If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do!

Goals.  So many of us hear that word and cringe.  Perhaps you relate goals to New Year’s resolutions, and have had about the same measure of success? Or perhaps you have this nagging feeling that you really need to create some goals, but when you think about it you find it really hard to want things for yourself? Sound familiar?

Did you know that only 3% of us actually write down our goals.  The sad reality is if we are not writing down our goals, we may as well not bother with them, as they remain a ‘nice to have’.  When we put pen to paper, we are far more committed psychologically to attaining them.

Think of goals as arriving at the train station.  If you have no goal – or destination – you may as well climb on an unmarked train and wonder where it will take you.  One thing I have become very convinced of is that what we expect out of life, we will receive.  And this is not a new-agey spiritual concept, it’s common sense that we play a hand in creating that reality for ourselves!  If you have no goals, you will tend to regard yourself as a victim of circumstance.  However, by setting our destination and deciding what it is that we really do want from life, chances are we will receive it.

It makes sense to have goals, no one can dispute this. Yet one of the hardest parts is creating these goals for ourselves.  Some of you may find it much easier to create career and money goals, but will struggle with spiritual and personal goals because it is much easier to think of other people than to think about yourself.  Others will find the opposite – personal goals are easier, but career and money goals are more difficult. If this is the case, you are probably not feeling fulfilled in your current worklife, and need to evaluate your direction in order to set some goals that will enable you to create a fulfilled career.

There is a concept known as ‘locus of control’.  If you have an internalised locus of control, you believe that you are the master of your own destiny and that you can create the life that you desire.  A person with an externalised ‘locus of control’ believes the opposite – that they are a victim of circumstance;  that fate decides their path and that no matter what they do, external circumstances will override their intentions.  An externalised locus of control does not cause us to be happy or healthy.  Yet we can really turn this around by creating goals and taking back the reins of our own lives.  As little by little we achieve success, our mindsets will automatically shift into a healthier space, one where we accept and practice self mastery over our own lives.

 Goals will involve some introspection; we need to spend quiet time with ourselves and decide what it is we want from life.  Do not think this is selfish behaviour, rather it is crucial for your personal development, mental and physical health!

Commit to discovering and writing down your goals today, and take back your power and control so that you can create the life you really want to lead.

If you would like to attend a goal actualisation workshop where you can discover how to overcome the obstacles to attaining your goals, contact info@timeclinic.co.za.

Image by Tony Curtis Freedigitalphotos.net

Why do we procrastinate?

You know you should be doing that important task, but you find yourself creating other things to do that are either more pleasurable or more ‘important’ instead. Well, they are not really more important, who are we kidding! But we will go to extreme lengths to find tasks to distract us from the very things we are avoiding in order to justify the guilty that we are feeling. Some of us even help others to avoid the issues in our own lives. Sound familiar?

Have you ever wondered why we do this to ourselves? And is there ever a legitimate reason to procrastinate?

Procrastination was built into us as a biological defence mechanism.  There really is a legitimate reason we procrastinate.  Let us imagine that I was to ask you to invest in a new business proposition that you were unsure of.  Or perhaps I ask you to do something that initially appeared ‘above board’, but the more you thought about it, the more unsure you became?  Can you relate that uncertainty to a ‘gut feeling’? Well your gut is correct in some cases! That feeling of uncertainty is there to caution you, to warn you of potential danger in situations where you might be at risk, or where you could be potentially compromised. A useful mechanism, agreed?

This legitimate reason to procrastinate somehow got corrupted along the way when our brains realised the benefits of procrastinating over ordinary things.  At a subconscious level, this biological mechanism has gotten confused when in today’s world we are faced with tasks that we do not feel like doing. We beat ourselves up over the fact that we are procrastinators, but to procrastinate is a human response. However, it is a habit that is not productive, and a habit that does not need to control us and can indeed be overcome with the right set of tools.

The good news is that no human being was born a procrastinator.  Every single human being has developed their own pattern of procrastination along the way. You are not alone. And you really can shed the shackles of procrastination.

For more information on procrastination and how to overcome procrastination email info@timeclinic.co.za This information is copyright of The Time Clinic and unauthorised distribution is prohibited.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles www.freedigitalphotos.net