The comfort zone - It’s not really comfortable where you are is it? If it were, you wouldn’t be reading this.

The comfort zone, is the quick sand of your current thinking. It keeps you stuck in the same place, and every time you struggle, you sink deeper and deeper into the mud.

So how do you get out of the mud?

Unless someone you know can throw you a life line, and lets face it, not all of us are destined to win the lottery, then you are going to have to do it all by yourself, inch by inch, until you are standing on firm ground.

That’s all very well I can hear you say, but you’re not where I am, you don’t have my kind of problems, how would you know.

I may not know you personally, but I know the kinds of problems you are probably facing, because I’ve been there. I have been overweight and in debt. And the way you solve one is the same way that you solve the other.

To lose weight, you need to eat less than the energy you expend.
To reduce debt and to save money, you need to spend less than you earn.

Simple.

In theory, yes it is. In practice it is not quite so easy, having tried and failed in both instances many, many times. If you have ever tried to stick to a new diet and exercise plan or a tight budget you will understand what I mean when I say, it can be hard to resist that piece of birthday cake, or the invitation to the movies.

It’s the decisions we made every day that have made us the people we are today. And so it must follow that if the decisions that we made yesterday are impacting on the way we live our lives today, then surely it stands to reason that the decisions that we make today will impact on tomorrow.

But how do you begin to think and act differently? After all, we’ve had a lifetime of practice doing what we’re doing, and look where it has gotten us.

The answer to this question is to go back in time, to a time when you did manage to reach a goal. It might have been your decision to learn to drive, or pass your exams. At some point in your dim and distant past are moments where you were successful.

What you need to do is take a minute or two and write down a list of things that you successfully completed.
--------------------

Can you remember what if felt like when you had successfully completed whatever is on your list?

Part of the answer to the elusive question on how to set goals, and more importantly achieve them has to relate directly to those kinds of feelings.

So the next question is - When was the last time you really wanted something? I mean deep in the belly kind of wanted something? OK I’m not really talking about fuelling your craving for chocolate at this point, but maybe if that’s the only thing you can remember being determined about, then that’s what we’ll have to use.  What we are trying to do is recapture that “feeling.” Can you remember how you felt? You were determined, you knew what you wanted and you knew what steps you had to take in order to reach it. In the case of chocolate, your mouth watered at the thought, your body tensed in anticipation, you made sure you had enough money in your pocket before you left your house. You dressed in the appropriate clothing, got in the car and drove to the place where you knew it was likely to be. You raced into the store and you searched and searched until you found what it was.

And as you bit into the first piece of chocolate, your body had a deep, deep sense of achievement. You had done it, you had beaten adversity and nothing was going to get in your way, not even that snotty nosed kid from next door was going to get in your way of achieving your goal.

So the question is, why can’t we re-create that same kind of determination for everything that we do? Why do we run away when the going gets tough? Why don’t we give it all we’ve got every single day?

Unfortunately, most of the goals we set aren’t quite as simple as fetching a bar of chocolate. So we set goals that don’t mean much too us. If we did, we’d do anything to get it – we’d make sure that snotty little kid didn’t beat us to that last bar of chocolate, it was ours.

Or are you the kind of person who gives the job to someone else.
“Can you go and get me some chocolate?”
“What sort do you want?”
“Oh I don’t mind, surprise me.”
And guess what, they get the sort of chocolate they want, because guess what, they fetched it, so they are going to share it with you. And whilst they may know what sort of chocolate you’d really prefer, they’re going to get their favourite, after all they did all the hard work.

We wait for someone else to come to our rescue rather than figuring out the solution the problems ourselves. It’s like buying a lottery ticket. We hope that this one will solve all our money worries, rather than figuring out just what it is we need to do to reduce our debts.

As a matter of interest -
Do you know what you spend your current money on?

Do you know how much you have left over for savings?

Do you earn enough to cover your living expenses, or do you waste money on things that don’t matter?

Do you need a better job or better money management?

Or do you live your life with your fingers crossed waiting for the lucky break?

As you can imagine, taking a good hard look at your life so far will not be easy. We tend to be critical of our achievements, or modest in what we think is an achievement. So to give you a couple of suggestions:

An achievement is something that you have had to work hard for over a period of time.
For example:
• Saving enough money to go on holiday;
• Gaining your drivers licence;
• Losing weight and getting fit;
• Earning your degree;
• Getting that all important job you said you always wanted;
• Raising happy, healthy children;
• Overcoming pain, illness and disability;
• Painting your house;
• Running a marathon.

None of these can be achieved over night. Each one brought with it some measure of adversity, setbacks and detours. But you knew what the outcome was going to be. You knew that with a few course corrections, you were going to achieve “it”. Please bear in mind, that you list will be different from that of your spouse, your siblings, your friends and your work mates.

What you should never, ever do is to compare your list of achievements with anyone else. First of all, if their list seems better than yours, you will feel discouraged. Similarly if your list is better than their’s they will feel discouraged. By all means discuss strategies – after all they may have done something differently that saved them a lot of time. Knowledge like this can make a big difference to any future endeavours.

So how come that the rest of our goals, dreams and ambitions don’t ever make it into the realms of consciousness?

The reason our goals don’t succeed is because they are invisible to ourselves, let alone anyone else.

MMM1 MMW1