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Average means you do the same things as everyone else.  You’re not a leader nor do you want to be. You got good grades in school, but to get an A would have taken you away from your friends on MSN. You don’t have a clue what you want to be when you grow up and that’s ok thanks very much.

Average is mass market. You buy the same brands from the same place, because you’ve always done so. You’re happy to shop in the same place, go to the same holiday destination, you save up for 50 weeks in the year, so you can do the same things for the two weeks you are away – just in a different place.

Average is watching the same programs on the television, at the same time of the day, on the same day of the week. If it’s Thursday then it’s got to be Fish and Chips. Average is normal, average is wearing the same kinds of clothes, reading the same kinds of books by the same authors, whilst having your hair cut back into the same style you’ve had it in for the last 20 years.

Average is normal. Average is a habit. Average is a rut you’ve gotten yourself into and you can’t be bothered to climb out of. You’ve carved a niche out of the 360 degrees that exists around us and you are happy to wallow in your own small space. You don’t buy anything new and remarkable – you prefer the tried and tested of the mass marketed goods and services on offer on every street corner in the industrialised world.

Why are you happy to do the same things day in, day out? What are you scared of anyway? Are you scared of being noticed? Are you scared that if you choose to shop somewhere different the wheels will fall off your bandwagon? When did you become Mr Boring Average anyway? Who told you, you had to settle for average?

What is the opposite of average? One of the words I would use is “remarkable”.

Believe it or not, you were remarkable once upon a time. Before the big people told you to be safe, be careful, don’t do that you’ll hurt yourself. You were willing to take risks (sometimes death defying risks). But every day was a remarkable adventure wasn’t it. Do you remember learning how to walk, ride a bicycle, read a book, climb the stairs, dare to kiss a girl (or boy), eat different foods? Of course not, you were too busy enjoying life to know that each of these new experiences were remarkable. But that’s what they were – we learnt so much in those first few years of life, that we were always buzzing. We didn’t want to go to bed because we were busy. We couldn’t wait to get up in the morning because who knew what the new day was going to bring. We enjoyed change. Of course our parents despaired they would ever get us to sit still long enough to eat or have a bath, let alone sleep for any length of time. They would get grouchy and tell us to be quiet they’re trying to watch the telly. So what did we do, we learned that being noisy was bad – we learned that being grown up meant being serious. We emulated the tall people in our lives and eventually we stopped jumping out of bed in the morning, because we knew there would be nothing new to look forward to. In short we grew up.

What would have happened if we had been encouraged to continue to be excited at the day’s prospects – there are some people on this earth who do exactly that! You may know some of them, heck you may be one of them. Then again – if you’re reading this website – then probably not…sorry.

But you can kick off the shackles of average if you want to. You can stop being mediocre if you want to. You can do something remarkable today, you can be someone remarkable today – if you want to.

How?

Average is your comfortable zone. Average is where you don’t feel threatened. In order to do remarkable things, and be a remarkable person you have to be willing to try a few new things. You have to be willing to take risks again. Now I am not advocating that you take up hang gliding or ice skating – but it’s not a bad idea – who knows you might just get used to enjoying it. But you can make a few changes today that can profoundly impact on your life from here on in.

· Drive a different way to work tomorrow. Yes you may have found the safest, shortest way to and from your place to the place where you work – but so what.
· Turn the radio to a different channel. Better still turn it off and wind down the window, find some music from your dim and distant past and play it. Or if you still listen to the music from your dim and distant past – borrow some of your kids and play that instead. And then you’ll have something to talk to your kids about. And no I don’t mean – how on earth you can listen to that crap I don’t know. That’s not talking to, that’s talking at your children. Remember they will emulate you.
· Go to a different restaurant and try something other than fried meat and potatoes, or whatever it is you usually order.
· Go to the library and choose a book from an author you’ve never read before. Better still go to the Biography section and choose a book by someone who has led a remarkable life. Books rarely get written about the average person. Who would want to read it?
· Go into your wardrobe and find something you’ve not worn in six months or more, and wear it. Stop wearing your usual colours.
· Tell your partner that you love them. But tell them why. Better still, show them.

Change doesn’t have to be scary – it’s just something different that’s all. And you can stop living a mass market, average lifestyle and start living a remarkable “hand crafted” one instead. It’s truly remarkable when you do, because there’s not many people there.

Can learning to live with your limiting beliefs help you succeed?

Focus on what you want and you will achieve great things. Focus on what you don’t want and guess what, that too will manifest in your life. Therefore it would make sense to focus on the positive rather than the negative aspects of your character and your behaviours. Well it does to me at any rate.

Be aware of your limiting beliefs and behaviours, but whatever you do, don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. As we have discussed we are all afraid of many things, it’s whether we allow them to stop us being the best we can be or not that determines where we end up in this life. Be aware that they are there, but do not focus your energy and your thoughts on them otherwise they will start to reappear in your life.

It is easy to slide down the mountainside little by little without us realising that the view has changed too much. We reach a plateau in our development and we have a choice, we can either let past behaviours dictate our next steps or we can find a way around the current problem.

And it comes back to motives and the reasons why we are doing something. If we are happy with our current position, we can wait a while whilst we figure out what it is we should be doing next. Or we can go back to our plan and see where we have deviated from it. More often than not, we can tell at a glance what we are now doing that was different when things were working out for us and we can start to re-introduce the behaviours that will allow us to move onwards again.

However, if the plan isn’t working as well as we had hoped it may just mean that the plan wasn’t as good as it could have been so it may be time to make some changes. So when you hit the next plateau, remember it is your attitude that will make all the difference.

To achieve a goal. it needs a deadline. And it is up to each one of us to either to use those deadlines to either give us a boost to get more done each day, or to stop us dead in our tracks. Have you ever felt like the deadlines you were faced with were far too much and far too many, and far too soon?

I cannot believe how much I have to do this week. My son goes to camp tomorrow, but we've also had to pull in a couple of trips to the hospital after an error of judgement on his part. Thankfully no lasting damage except to his ego, and maybe his foot. No river activities for him this week though, so maybe he will learn a thing or two. Then again he's a boy and almost a teenager so who knows.

But tomorrow is also a major breakfast event for the organisation I work for. So an early start. Thursday I travel to New Norcia for the annual library lecture, so an entire day out of my work schedule. Why is that an issue? Well I am also editing a book a the moment and it has to go the printers by mid november so that we can supply it to the annual subscribers before chirstmas. Is time running out or what?

So what happened? To do lists. And you were hoping for a magic bullet weren't you? sorry to disappoint you, but there isn't one. Things that needed to be done and a short time frame. The thing that I have found is that you actually get more done with a short time frame and a major to do list. Why? because what ends up on the to do list are those things that really do have to be done. There isn't any time left over for anything that really isn't important.

But now it's time for bed, cos I've got a 5.30 start tomorrow morning, and the start of another VERY BUSY day.

If you have been coasting with regards to your goal setting and more importantly goal achievement, then it is time to up the pace now. Whilst it is OK to coast (rest) for a while, especially if it’s taken some time to climb the particular hill you’ve been negotiating. But have you noticed that the downward portion runs out after a while, and unless you start to pedal again, sooner or later you come to a grinding halt. Goals are like that. We need to work on them to keep them going.

One thing I have noticed with goal setting is that it is very easy to focus on the hillside that is directly in front of you, you don’t see what is coming up. It is also interesting to note that you rarely (if ever) know every step that you need to take when you begin on a particular journey. You don’t know what is going to work, and what is going to slow you down. So you focus on the here and now. The problem with that of course is, when you do reach the valley and you need to start pedalling again, you become aware that the road starts to climb again. So you stop and you look up and – oh my goodness, not only can’t you see the top of this particular mountain, but there’s not many people attempting the climb.

You stop for a while, any energy and enthusiasm you may have had for your particular goal disappears into the ether, and you get off your bike and set up camp. Promising yourself that you will get going in the morning after you’ve had chance to re-assess the mountain that lies ahead.

Morning comes, and you take another look at the mountain and decide that you are too sore and stiff today, and besides its really quite nice in the valley. You’ve gotten this far and hey it’s not that bad. So you make yourself a little more comfortable. You know the mountain is still there, but then other people come in and block your view and sooner or later you forget to look because your mountain is hidden behind everyone else’s needs, wants and desires.

Occasionally though, you decide that you really should go and make sure your mountain is still there, after all you have this niggling suspicion that what you really wanted is over there somewhere, not here in this valley, so you find your bicycle and wobble off to the start of the climb. Unfortunately, the people you’ve left behind are shouting at you to stop being so selfish, they’re happy in the valley, why can’t you be? and so you turn around and re-join them, sighing.

Time and time again you start, thinking this time it’s it. You move closer to the bottom of the climb, promising yourself that once you get motivated you’ll be off, and nothing and no-one will stop you this time.

But have you noticed there aren’t many people on the climb out of the valley? And you wonder if you want to spend time alone on the mountainside. After all what happens if you fail? You’ll have to come back to the people who told you you’d never succeed, so why bother starting to climb in the first place. And the shame of failing, you can’t bear it, so like everyone around you, you don’t start. You shelve your dreams, chain up the bike and ….

Goal setting – Is more than just deciding what you want and writing it down.

What is a goal?

A goal is something that you say that you want. But is not something that you can achieve in a day or two – they’re classed as tasks. Now a task can take you towards your goals, but they can just as easily take you away from achieving them. What is the difference? Well a goal has to be both exciting and a little frightening. It has to take you out of your comfort zone into areas you’ve never been to before. Because – and this is the first key – achieving a goal is not just about the end result. But the person you will have to become in order for you to reach them. So when deciding whether or not you have a list of tasks or a list of goals, the first question is to decide whether your goals both excite you and scare you – just a little. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The next question has to be – How do you set goals?

How do you set goals?

And more importantly how do you set goals that inspire you? You may or not have set a list of New Year’s Resolutions. If you did, I need you to fish out the list. Does it contain the same set of tired objectives as last year? Or did you manage to cross one or two things off the list from last year.

Most people spend a minute or two deciding on things they want to change in their lives. High on most people’s lists are things like, earn more money, spend less, don’t buy so many shoes, eat less, exercise more, take a decent holiday, pay off the credit card debt. As you can see from this kind of list – it’s hardly inspiring is it? The problem is, most people haven’t been taught that to set goals that inspire, you have to do some real thinking first. And this is called – the do before you die list.

These are the things that you say that you have always wanted to do and see at some time in your life. In this list are those things that form the basis of an inspired goal list. If you haven’t spent time and written one of these before, spend some time over the next couple of days, get out a big piece of paper and start scribbling. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. On my list is re-learn the times tables (what can I say – we had an art teacher in junior school, we learned how to throw clay rather than learn math), do 100 push ups (up to 40 before stopping), and many different places I want to visit.

Once you have written this list, you might have a 100 things, or you may have 20 – it doesn’t matter how big the list is, so long as it has things on there that inspire you.

What items are on your goal list?

Now you have your list of things you say you want to do or achieve. However before we go on I would like to ask you a couple of questions. Have you looked at every area of your life? Believe me when I say it is no good just working on one area and neglecting the rest. Why? Because one area can be directly affected by another.

Do you have a problem with spending too much money on things that give you pleasure, for example coffee, chocolate, alcohol or cigarettes? Then how are you going to save up for that brand new wardrobe of clothes you say you want? What about that trip to Europe? Do you currently have a credit card debt that you can only just manage to service? Are you overweight because of your reliance on those things that you buy on a daily basis?

Chances are better than good that if you said yes to one area then you also said yes to most of the other areas too.

So when dealing with goal setting, you have to consider everything that will be affected by how you currently act and react, and only when you have decided those factors can you decide whether or not you are willing to take the next steps and work out how you are going to achieve those things.

How are you going to achieve those goal items?

This is usually where most people get stuck, they know what they think they want, but they don't think they know all the answers...which stops a lot of people from beginning the process. And their reliance on small daily pleasures can add up to a major problem at the end of the year. Don’t believe me? Then consider that you say you would like to save some money to go on a trip to Europe – but you never seem to have enough money to get through to the next pay day. Well here’s the thing. What are you buying on a daily basis that is stopping you from saving money? Do you buy a cup of coffee on the way in to work? Multiply that by the number of days in a working week for you, and then multiply that by an average working year…. OK I’ll do some math for you.

Average cup of coffee price $3.50 x 5 days x 48 weeks in a year = $840.00 (I cheated and used a calculator) – that’s half way to a ticket to Europe.

So, I was being serious when I said those tiny decisions on a daily basis can and do add up to major influences in your life.

When are you going to achieve it by?

Most people have a vague, oh I’ll get it done by so and so.... when it comes to goal setting and goal achieving.

Let me put it this way, a goal is just a dream without a proper time limit on it. But how do you set a time limit. Well it depends on the goal.

·    Painting the house - An average size room can be stripped of furniture, cleaned, patched and painted in a weekend. Average of two days. If you only have the weekends - then each room will take you a weekend....4 bedrooms = 4 weekends....or 8 days.
·    Planning and saving for a trip to Europe - will depend on your current level of debt and your ability to save. If you spend more than you currently earn, then you won't achieve the goal at all. The first issue with dealing with this goal isn’t just about your lack of ability to save money, rather your ability to stop spending lots of money a few dollars at a time. Work that one out and you can save up for anything.
·    Weight loss - half a kilo to a kilo a week is do-able...any more and you run the risk of putting the weight back on as soon as you stop restricting your calorie intake. So work out how much weight you need to lose and you have the number of weeks it is likely to take you. 10 kilos = 10-20 weeks
·    Writing a book - if you are working, then a thousand words a day is a good target, depending on how fast you write (or type) - an average novel starts at about 100,000 words - therefore a hundred days or 3 and a bit months (to get the first draft)
 
What are the benefits of achieving the goal items?

One of the major keys to goal achievement is the benefits you will gain from doing it. Not just reaching the goal – but the kind of person you will need to become in order to achieve it. Benefits are essential. If you don’t know why you want something then you won’t be motivated to take the steps that you need to take. Bryce Courtenay said it best when he said one of the things you need when writing a book is “bum glue”. You might have the best ideas in the whole world, but unless you are willing to spend a considerable amount of time in front of a computer or at a desk with a pen and paper, then you are not going to get the book written are you? So what are the benefits that you think you will get from achieving the goal item?

·    Writing a book - you may get international or national recognition, and more money. You may simply have the satisfaction that you did it...
·    Losing weight - may mean - better health, a whole new wardrobe, much better self-esteem and an improved bank balance.
·    Travelling to Europe – you’ve managed to save the money, you have seen the land of your forefathers, everyone told you that you couldn’t possibly do it and you proved them wrong.
·    The house will sell for more money, which means you’ll be able to move to the area that you want to live in.
 
What are your reasons for doing it?

Whilst benefits are a good way to motivate you, the best motivational tool you can use to achieve your goals are the reasons you have these items on your goal list in the first place. Why you want to achieve something can take you towards your goal. You can see it, you can feel it and you know why you want it. Imagine that you had to succeed with the goal – or someone close to you was going to die. How motivated would you be to get going on the goals on your list? I suppose it depends on how much you like the person I suppose, but if you really want something, you will move heaven and earth in order to achieve it.

So work out your reasons, and you will have all the motivation you need to get moving.

Renovating the house:
·    The house is a pigsty and needs a complete overhaul;
·    We've just moved in and we want to make it look like it belongs to us
·    It's been years since these walls last saw a coat of paint - it's time !!
·    That style of decoration went out 30 years ago (don't worry - wait a few more years and it will be back in again)
 
Weight loss:
·    I have an unhealthy BMI and the doctor told me to lose weight or die
·    I do not look very nice without clothes on !!
·    I don't look much better with clothes on !!!!!!!!!
·    I hide behind frumpy clothes to try and disguise the fact that I am fat and unhealthy
·    I don't have any energy
 
Who will help you achieve your goal?

Every one needs help, and those people who say they don’t are usually hiding behind the lies so they can find all sorts of excuse not to do something. The richest, most powerful people in the world have armies of advisors to help them. Sports people have coaches and personal trainers to help them improve their game. Why should we be any different?

Believe me when I say, you will struggle to do everything you need to do by yourself. So enlist the people who can take your dreams forward:

·    An author needs an editor and a publisher. Even if you decide to self-publish your work, you still need to get someone else to read it to make sure you haven't written drivel
·    You may need encouragement to reach your new weight - in which case a personal trainer can be invaluable, or a weight loss consultant, a nutritionist, your partner and your kids can all help you to keep to the straight and narrow and encourage you not to buy and eat "bad" things.
 
What is stopping you?

Your belief in yourself may be your biggest stumbling block. If you don't believe you can do it, you may struggle to achieve anything.

·    Lack of motivation is the other big factor - if you don't believe in your goals, if they don't inspire you to get started on them, then you will find all the excuses in the world not to get started.
 
Remember:
So, when you are working out your goal plan, ask yourself the questions:

·    What do you want?
·    How are you going to get it?
·    When are you going to achieve it by?
·    What are the proposed benefits of getting it?
·    What are your reasons?
·    Who will help you?
·    What is currently stopping you?
 
Goal setting isn't hard - that is the first question in the above list....goal achievement is easier once you have the answers to the remaining questions worked out.

Apart from reading this of course? What are you doing today? Is the "thing" you were doing, before I rudely interrupted you, important, urgent, important and urgent, or were you just filling in time between tasks? You see I think it is the movement between tasks that can have a major impact on where we get to at the end of the day. Have you noticed that if your day is not structured and planned, you will procrastinate between the tasks? Believe me when I say it is true.

I had an incredibly busy and productive morning today. I started and completed an expression of interest for a client, wrote a newsletter, cleaned out my emails, and answered a couple of queries - For me - that is a lot of work in a couple of hours. Of course it may be nothing compared to what you've done today, but as I said, for me - not a bad morning.

The difference - having a task list, a time log, and a desire to clean my desk before the end of the working week. But whatever works for you - just do it.

So - what are you going to do now you've read this? Me I have another newsletter to write and some copy to be written and added to the other website I am building (it's lunch time BTW) - and sometimes living in the creative realm I need to do something completely different to transition between the different parts of my job. Whilst some people may go and chat to their colleagues and neighbours, make coffee or read the newspaper, I put one job away, clean my desk and pick up the next thing. I try and answer all the emails in one go, and make any telephone calls I need to make in a single block. I find it's far less disruptive that way. But as I said - whatever works for you.  

So what are you doing on the weekend? I am going to be spending a lot of time this weekend writing, I get twitchy when I don't write. But I'm also reading an emotionally hard book. One of the top 100 A&R books of all time....according to popular vote that is. Not a writer I would normally read, but you shouldn't just read the easy stuff - you need to move away from the stuff you normally read and branch out - you'll get far more out of life, if you are willing to see it, read it, share it.

So whatever you are going to do this weekend, I hope you enjoy it. After all life is about enjoyment. A rest after a long and sometimes difficult week of broken promises and unresolved questions. Because if you knew all the answers - well, what else would there be to strive for?

If something sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. Having watched a copy of "the Secret" I am amazed at how few of the "teachers" actually expect their students to do anything other than visualise the life they want. They call it the Law of Attraction. Few of them offer any concrete suggestions as to how to get out of debt/lose weight/build a better business/better relationship....just a passing comment here and there. Ask and you shall receive etc etc.

Whilst I have asked you to visualise the kind of life you would like to live. I also expect you to do something to realise those dreams, goals and ambitions. Do you want to lose weight - well visualising a better, healthier body is a great start, but unless you stop stuffing your mouth with food your body doesn't need, and exercising on a very regular basis, then you are not going to get thinner. No you cannot think yourself thin.

If you want to build a better business then you are going to have to make the phone calls, find a product/service that people want to buy and would refer their friends to buy also. If you want a better relationship you are going to have to work at it, yes it starts with a thought, but you can't just sit there smiling - they're going to think you're mad.

It starts with a thought, it starts with an emotion that you want a better life for yourself and your family and once that emotion has died down, then it comes to persistence and patience. If you're starting from zero in the bank and you have a mountain of debt - then it's going to take a while to get the million - unless you have an elderly relative who is also rich and is willing to leave you their fortune, but you could be waiting a very long time. Most people are willing to wait for someone else to pull them out of the mire. Me I expect you to ask questions - how can I get more money, what can I do differently, what should I stop spending my money on? And then I expect you to act on the answers that you receive. And yes it will sometimes take time and lots of patience.

If you can't see the "big picture" you may have trouble achieving your goals. But what happens when your goal appears to be too big. How can you achieve your goals and stay motivated when the end seems so far away?

Break it down into easily achieved parts or sections.

I'm not a big fan of gardening. I love the end results you understand, what I have trouble with is, doing the hard stuff. The weeding, the endless pulling of perfectly healthy weeds. Why I don't know. My mum is an amazing gardener, she's always doing something. I get bored really quickly, so what do I do?

Well I work with my own personal limitations. I complete one small project each time I go into the garden. Weed, plant and re-mulch one garden bed. Prune the roses. Spray the garden paths another. And you know what it works.

Which of course it applies to every goal we set for ourselves. 

We can lose weight one pound at a time. Each pound we lose we can add to the next pound we lose and over a course of a few weeks can lose all the weight we say we want to lose.

We can paint a house one wall at a time.

We can write  a book or poem one letter at a time, one page at a time.

We can save a million dollars one dollar at a time. Of course with all goals, especially monetary ones, interest soon takes over. And we get an added boost to our saving plan. The interest we gain from achieving those small goal items gives us the interest to keep going, we can see the end result and we can't wait to see the finish line.

So, don't panic if you think your goal is too big. Break it down until you can complete each section in an hour or so. We can all do something for an hour or so - can't we? 

Then go to the habits 3 - page - busy doing nothing ....and watch the video....

Thanks to the person who sent me the link.

Elle

What motivates you to change? Is it having a plan, or goal, or achieving the goal? But in order to change - you need to want to change - that's the first thing. The second step in goal achievement is having a plan. The final and crucial step of course is action. Acting on the plan that will take you through the steps to achieve those goals you say you want to achieve. But when do you find time to plan?

I tend to plan whilst walking. Something I haven't done much of in the last couple of months I have to confess. As in I haven't done much walking or planning, which probably explains why I feel like my life has been one of reaction rather than proaction. It's hard to be proactive when you haven't taken the time to plan the next steps, let alone the next few months or years.

Yesterday's daily dose got me thinking - yes I do mean what I say when I never ask you to do things I am not willing to do myself - that's hypocritical. So I have begun by putting the first of my $1 coins into a jar - but I've also added all the silver change as well - well I'm a bit behind if I want to get to $365 by the end of the year. Given what I spend during Christmas and the New Year period in the past few years, every little bit is going to help. For those of you who don't know, but the new school year starts in February here in Australia which means new school books, stationery and fees on top of my daughter's birthday - Jan 6th 2010 my daughter turns 18 ... my car registration bill is due in January and of course there are always presents to buy and thinking about it seriously $1 a day whilst a good start will not begin to touch the amount of money I will need to have put aside this year. But it is a start and I can revise my plans as I go along.

The second major decision I have made is to drop a massive 17 kilos in weight, reduce my body fat by 10% and as someone put it recently "get my sexy back"... how am I going to do that?

Well my diet is relatively good. I have incorporated more fruit and vegetables into the diet. I rarely if ever drink colas and fruit juice, eat crisps (chips), cakes, biscuits or pastry, but have been gaining weight steadily over a couple of years. Basically I don't do anywhere near enough exercise to warrant the amount of food I am eating - which isn't that much in all fairness. So what am I going to do - well the only thing I should and will get rid of is alcohol. And mum's recent visit included sampling every beer this side of the equator. Now you would think that with mum heading home it would be relatively easy to drop a few kilos, but I am also a wine drinker. So until the 17 kilos have gone I am going to limit my alcohol to one day a week. No I don't mean binge drink - just that one or two glasses of wine at night is obviously not doing much for the size of my rear end, or my liver come to that.

I am keeping a food and mood diary - and will look to publish both the results and the book for you to keep yours in.

And hand in hand with the improved eating plan goes the exercise. I have a sore achilles (left side) and the pain is travelling up into my calf as I sit here and type this. The reason is simple, I have done little or no exercise for the entire time my family were here. I put my own needs to one side and played hostess and tour guide. And now my body is getting its own back. This week I have eased back into the walking - but today I decided that I would see how the leg was after 2 k's and then I had to decide - push it to do the larger 8km circuit or cut it off at 4km's. I did the 8k's which took me an hour and 20 mins...100 mins to do the 8k's. Given that I really cut back on the speed over the last kilometre, I didn't think that was too bad for the first day out.

So - three new resolves, all starting today and today I feel good about the plans I am beginning to make again.

When do you do your planning? How good is your planning? And more importantly perhaps - how good is your staying power and completion rate?

Sometimes it doesn't take much to get more out of every day. Sometimes it just means using your time more wisely.

The MotivateMe! Time Log allows you to track how you spend your time.

Are you spending major time on minor tasks? If you want to find out, then fill in the time log for just a couple of days and you will see how much time you are wasting doing things that do not matter.

If you want to get more out of every day, then the Time Log is a great way to do just that.

Download your copy of the Time Log and get more out of every day.

Large goals are important. They are the ones that make you feel slightly queasy when you think about them. They are also the ones we tend to get stuck on.

The what if ... questions start to plague us

Well, what if you succeed?

Big, humungous goals are also the spice of life. I don't know about you, but small goals don't make we want to get up in the morning, stop me going to sleep at night or fill my every waking moment. That is what a big goal can do for you.

Now if you don't want to have a big goal that's fine, but I do ask that you give your dreams and passions a chance as we head into this new year. The next 362 days will pass whether you like it or not. So why not dust off that idea and take a good hard look at it.

Then turn each section of that into a project. Projects you can complete, problems just give you a headache.

Break down each project into easily achievable tasks and slowly you will start moving forwards.

If you are still having trouble thinking about BIG goals this way. Break down the tasks until you can't not do it. Think of it like reading war and peace. You just start with the first word, then the first sentence, then the first paragraph, then the first page. But you only start with one word.

Want to start a business? Start by getting a Business Number and registering your intention to trade.

Want to walk a thousand miles? Start with one step.

Want to lose 30lbs - start with just 1 and start with the next meal.

Want to save a thousand dollars - start today with just 1. If you add just 1 dollar to that jar each day it will take a thousand days. That's 3 and a bit years. It will take slightly less time if you put a dollar in a bank that yields interest, then you can work on compound interest. But you do get my point.

Start today, start with an idea, start with just 1 item. Tomorrow you add another.

Every year we set ourselves new goals in the form of New Year's Resolutions. Normally though, by the middle of January, most of these "goals" are nothing more than memories as we struggle to cope with our normal lives and our new resolutions (goals).

The only way I can cope with New Year's Resolutions is remembering previous experiences and to allow plenty of time for the goals to become a reality. The biggest time for me to set and achieve projects is between Christmas and New Year, when I am away from "work" - and this year is no exception. As you know, we are in the midst of re-decorating my son's bedroon (yes pics will follow) - but I am also making curtains and cleaning the house at the same time. When you own (or rent) a house it never ceases to amaze me just how much cleaning and maintenance needs to be done on a daily basis, let alone when you want to start a new project.

So a word of advice - don't underestimate the amount of time it takes to do things. For instance the walls needed 3 coats of paint...that's three separate days - with a day to cure in between each painting session. Then there has been the time taken to make the curtains, hanging, hems, and believe me you need to keep your energy levels up as you work. It might also interest you to know I've had most of the material for years, it's just without having curtain tracks to put them onto, didn't have any kind of incentive to sew them.

But the difference. As each job is finished, another major item is crossed off the list of things that needed to be done. Yes the 2008 goal list will be completed before the first week of 2009 - and that is a record in itself for me.

Anyway, I hope you are having a good break - and I hope you are getting lots done and cleared off your personal to do lists.

Over the years as this website has developed and people like you have found the site, I have been amazed and awed by the simple fact you have joined me. Some of you have joined out of desperation and some from the hope that I can inspire you to do more, be more and yes achieve more. Thank you for having the faith in me to do just that.

In recent times - in fact this week, 2 readers of the daily dose of motivational medicine have been inspired to give up jobs they don't like in order to follow their dreams. Both have credited this newsletter and this site as having helped them to clarify their thinking and to take the plunge and do it. My hat goes off to both of you as you allow your dreams and your goals to fulfil you.

And that's what it is if you think about it. If your dreams don't inspire you. If you can't "see" yourself achieving them - at whatever cost, you won't put in the time or the energy to achieve them. I know - been there and done that many times, and no doubt I will go down that path again.

At the moment i am recuperating from a bout of flu and infections, ear, throat and chest. For the first time in months I am having to rest and its giving me time to think and reflect. What am I doing? What am I doing that is right and is working well for me, and what is not working well for me. It is also giving me some serious writing time. Or will do from today onwards, I've not had the energy to put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper in about a week. Must be sick.

Down time. A time to think and reflect. A time to get out the old journals and re-read the history of your lives. Because it is the patterns of behaviour over time that will eventually inspire you to break those habits. Believe me when I say - some of things I was talking about 2 years ago are still rearing their heads today....and believe me this is not a good thing. But it is there in black and white and I can no longer hide behind busy work. My soul laid bare in black and white.

So my friends, what will it take for you to make massive change? What have you tried to fix and have failed at many times? Where are your repeated patterns of behaviour? And are you willing to admit that perhaps it is time to do something about them? Or are you going to continue to hide behind "stuff" and busy work?

Speak again soon

Elle

With goals it is important once you have achieved it, to celebrate the fact that all your planning and your strategies to overcome the procrastination habit and achieve your goal, you celebrate the fact. But it is also very important to start thinking about the next goal, and the next goal, and yes the one that will take more than a year or two to complete. We need to have some short term goals (ones that can be achieved in a month or so) some medium term goals (ones that take between a couple of months and a couple of years) and long term goals (ones that can take decades to complete).

If you wait for too long between starting one thing and finishing it....well you are going to always be playing catch up. For a long time I've been promising myself that I will mulch my garden to help keep the weeds down.

I didn't and now the weeds are taking over the beds again. I am left to pull weeds when I should be enjoying the plants. At the moment I can't see the plants because they are being choked. Any project is like that. Wait too long between each installment and you will need to go back over the same ground to get back to where you started....before you can move onwards to a new section.

Don't let the weeds take over your garden, otherwise you will be wasting time, energy and money.

Just like the weeds in your garden, if you don't work on your goals on a regular basis, other things will come along and take precendence over what is important. But you also need to have your goal strategies in place so that as you complete one goal, you know exactly where you are with the others and what you need to do in order to complete them also.

So - don't wait too long.

This isn't about women who can multi-task and men who have blinkered vision when it comes to goal setting and goal achievement. Rather, does it matter which way you choose to work?

The answer is of course, they both work and they both have problems associated with them. So we'll deal with the positives of both methods first.

Multi-tasking means that:

• You can move more than one project forward at any one time
• Projects that stall for one reason or another (usually because you are waiting on something or someone) means that you can carry on with your other tasks without standing around twiddling your thumbs.
• You can fit minor tasks around major ones

One project focus:

• Your projects get completed far faster if you focus your attention on them
• Your concentration isn't broken by other things

The downsides of multi-tasking are:

• Too many things try and compete for your time and energy
• Projects don't get completed quite so quickly
• Your attention can be swayed by other things that come up

The downsides of one project focus:

• If you are relying on other people to assist you, you will be waiting for them to do their bit before you can complete yours. Depending on the person(s) you are waiting for will determine the amount of stress this places on you.
• Other projects do not get started, let alone completed, so deciding which one to work on can be a problem and you may end up not doing any of them.

So, both work and both have problems associated with them. As with all things in life, do what works for you. There is not a one size fits all strategy when it comes to goal setting and goal achievement.

Probably the best 11 minutes you will spend today...the original lecture was much longer, this is a shortened version for Oprah Winfrey's show.

Go to Motivational Movies - Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture 

One of the frequently asked questions is why do you put out "a daily dose" of motivational medicine?

Well like all medicine - you need to take regular doses to get the benefits.

You can't take the entire pill bottle on day 1 and hope you will have done all that you need to do in order to get better. Medicine doesn't work like that, and neither does motivation. We need a constant reminder to do more, otherwise we fall into the trap of what Jim Rohn calls "the law of diminishing intent". We say we're going to start, but then we get to the end of the day with nothing done, and no changes happening. We quickly fall back into the habits we have created for ourselves and conveniently forget that today we were going to do something different.

In order to build a better future for ourselves, in order to be bigger and better than we were yesterday we need to be able to do more not less every day. We need to build upon the lessons we were given yesterday, the successes we had and the commitments we made of ourselves, and we need to add today's lesson to yesterday's foundation. Just as today's lesson will be tomorrow's foundation. And as you know without the planning and preparation, without the commitment to get up and get going the bricks are not going to be laid, the structure will soon start to crumble and before you know it, you are back to square one. Except now you have to clear away the mess that's already there.

So if you were unsure as to why we issue a daily dose of motivational medicine - well now you know. If you have any more questions (politely please), we would be delighted to answer them. Or if you would like to comment as to how the daily dose has helped you, we would love to hear from you.

Elle

Do you have a new set of New Year's Resolutions? Or to put it another way - have you set yourself your goals for the next 12 months? No???? why the heck not, too hung over - what still?

Come on guys, time to get your head out of the sand, you know what you should be doing, the question is - why aren't you doing it? Having a list of "stuff" you want or need to do should be incentive enough, but don't forget the biggest motivator is (or should be) the results that you are getting as you cross things off your planners. Step by step we can move forwards. Cleaning a house starts with a single room. A journey begins with a single step and the desire to get to the other end. Where is your desire? Why don't you want to do something today? Why are you happy stuck in the same place, doing the same thing day after day? Me - I've had enough of that.

I have just over a week of my holiday left, and I have only just started getting stuck into the major tasks, projects and goals that I have stuck on my list, and I must be honest, some have been on the list for a while - namely finish the garden, finish the book, work on the website, think about a second book that's been hovering around in the back of my mind for a while - and maybe create a CD so I can motivate myself on the way to work. Did  I tell you I hate drive time radio - well I do, it drives me insane. Bland, mundane, boring patter that some find amusing, me I just find it annoying.

So I have my objective - finish the garden, and it is time bound - i have about 10 days to do it in. It is also heat bound - we are in the middle of summer here in Oz, so there is no way I am going to be working during the heat of the day - but if I get up early, do the garden when it is cool, I can shower and get on with the writing projects in the cool of the house, when the sun hits the peak.

And that is only one of the major projects I have lined up, as I said I don't have time for messing around this year, I have far too much to do. What about you?

Or should that be, New Year's Revolutions as we seem to try and want to change too many things all at the same time.

Have you set any new year's resolutions? How long do you think you will stick to them for? A week, a month? Do you want to know the best way to not worry about breaking them? Easy, don't set them in the first place. Just as "diets" don't work, New Year's Resolutions are not worth the scrappy bit of paper they are scrawled upon. What you should be doing is working out where you want to be this time next month, next year and in the next five years.

Who do you want to meet?
Where do you want to go?
What places do you want to see?
What activities have you always wanted to do, but never got around to?

Once you have written these down, next you you have to work out how you are going to reach these "goals". Work out what you have to do starting today, that will take you towards them. But and here is the thing. It is no good putting down - visit Europe and travel for 6 months if you are spending more money than you currently earn.  So work out your budget, work out what you are currently spending your money on and then ask if that money could be beter saved and spent elsewhere.

For instance a single bar of chocolate at $1.50 a day over a year equates to $78 - hardly a fortune - but add the cup of coffee that you always buy with it and you have a $1,000 a year "problem" spent a few dollars a day. Now that $1,000 could buy you most of a plane ticket (depending where you are flying from of course), so goal setting, goal achieving is possible if you know what you want, and what you are willing to do in order to get there. And that is why most people who set New Year's Resolutions don't work, they haven't been told the best way to achieve them is by having a plan, and working on them on  daily basis.

Do repeated patterns of behaviour, habits, addictions, keep you stuck in the same place, doing the same things? Do they get worse or better over time? Most people assume that if they keep doing the same things in the same way then they get the same results.

But if you think about it, we base today's actions on the results we obtained yesterday. Every day we redefine the term "normal".

Depending on how much effort you put in, you can determine the results you get. However, what seems "hard" when you first start to do something, you become used to doing. Which means that you can start to coast if you don't change what you are doing, and/or the intensity of the activity.

It is when we start to "coast" that we need to take the most notice of where we are and what we are doing, and more importantly the results that we are getting. if your results are not as good today as they were yesterday, you need to have a look at your behaviours, habits and addictions and ask if they are a positive influence on your life, or a negative one. Only then can you make the decision to change or keep on doing the same things in the same way.

Time, that elusive component that makes up every day. Why elusive? Each of us has been given 24 hours of untapped potential, yet we waste it, squander it knowing that we'll get another block of 24 hours in which to do little or nothing tomorrow.

What would you do if you knew that today was all the time you had? Would you do more? Or would you sit and wait for the end? The choice as they say is yours. But let me put it this way if you are waiting for some unseen moment in time before you start that diet, or exercise program, or write that book you said you were always going to write, guess what - you'll never get started. Why? because "tomorrow" never arrives. We use all the excuses in the book - i'll do it when the kids leave home, i'll start once we've eaten all the bad stuff in the fridge, pantry, cupboard, spare fridge in the garage, oh and it will have to be after that wedding we're going to in ...

Oh please, do me a favour, but do yourself a bigger one. If you're still playing the "i'll do it tomorrow" game, stop reading this, because I can't help you. Go on, get back to what you were doing. Only people who are ready to give up the old ways and behaviours, people who are truly ready and willing to change, to do whatever it takes to build a new life, new them and want to get more out of every day will benefit from the information contained in these pages.

Every day I send a message to the readers of the daily dose of motivational medicine. Have you got your copy for today? Thought not. Why haven't you subscribed anyway? (Spam filters notwithstanding I will respond to your message if I receive it).

A couple of weeks ago I gave my readers a small gift, something that was literally going to change their lives. But if you missed that edition, don't panic - the words will eventually get to the e-zine archive. But I've uploaded the gift for you, all you need to do is go to the Downloads and Free Stuff page and click on the link. It's time to stop wasting it.

This email was sent to me - you know, one of those little things we get sent. Sometimes we read them and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we pass them on because they have touched our lives, and sometimes we can't be bothered. Goal setting and goal achievement is like those emails....sometimes we can be bothered to make a difference to our lives, and sometimes we can't. Sometimes we can be bothered to make a difference to other people's lives and sometimes we can't.

The Daffodil Principle