How to stay focused and not give up

Having a plan and sticking to it is easier said than done.

I am the queen of distraction. So how do I focus on getting my work done when I’d rather be watching a Bollywood movie?

Easy – I have a goal. A goal that is important. In fact, it’s so important that getting it done is going to have a tremendous positive impact on society and the world in which we live. I am so passionate about my goal that working on it is a pleasure. So much so that taking time off to do other things is actually pretty hard for me.

In order to be successful, you have to have some idea of what you mean by success. How you define success is your goal.  I like to break goals down into primary goals and secondary goals.  My primary goals are fairly static.  Live life well and be happy. Try to make others so at the same time.

My secondary goals are way more flexible and they change over time. So – getting a degree was a goal for a while. Why get a degree? So I could live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

My current goal is to set up my business Humanist Learning Systems (https://humanistlearning.com) so I can get paid to teach people how to stop bullies using science. Why? So I can live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

See how secondary goals are in service to your primary goals? Whatever I am working on – is in service to my primary goal.

The mistake many people make is in not having a primary goal. Without that, your secondary goals have no grounding. You don’t have a good reason why you are doing what you are doing. If your goals are not grounded in a really strong reason why, then when, not if, you encounter problems, you have no real motivation or reason to keep working on them.

If you are having a problem staying focused, then consider rethinking your goals. If you need help – consider taking my course – Planning for Personal Success (https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/) which will not only help you better define your primary goals, but it will also teach you how to be more strategic in your decision making along the way.

Keep your goals to yourself

Delaying your gratification makes a difference in whether you achieve your goals or not.

I like to tell my son when he wants something now that one of the hallmarks of being a human being is that we have the ability to delay our gratification. What does this mean?  It means that we have the ability to choose not to receive a reward right now.  Why would we choose that?  Well, in order to get a better reward later, of course.

This is just really a fancy, kind of scientific way to describe the concept of saying, we have the ability to plan for the future AND, that’s a good thing.

But there’s a problem. It’s not enough to make plans. In order to be successful, we generally have to do a bit of work to make our dreams happen. Sure, you can wish upon a star if you want, but successful people don’t stop there. They do the work that is required to make their dreams a reality.

Here’s where delaying your gratification really matters.  It turns out, that if you tell other people your goals, and they congratulation you on setting your goals, your brain treats that congratulation and a reward and – having achieved you reward, you don’t need to work so hard on it anymore. And that’s actually what happens.

I realize I seem to quote Derek Sivers a lot – but he’s right on a bout a lot of things. Here is a Ted talk he did on this topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself#t-173955 

What he says is that the more we share our goals and plans with others, the more likely we are to feel like we’ve already accomplished them and we mistake talking about our goals with doing something to achieve them. And because we think we’ve already worked on this when we talk about it, we don’t put as much effort into it as if we had kept our goal to our self. Apparently when we talk about it, our brains perceive it as real and that’s good enough for the brain.

I don’t know about you, but for me, perceived success ain’t nearly as good as real success. I’m not afraid of doing the hard work required to make my business a success. I make sure that when I talk about my business goals that I also emphasize the fact that they aren’t a reality yet – and that I still have a lot of work to do to make them a reality. Because unless I make it happen, nothings going to happen.

Don’t mistake your dreams for reality and don’t fall prey to the positive thinking movement’s non-science approach.  Thinking about what you want isn’t going to make it magically happen. And imagining it’s already happened actually makes it less likely to happen because it makes you less likely to put in the effort to see your project through to completion.

If you want to be successful, stay firmly grounded in reality and do the hard work required to make it happen.

Finding Clarity

Gain Clarity, Get Committed, and Capture Your Goals With Critical Thinking

Humanists are by and large internally motivated. Our philosophy helps us to prioritize our ethics and find balance between our competing needs, desires and responsibilities. Plus, and this is a big plus, the time we spend on learning how to think well helps us to find clarity.

I say this because a LOT of people think that critical thinking is boring and intellectual. But spending some time learning how to think about how you think is actually the key to gaining clarity and from clarity commitment and motivation to accomplish your goals, whatever they might be. 

So, let’s talk about the process of finding clarity in the context of critical thinking and Humanist ethics and how this will help us to be more successful in life. 

First up: Refection.

What do you want to accomplish and more importantly, why?

If you want to gain clarity of purpose in your life, you need to spend some time considering why you think the things you think and whether what you think is even so. This is the power of critical thinking and the power of why. Asking yourself why helps you properly define the real problem you are trying to solve. This helps bring clarity and puts in you a position to be successful! In a way that focusing on what you want to accomplish won’t.

Next: Visioning.

Now that you are clear on your goal, the next step is to consider what an ideal solution to your problem might be. And again, we have to do something thinking to get this right. If you don’t want your solution to be limited, you need to ask yourself is what if.  What if things were different? What if I could end world hunger? What if there were no limitations put on you. Finding the motivation to take on the world is tough. Spending time thinking about what if possibilities helps you gain the motivation by helping you truly understand what is at stake and what can be gained by your efforts. 

Finally: Strategy.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, why you want to accomplish and what the benefits are to acheiving your goals, the next step is to develop a pragmatic strategy to accomplish it. Pie in the sky ideas are great but they won’t become reality unless you do some hard thinking about what is possible in reality. What steps do you need to take to get there. What will actually work vs. what do you just think will work. And again, critical thinking is key. If your assumptions about what works and what doesn’t is flawed, you aren’t going to succeed.  Critical thinking is key.

Here is a nice exercise, share with me what your goals are and more importantly why you chose that goal.