Lacking Energy, Motivation, Confidence?

Are you lacking in Energy, Motivation, or Confidence?

Or perhaps all three?!

Picture this, you've had a hard week at the office, and on the weekend you partner reminds you that the garage needs sorting, the spare room needs painting, visit the mother in law, or some other chore that you really don't want to do. You say "Honey, I've had a tough week, I'm tired, the boss is on my back, I'm really stressed out, I'm really not sure how to do that, I just want to chill out in front of the TV".

All of a sudden, your friend calls up and says he has a tee-off in one hour at the golf course, and they are missing one player, they'll be picking you up in 15 minutes.

And Bam! Just like that there is energy, motivation and a confident spring in your step, and you are waiting eagerly on the doorstep for your buddies to pick you up.

What happened? What made the difference?

If your goal, lets take painting the spare room as an example, is not aligned with your highest values, you procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate yourself (and your partner, boss, etc.).

If your goal is aligned with your highest values, then you get disciplined, focused and reliable.

You will always have time, energy, money, to achieve things that are aligned to your highest values.

You are inspired to do them. You don't need anyone to motivate you.

"But" I can hear you say, I really 'should', 'ought to', 'got to', paint the spare room. How do I get myself to be inspired to achieve this goal?

The answer is to simply link it to your highest values.

Painting the spare room may not be high on your values, but impressing the relatives that are visiting from overseas might be. Or getting the room ready for you new baby.

Once you have a good enough, reason or reasons WHY painting the room will align with your highest values, you will find the time, energy and a way to do it.

The goal then becomes something that's ON the way, rather than an obstacle that's IN the way.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Can't Find What You Are Looking For?

You don't see with your eyes - you see with your brain!

Every second, over 400 billion bits of information flood into the brain, via all your senses, yet you are only consciously aware of about 2000 bits of information.

What happened to the other 399.99999 billion bits of information? Well, your unconscious mind remembers everything, but that's not much use to you unless you know how to recall it.

What is important is what determines which bits you "see", and which get skipped over.

That all-important, life-shaping decision is made moment to moment, day or night, awake or asleep, by a part of your brain called the reticular activating system (RAS).

The RAS is literally a little net made up of nerve pathways, at the base of your brain that connects the spinal cord, cerebellum and cerebrum. It acts as a filter for all the sensory input that you see, feel, hear, taste of smell. It then relays the signal on to the appropriate part of the brain for processing.

A mother who is fast asleep will wake at the slightest whimper of her baby, even when she is sleeping in a different room.

I once bought a Honda CRV, it was pillar box red, I was certain this was the only one of that color. Until I drove it home, then I saw them everywhere! How is that possible? Did everyone go out and buy one on the same day? No. I just became aware of them. They were there all the time. I just didn't 'see' them. Until I bought the car, my unconscious mind was programmed to not see a pillar box red Honda CRV, as soon as I bought one (has some emotional attachment to it), the programming changed and I could see them everywhere.

If you type the word 'poverty' into Google, what do you get? 167 billion references to poverty!
If you type the word 'wealth' into Google, you get 291 billion references to wealth.

Your RAS does the same thing for you, but it does it so quickly, it makes Google look like a chalk board.

Here is the most important thing about the RAS. When you program a specific idea or goal into it, no matter if you are asleep or awake, thinking about it or not, the RAS will do its job to filter through 400 billion bits of information every second to find precisely what you've told it to find.

When you create a clear focused picture of what you want, and emotionalise it, your RAS kicks in and doesn't stop until it finds what you are looking for.

Get CLEAR.
Get FOCUSED.
Get EMOTIONAL (in a good positive way).

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 2 - Prioritise

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 2

Prioritise!

Find your top 3 most important goals.

That's it. Step 2 complete. 

What are the top three things you want to achieve in the next 12 months?

"But" I hear you say, now that I've listed all those things, I want to be, do and have everything on my list!

All in good time, all in good time.

You see, trying to focus on say 50 goals at once, is about as useful as having no goals at all.

If you put a leaf out in the sun, it might warm up a little. But if you focus the energy of the sun with a magnifying glass, you will quickly burn a hole in that leaf and maybe even set it on fire.

That is the power of focus.

Achieve one, then move on to the next. This is success. The progressive realisation of worthy goals.

At the end of 12 months, when you review your year, you will be surprised at how many of the goals on your list were achieved, even though you were not actively working on them. This is the power of writing stuff down. The Law of Attraction goes to work while you are working The Law of Action.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Beat Procrastination NOW

Here is a summary of the last few posts on overcoming procrastination to assist you in becoming more productive and smashing out your goals:

• The shortest distance between where you are now and your goals is a straight line.
• Write stuff down, all of it, everything. The things you have to do today, the actions that will propel you towards your goals, the bills you have to pay, the one day I'm going to do that bucket list item, the worries and concerns you have, the little chores that need doing etc. Just brain dump and write them all down, and keep adding to the list throughout the day.
• Get rid of the distractions, at least while you are working. Turn off your phone, email, messages, facebook, skype, etc. and FOCUS for the time that you allocate for productive working.

• Make a list of things to do IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE, things that will propel you towards your goals.
• Start work on the first one. "Started is half finished". "10 Focused Minutes". 
• Don't start on the second one before you finished the first one. etc.

That's it. Write stuff down. Eliminate Distractions, Prioritise, TAKE MASSIVE FOCUSED DIRECTED ACTION!

Simple right? DO IT! IT MAY SEEM DIFFICULT AT FIRST, BUT EVERYTHING IS DIFFICULT AT FIRST.

Did you know that your coach is an excellent resource when it comes to you setting your goals, planing and taking action towards them? Contact NOW for a complimentary 15 min strategy session.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Procrastination - Failure to Launch

So you are ready to get to work, you've written everything down so your mind is clear, you've switched off your distractions.

And your brain has gone into hiding. 

What's happened? You are overwhelmed by your 'To Do' list, so your brain goes into overdrive looking for avoidance behaviours, you know, more coffee, having a 'rest', just one more check of Facebook, or perhaps even some advanced procrastination strategies, like that DIY project that you've been putting off for months. In fact anything at all that is not on your list to take you towards your goals!

So whats the solution? 

Think about your goals, look at your 'list', and decide what is the most important thing on that list that will take you towards your goals? Perhaps it's marketing, or writing that ebook, or setting up a website. 

Then write down the second most important thing, then the third, etc. Hint - filing is probably not going to be at the top of this list.

To help you order your list, here are some ideas and their relative value, for least to most important:

Now, refer to your new list of tasks for the day, in order of importance, that are going to take you towards your goals.

Start on the most IMPORTANT one.

When do you start on the second one? Only AFTER you have completed the first one! That way, even if you only do one thing that day, at least you have worked on the most important thing.

I have a simple mantra - "Started is Half Finished!". Often getting started is the hardest part. e.g. Once you are at the gym it's easy to work out, getting there is the challenge. And you know what, us humans are creatures of completion, once we get going, we like to finish things off. Have you ever gone into the kitchen, just to load the dishwasher, and found yourself cleaning the whole kitchen? While that may be an advanced form of procrastination, it proves the point.

If I'm not getting into a task, for whatever reason, maybe I don't like it, or I don't know how to do it, or I'm considering checking Facebook one more time, I have another mantra - "10 Focused Minutes!". You can do anything for 10 minutes, right? So I commit to spending 10 minutes purely focused on task at hand, nothing else for that 10 minutes. That is usually enough to get engaged in the task, and see it through. Worst case scenario is that at least it got started, and I can throw another 10 minutes at it later. Usually though, the "started is half finished" thing comes into play and the job gets done.

To your Success,
Trevor Long

Procrastination - Death by a Thousand Cuts

"Death by a thousand cuts" has its origins in lingchi, a highly unpleasant form of execution used in Imperial China, which involved the slicing of the convicted criminal's flesh until death ensued.

Not a very pleasant way to start a blog. And what does this have to do with procrastination?

The 'cuts' we are referring to here are the constant distractions and interruptions that plague us throughout the day.

What are they? SMS text messages, Facebook notifications (and the need to keep checking on Facebook to keep up with who is eating what for lunch with whom and where - all the important stuff required for your success), emails, Phone Calls, following Links and investigating things that have nothing to do with your purpose, eg. the latest Malaysian Airlines disaster, Skype, IM, Youtube, Spotify, TV, Radio, oh look a butterfly, etc. etc.

If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got!

So what can you do about it? You can't live in a bubble, disconnected from the World, right?

Well you can, for short, focused, periods of time.

When its time to work (and you have those periods scheduled, right?), shut off your email, your IM's, your Skype, your Phone, etc. etc.

Then work for your scheduled period of focused time. Simple right? At the end of your allotted time, check your emails, your messages, voicemails, Facebook if you must, and then get back into it again.

Life is not a marathon, it's a series of short sprints.

Oh, and just in case you are not disciplined enough to unplug for a while, there are plenty of apps to download that can help you with that.

To your Success,
Trevor Long

FOCUS - What It Really Means

Yesterday, along with my fiance, we drove approx. 929Km from Sydney to Melbourne, to visit my fiances son. It's a long drive by any standards, but with good roads and little traffic, we made it in around 10.5 hours.

My finance repeatedly asked if I wanted her to take over the driving, and was surprised when I said no.

I was FOCUSed on the task at hand.

I'd planned ahead and prepped the car, got everything ready to load into the car, had a good nights sleep and got up early to miss the morning rush hour. We had regular McPit stops along the way to stretch, unload and reload the coffee, and we even treated our selves to a waffle cone (we're on holidays, right?!)

Since we were making such good time, we made a slight detour to look at a new plot of land I'd recently purchased, it was in a great new suburb, and a new high school looked to be set to open any time soon, on the same street - sweet!

After that, we stopped off to buy cheese. You may be wondering why, but I was informed by my fiance that she wouldn't be able to make a certain dish without it. Hard to argue with that one. Then we popped into the hardware store, to buy work gloves. I didn't realise she was serious about me working in the garden until that point, more on that in a future blog. The things you do for a happy and harmonious relationship!

So whats the point of this blog?

FOCUS - Focus on One (most optimal) Course Until Successful.

My goal was to get to Melbourne, my course was set (thanks Navman), I had planned and prepared for the trip, and took massive directed action. Once I'd achieved my goal of getting to Melbourne, I allowed myself a reward, a few detours to advance my finance and relationship goals.

What is it that you need to FOCUS on?

Remember this acronym. Multitasking is wasting your time and diluting your focus.

Trevor Long