to ring my friends neck is a-ok. It means nothing. It is the thinking about exactly how I am going to wring his neck that will make it happen.

So here is to conscious thinking and non-attachment to our crazy thoughts!

Cheers,

Carl

If you want to do a course in thinking then you might want also want to check in for a healthy dose of the 30-Day Happiness Challenge. On Day 2 we do a deeper dive on the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind.

I am doing a lot of research on Goal Setting these days and so I wanted to share with you some of the best stuff that I have found. So from now on I will include a regular Goal Setting Tip.

This September’s Goal Setting Tip is:

When you write out your Goal (and YES you do need to write your Goal out), write it as if you were going to hand your Goal statement to a subcontractor and they are going to fulfil your request.

Here is the key: Is this subcontractor going to understand exactly what you want or is it too vague for them to know where to start? Will they get the order wrong? Your Goal needs to be 100% clear so that the subcontractor (your subconscious mind and life itself) can deliver you or bring you to exactly what you want.

Clarity and specificity is HUGE!!

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I will give you someone who will make history. Give me someone without a goal, and I will give you a stock clerk." – J.C. Penny

(J.C.Penny was referring to that Einstein guy)

Obviously for a deeper dive on all thing Goal related, check out: ELITE Goal Setter.