What Most Entrepreneurs Never Share: 7 Honest, Actionable Answers to Your 7 Most Debilitating Fears & Challenges

by SCOTT

“It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.”

– Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia

Urgent Note: Live Your Legend RAW, our latest creation, went live a couple days ago. You have 2.5 more days (until this Sunday at midnight PST) to get early Insider’s (and very discounted) lifetime access + a live mentoring call with me. Lots more details below, or if you’re a member of our free LYL community, check your email for access.

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The Fun of Things Going Wrong…

The above is a snapshot of Chelsea learning to drive a stick shift on a wide open road in Northern Argentina a few days ago. Usually I do the driving in foreign countries, especially when a stick shift is involved, but I managed to leave my driver’s license at a bike shop in Uruguay a couple weeks ago, and despite endless attempts by me and our Argentinian friends, I don’t think I’m ever going to see it again.

That road might look tame enough for learning stick, and it was, right up until it turned to dirt, rocks, mud and river crossings a few miles later – which have become the ‘normal’ driving conditions for the past few days and 10+ hours on the road.  #saygoodbyetopavement #lovemywife

And that is why the above quote from Yvon Chouinard might be my favorite quote of all.

The best stuff is never planned, and if you knew what was coming, you’d likely never start. 

Life (and business) have a funny way of working like that.

And that is exactly why I created Live Your Legend RAW – to share the behind-the-scenes stuff that most entrepreneurs are too scared to share.

It’s a window into the “inner circle” so to speak – of what it takes to live your own legend.

More specifically, it’s a resource for honest, uncut, weekly lessons, guidance & focused actions on how to successfully pursue a dream & do work you love.

Despite some incredible (read: laughable) technological challenges of running a web-based business in rural Argentina (Yvon’s words strike again), LYL RAW went live two days ago (3 weeks behind schedule).

And I’m effing pumped that many of you have already joined!

In building RAW, I asked all of you what your biggest questions and challenges were in pursuing work you love and surrounding yourself with the people who make it possible.

That’s what I always do before creating something new for our community – so I know exactly what would help you the most.

Almost immediately, we had nearly 1,000 responses.

And after reading through them, we found a few things that everyone seems to be struggling with.

This used to surprise me. Now I expect it – it turns out, regardless of what we’re all trying to build, change or improve, or where we are in the process, the same challenge always seem to come up.

So, in honor that, I want to share some brief answers to your biggest questions and challenges.

Over the coming months, we’ll dive incredibly deep into these (and a ton more) in our weekly RAW sessions and lessons.

Honest, Actionable Solutions to Your 7 Biggest Challenges

#1.“What the heck am I supposed to do? I have so many interests and no idea how to choose. How do I find a dream big enough to inspire me?”

AKA: Choosing & Defining a Passion & Dream Worth Fighting (& Living) For

ACTIONABLE ANSWER: 

Follow the path of excitement – follow the spark. No one ever totally figures this out. I’m learning more about it every day (hence creating LYL RAW). And that’s the fun part. Stop putting so much damn pressure on yourself to find that ONE THING.

It’s not about what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. It’s about what you’re meant to do. That passion and fire comes from doing the things that intersect with your talents, strengths, values, beliefs and how you can actually make someone else’s life better. Everything you do – every success or failure, is part of the grand experiment. It’s a data point to better direct you towards the work you can’t not do. You just have to pay attention and do something with it.

Think about what makes you incredibly angry to talk about – something wrong about the world that you can’t stop thinking about. Focus your energy on helping with a solution. And start on an incredibly small scale.

Don’t worry about picking the ‘right’ passion or direction among all your interests.There will always likely be more than you can handle at any one time – and the list will only grow as you continue to pursue what lights you up.

The only way to have a chance at doing it all, is to pick ONE thing right now and move forward with it. The irony is that when you give incredible focus to one of your interests, that often opens up doors to incorporate others.

A few years ago I was terrified to launch a site that was only about doing work you love. There was so much other stuff I wanted to talk about. But now that incredible focus has allowed me to incorporate social dynamics, human connection, relationships, entrepreneurship, physical fitness and a lot of adventure (as I write you from a tiny town in Northern Argentina).

But if I started with all those things, most of you probably would have never heard of LYL. There would have been no clear and specific reason to pay attention.

#2. “I have no idea where to start and can’t find the motivation & momentum to keep going. How do I create a business without having it all figured out first? What’s the very, very first step?”

AKA: Starting (& Finishing) Your Most Important Projects & Finding the Unshakable Courage to Pursue Your Dreams

ACTIONABLE ANSWER:

No one has it all figured out. No one. And anyone who says they do is a liar. If fact, the more you learn and figure out, the more you realize you have to learn and figure out. But that’s part of the party that is pursuing a dream, doing work you love and making a difference in the world.

All that matters is the next step. If you can take that, then you can take the next. That’s what makes magic. Stop spinning your tires trying to figure out how to build the whole damn castle. Find a good plot of dirt and a couple good bricks. Make the steps so incredibly small that they’d be impossible not to take.

And in case you’re wondering what to specifically do first or next, it’s the thing that scares you the most. And the thing that’s likely to help others the most. It’s not getting business cards or a new suit or even your website URL.

It’s getting out in front of people and finding a way to change their life. That is all of our biggest task. Figure out how to use your talents, strengths and passions to make one person’s life better. Then do it with another, and another. Only after you’ve nailed that, do you think of how to apply tools and technology to scale your impact. Almost everyone gets this backwards (I know I did). Nail your impact first, then scale.

And if you’re lacking motivation, start spending time with other people with similar dreams. That’s why we created our free LYL Local communities. None of this is meant to do alone. Be grateful for the fact that you’re even able to read this and have the ideas that you do. Then realize that it’s your ultimate responsibility to do something with it!

#3. “How do I start something that makes real money, on-the-side, so I don’t have to take all the risk of dropping everything. I just can’t just check out and take all that financial risk right now!”

AKA: Building a Risk-Averse Passion-Based Business On The Side

ACTIONABLE ANSWER:

No one can just drop everything and leave. And even if you could, it’s often not the smartest thing to do.

Create your side hustle first. Build out your idea on the side, and use your current gig as a learning ground, as you test out what you love, how you can help people and what is going to actually work.

Live Your Legend was a side project for over five years before I went full time. And by then I was sure it was going to work, because it already had. The community was growing, the revenue was growing and I clearly found a way I could change peoples’ lives.

I cannot stress this enough – do not quit tomorrow with no idea of what’s next.There are so few people that can thrive in an uncertain environment like that, that I’m now just telling everyone to wait. If you jump ship without having a clear idea of what you actually want to be doing, the uncertainty will likely cause panic, which will lead you to another miserable job – and another 6-12 months of wasted time. Nothing’s worse than that.

If you figure out how to add massive value to someone’s life, then you can find a way to build a successful business around it. That first step is the hard part. Then you can find models of people who have successfully built the businesses and lives that you want. Study them like crazy.

The incredible thing about being alive today, is that we rarely need to invent something from scratch – the business models and examples are everywhere. We just have to figure out how to apply our ‘thing’ to them.

Start with making your first dollar from adding meaningful value to someone’s life.If you can make $1 from that, you can make a lot more.

#4. “How do I meet people who actually support me pursuing these ‘crazy’ dreams of mine. My friends and family don’t get it.”

AKA: Finding YOUR People Who Refuse to Let You Fail

ACTIONABLE ANSWER:

Start with one person who inspires you. A family member, a friend, a friend of a friend. Anyone who is somehow linked to you or someone you know. Reach out to them, tell them what you admire about them and what you’d like to build. Start by spending a few minutes on the phone or an hour out on a workout together.

At the same time, spend one less hour with the people who drain your energy. We all know who they are. Make a list of your toxic friends and slowly spend less time with them as you spend more time with people who inspire you.

Then join a Live Your Legend LOCAL group (or start one) in your home town. We now have them in over 300 cities in 70+ countries. They are 100% free and are full of ‘crazy’ people who believe what you believe. People just like you and me.

Tell the people closest to you what your goals and dreams are and why. Sit them down 1:1 and tell them how much you love and care about them and how you believe your plans will make you a better person – and improve your relationship with them. Make it crystal clear that you are not asking them to change. Show compassion.

Then spend another hour hanging around someone who inspires you. Then another. And another. Life’s too short to spend time with people who kill your dreams.

#5. “I feel guilty charging others for giving my advice, especially knowing there are other people better than I am at what I’m offering.”

AKA: Making Your First Dollar & Becoming a Practical Expert

Actionable Answer:

There will ALWAYS be people better than you. No matter how hard you work. That’s not the point.

The point is to find the intersection of your unique talents, passion and experience +the people who desperately want and need help with what you know. That is what it means to be a practical expert. And that is all you need to help people in a massive way and build an awesome business around it.

If you wait until you’re the leading expert in the world, you’ll never get anywhere.The world’s greatest experts earned those titles by doing things long before they were as qualified as they are today.

The only qualification, credential and definition of expertise that matters is getting massive results for people. You can start doing that in some capacity right this second.

And believe it or not, people will value and appreciate you more if you offer an honest and congruent way for them to compensate you. When people receive massive value, they want to pay for it. And if they do, then they’re much more likely to actually value and implement what you teach them.

Every person that’s been on this earth for a couple decades or more, has some talent or experience that another group of people is dying for help on. Those people would happily pay you for your services – and thank you for it.

That starts by finding one person. By changing one life. That will give you the confidence to start charging for the value you’re providing.

Most of the time the only thing keeping you making money from your talents and passions is…YOU. You’ll probably start making money as soon as you decide to start putting a price on what you’ve got to give.

Don’t overthink this.

#6. “How do I get people to even pay attention? Where do I find them and what should I be doing to build that online following?”

AKA: Building a Loyal & Raving Audience

Actionable Answer:

First start with one person – in the real world. See above – you noticing a pattern here? Then use those in-person interactions to craft a very specific and concise description of how you’re helping people (i.e. your personal positioning statement). For LYL this is ‘how to find and do work you love and surround yourself with the people who make it possible.

Then create a platform (a website or blog with just one or two pages to start) and create incredibly useful and directly actionable content to help the people you want to help. Put your absolute best stuff out there.

Then create incredibly useful content for other websites with similar and bigger audiences. This is what many call “guest posting.” Do this as far and wide as possible. Start with small sites, build credibility, then ladder up to bigger sites.

Then point those readers to a specific page on your site that gives huge value and asks them to join your community (i.e. subscribe to email list). Like we do at liveyourlegend.net/toolkit. Sending them to a specific page will literally increase your conversion rate by 5-20x. No joke. It’s incredible.

The formula is simple: Create massively useful content for you tribe + create massively useful content for other tribes. Repeat a lot of times.

Then continue to blow your audience’s mind with value.

#7. “How do I know which areas of my business to focus on when? What’s the ideal 80/20 time management breakdown?”

AKA: The Best Daily Habits, Tools & Routines for Handling Stress, Pressure, Fear & Rejection

Actionable Answer:

Let’s keep this one dead simple.

Do your most important task right when you wake up – the one that scares you the most. You know what’s most important or at least one of the most important things. Don’t do any other work until this is done. Then the rest of the day will be a victory no matter what.

Put all your creative energy into how to help people with the things you’re good at and enjoy. Be relentless with this. Turn off all your BS notifications for emails, Facebook and all else. Install Freedom or RescueTime or something similar to block websites. Or better yet, don’t turn on the Internet (disconnect wi-fi) until you’ve done what matters.

And give your body and mind first priority. You can’t operate at full potential if you miss workouts, eat like shite, rush non-stop through everything and leave no time for yourself and those you love. This is not optional. Taking care of yourself is more important than any of the other stuff.

Your body fuels your mind and they both fuel your potential. 

Meditate.

Breathe.

Love.

Play.

Slow down.

Know Enough to Take the Next Step…

I know these answers barely scratch the surface, and that’s the point.

Because knowing enough to take the next step is all you ever need – and usually all you should realistically expect to find. As much as you want it all laid out, with perfect clarity, before taking the first steps – that’s just not how it works.

That’s not how anything meaningful comes to life.

Start with the dream and vision of the world you want to live in.

Then take the most educated next step possible – TODAY, right this second. 

Know that all of it is going to evolve as you blaze the trail. Welcome the adventure. Because that’s what makes it worthwhile (and so much damn fun).

Especially if we get to all do it together.

That’s why we’ve created Live Your Legend RAW.

And I cannot wait to see what you do with it.

Ciao from Tilcara, Argentina…

-Scott
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12:30:00 - By Vincent 0

THE SIMPLE JOYS ARE THE MOST MEANINGFUL

By Mark Manson

The cute Brazilian girl in the cell phone store looks up at me and sputters a series of syllables in my general direction. She’s been fiddling with my phone for 15 minutes now, the phone I just bought for twice as much as I would have paid in any other country. Now she can’t get it to work. Explanation is pending, at least until I decipher the Portuguese syllable soup she continues to vomit at me.

I’m frustrated, if you didn’t notice.

“Não entendo,” I reply, for probably the twelfth time. It means “I don’t understand.” One of the only Portuguese phrases I know.

The coy smile she had given me the first few times I said it are now replaced with an aching impatience. She frowns at me, then at the phone, and then sighs. She pulls out a Post-It note, scrawls some Portuguese on it, hands it to me along with my dysfunctional new phone and slowly instructs me to go to another store in the mall and have them deal with it. She has to repeat these instructions three times before I understand them. This is the fourth cell phone store I am being sent to. Apparently there are a lot of bureaucratic procedures involved with buying a cell phone in Brazil, the details of which are obviously sailing clear over my head. And since none of the store clerks speak English, they’ve all eventually reached a breaking point, lost patience and sent me down to the next store to be somebody else’s headache.

The entire process has taken close to three hours… and it’s still not over. The mall cell phone nightmare continues.

(Although to be honest, it should have only been about an hour-and-a-half, I fell asleep in the Claro store waiting for a customer service rep to call my number. I awoke 45 minutes later to find they had proceeded to half a dozen customers beyond me. I strained to convince the rep to take me next since I had been there an hour. But my Portuguese persuasion skills weren’t very effective… OK, since we’re being honest right now, they were non-existent. I couldn’t say a thing, and therefore I hardly raised a fuss. Thus I took a new number and sat my ass back down, this time forcing myself to remain awake for the ensuing 30 minutes I would wait… again.)

I never resolved my cell phone issue that day. I finally found an old man in the mall who spoke English and was kind enough to come translate for me — yes, I walked around a Brazilian mall randomly approaching people to find someone to translate for me. It turns out that Brazil requires an identification number to activate any cell phone bought within the country, the equivalent of having a Social Security Number in the US to buy a cell phone. There’s a formal process that’s required and if you’re a foreigner and don’t work for a Brazilian company, then you’re screwed (unless you can get a friend to come in and register your phone under their name). As is probably obvious, I did not have any Brazilian friends with me. So almost four hours after arriving, I left the mall, having paid too much for a phone I still couldn’t use.

…And then got lost going home.

This was my first day in Sao Paulo. And I would be lying if I said days like this were rare. They don’t happen that often, but with enough regularity that the seething frustration, the awkward self-consciousness, the mental exhaustion, and the unavoidable sense of isolation, they’ve all become familiar to me now.

Today, internet entrepreneurship is the latest rage. Attachment-free mobile living is the new dream. And you don’t have to look much further than the 4 Hour Work Week to see the romanticization of such a post-modern lifestyle.

But as with any lifestyle, there are strengths and weaknesses to it. It’s not all a bed of roses. You sacrifice some things to gain others. And don’t worry, I’m not here to complain about every trying moment I’ve come across in two-and-a-half years of traveling. There have been far, far, far more good days than bad. And I would not take back a single life decision I’ve made.

But I do want to paint a realistic picture of what this lifestyle entails, the highs with the lows. And posit that perhaps the biggest difference between this lifestyle and a conventional one, is simply that the highs are higher and the lows lower, thus reorienting what one values spending their time on.

Because this is what you don’t hear, and that Tim Ferriss would never tell you: that day after the Brazilian cell phone debacle, after finally finding my way back to my hotel at dusk, I went and sat in my room by myself. Without TV. Without Wifi. No movies. No friends (not like I’d be able to call them anyway). Nothing to do. I went home and laid in bed for most of the evening. Physically and mentally drained and miserable.

And alone.

There’s nothing new about a bad day. We all have them. And we all have our own strategies to unravel our negative emotions. Sometimes we call up a friend and unload on them, perhaps over beers. Or we call up mom or dad and look for a little reassurance. Maybe we put on a movie with our significant other and just forget about everything for a few hours. Or maybe we hit the gym or take it out on a basketball court.

But life on the road, it’s quite often that you don’t have any friends to have beers with, you can’t call a parent and lean on them for some support, you don’t have a movie to watch or someone to curl up with, no gym membership, no basketball court. Often you have to take the brunt of your emotions alone, with nothing to distract you from them.

And it’s hard. But it makes you stronger, more mentally resilient, more centered. When you do eventually bounce back, life feels much lighter. And those joyous experiences you feel in contrast to the dark and lonely ones become that much better. In fact, I’ve found that the stark contrast between highs and lows has actually begun to redefine what those joyous moments are.

Some of my happiest memories from last year were going out and just having beers with some friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Something which I did weekly for years and years prior to this new lifestyle and that was always available to me.

It’s a bizarrely paradoxical effect on one’s emotional life: the extreme highs and novelty of experience render certain “exciting” activities to feel meaningless, and the extreme lows of isolation and frustration make many “normal” activities feel exciting and fulfilling. A Fourth of July parade looks a lot different after you’ve been to Carnaval in Brazil (twice) and stayed up three days straight partying in Ibiza. And I’ll give you a hint: it becomes really boring.

A road trip to the beach back home seems silly in comparison to living on the beach in Thailand, or taking surfing lessons in the swells of Bali. In many ways, you become jaded to your former life.

But on the other hand, the dark times of loneliness, depression, frustration, and isolation make other routine daily events of life — events which you and everyone else take for granted — that much better and more significant.

Last year, I got terribly sick in a rural town in India — possibly the last place on earth you would want to be sick. I had a scorching fever, cold chills and a headache that jackhammered the inside of my skull. I ran out of potable water at about 10PM, and the only stores in town had closed down for the night. I laid in bed through the entire night, unable to sleep due to fever and sweats. No medicine. Dehydrated and incredibly thirsty. And just to make things more interesting, a few hundred bugs swarmed into the room and were now crawling and buzzing around the walls, and occasionally on me.

Mom’s Christmas dinner tastes a lot better after an experience like that.

Which I guess is what the paradox resolves into: a devaluing of superficial pleasures and a greater appreciation for simple, authentic ones. I don’t really enjoy the presents at Christmas anymore, the fireworks at fourth of July, or even the parties on New Year’s Eve. I’ve seen bigger parties, been to more beautiful places, and already own everything I’ll ever want in this life. But unlike before, I appreciate every day spent with those who mean a lot to me. A quiet beer on a patio. Watching a basketball game together. Going to a birthday party or a barbecue. These are the events I look forward to now and get excited about, days and weeks ahead of time… And that’s probably the way it should be.

12:28:00 - By Vincent 0

How Taking Baby Steps Made a Big Difference in My Life

Smart way to systematically achieve goals for health and happiness in life

By  - Jim Turk 

Have you ever been in a situation where you know there is a way to solve a problem and there are countless books and advice columns telling you what to do, but you just don’t know where to begin?

Countless.

Maybe THAT’S the problem. Everyone has an opinion about what you need to, but nobody tells you how to get there.

This situation became very personal to me when I was diagnosed with a progressive disease in 2008.

I had two choices, the way I saw it – figure out how to turn big, unrealistic goals into smaller, more manageable ones, or be overwhelmed and give up altogether.

I chose the former.

The questions I needed to answer were “how can I slow this thing down?” and “how can I improve my life despite my loss in abilities?”

Faced with such seemingly insurmountable goals was daunting, I admit.  What was I thinking?

I’ll tell you what I was thinking – Panic.  Concession.

It felt a little like that falling feeling you get when you first fall asleep.

But the stakes were high.  Much higher than I’ve had to deal with before.

Not only did my future depend on it but so did my legacy.  How my kids would remember me!

I HAD to figure out how to make some progress.

Still, when you get down to it, it’s just solving a problem.  The method I used wasn’t rocket science – it just takes discipline and patients.

Not a given when you are in a high-stress situation!

This isn’t unique to me, either – you could use the same method to make improvements in your life.

I won’t claim to know about other issues, but I bet you could, at least, make some progress.

Do you suffer from depression?

Have weight issues?

Looking for more balance?

I’ve even used this method to accomplish other goals, from changing my diet to writing this blog post.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” ~ Henry Ford

Take the Goal and Break it Down

So how did I do it? What was my objective?  I needed a defined goal. My objective is and was not to get worse quite so fast.  Not very objective – more like subjective! To a point, but accomplishing a goal that you set for yourself is determined by you, anyway, isn’t it?

What I needed to do was to ask myself the right questions to help me break things down.

In other words, I needed things to be specific.

What are the major offenders that people talk about? ‘

I could find those on forums, blogs, support groups (in my case – but this could be things like networking or Church groups as well).

What does the research say?

No sense in reinventing the wheel, right?

If someone has socked money into researching it, there’s probably data out there, and it would certainly be a legitimate place to look.

What does intuition tell me?

We are all experts at what we do, so isn’t it reasonable to assume that we have a good idea what we need to do and why we need to do it?

Don’t sell yourself short! If you think it’s right, it probably is, and that’s a good place to start.

Now, I had read a lot about nutrition and its impact on a whole host of health problems. I also had a secret obsession with it since my college days. That was an easy one.

Next, it was clear that exercise had a positive and well-documented impact on countless illnesses and tendency to increase the lifespan in healthy individuals. That one also seemed like a no-brainer.

Outlook seemed to influence many things.

There was a lot of evidence tying it to the immune system, and multiple studies showing that a positive attitude made people recover from surgery and illness faster, students less likely to get sick, and vaccines work better.

That, and it just seems to make you feel better. I can live with that!

Sleep is a big one. Even the CDC says we don’t get enough sleep.  We have this “full steam ahead,” multi-tasking lifestyle that makes it easy for things like sleep to take a back seat.

People that get enough high-quality sleep are less likely to have weight problems, are more attentive, and recover more quickly. I guess I’d better look at improving my sleep patterns, too.

Oh, and there’s stress reduction. There is a strong link between being stressed and being more likely to die of a heart attack. There are a number of measurable factors that are tied to it as well.

Factors like higher levels of “bad” cholesterol and slower wound healing in stressed out individuals.

That goes on the list, too.

Make your Mini-goals, Specific

The key, here, is that I broke the problem into smaller parts, which I could then address one at a time.

By working on small problems individually, measuring the results was pretty straightforward.

It would’ve been easy to become overwhelmed if I had addressed them all at once and there would have been no way to accomplish the goal “as a whole.”

Where would you start? What would your endpoint be?

So I took them on one at a time and made sure to have a final objective in mind. It needed to be something measurable.

For example, I couldn’t say, “I’ll ride my stationary bike more often.” That is pretty vague, and I’m not likely to follow through with it.

If I said, on the other hand, that “I will ride my bike three times a week for at least 15 minutes,” that’s easier to keep track of. If I can ride for a little longer – great! If I’m feeling extra strong and can bump up the resistance – terrific!

I’ve accomplished my goal, though, because I’ve blocked the time out on my calendar.

The results I’m seeking aren’t setting me up for failure since they’re not performance-based.  I’ve made that commitment and can use the time as productively as my body will allow.

Have I Created Attainable Goals

This is what breaking things down does.  It makes them achievable.

If I had stuck with that first, big goal, which was really just an emotional response to my diagnosis, I’d either be spinning my wheels or wasting away at an assisted living facility somewhere.

That wasn’t an option.

By breaking the problem down into smaller pieces, they were easier to address and much more likely to produce success.

For example – I knew that regular meditation had created promising results and had been shown in numerous research articles to improve one’s health, no matter what their situation.

It’s a little like rebooting your hard-drive or hitting the reset button.

But there is little chance that I would have successfully made that a part of my routine if I didn’t know the proper technique and tried to address dietary issues at the same time.

I was worried about finding time for it since my sleep schedule was all over the board, and I hadn’t figured out my routine for exercise.

One thing at a time.I took it on by itself enabling me to break that down into even more manageable pieces.

Projects are always bigger than we first imagine, right?

With meditation, I figured out the technique to use, what the proper environment should be, what time of day, and… voila!  (well, after a few days of trial and error)

Then, once that was established and part of my routine, I could move to something else. In my case, sleep patterns.

All of these things were part of that same goal I had originally made – just in smaller chunks.

That seemed to be the key to success – make the goals small enough and take them on one at a time so that achieving them is more likely.

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” ~ Walt Disney

Am I Being Realistic About the Goals I’ve Set for Myself

How likely was I to achieve the goals I had set for myself?  That answer seemed to be rooted in the question as well.

If I had committed to running a marathon in two years – that wouldn’t have been realistic.

I was quickly losing strength in my legs and would be lucky to run across the street, let alone 26.2 miles.  That would be certainly an unachievable “goal.”

My objective, again, was not to move backward quite so fast. It wasn’t to live in denial and set myself up for failure!

Like a puzzle, I had to analyze the individual pieces and put them in the right places to create the bigger picture that I was going for – the ultimate goal.

Everything that I committed to, needed to be realistic.

If I promised myself, I’d do it, that’s half of the battle, but I needed to commit to things that I could actually do. That were possible.

Things like:

• Ride my stationary bike for at least 15 minutes, 4 times/week
• Do resistance training every 4-5 days
• Get to bed by 9:30 every night and get up by 6:00
• Eliminate refined carbohydrates from my diet
• Eat at least 4 servings of fruits and vegetables/day
• Meditate for at least 10 minutes/day

These were all defined and realistic.  I could confidently commit to doing those things.

But some things were not so easy to measure.

Even so, by committing to them, I was more self-aware. Not doing them or forgetting to do them wasn’t a failure – it just made me more cognizant of it the next time.

It really was another learning opportunity.

• Always look at the bright side when someone complains
• Always be positive when someone asks how I’m doing
• Don’t read into a perceived aggressive attitudes
• Always carry myself in a self-confident manner

These were all things that I knew would grow – like a puppy.

I may not see a change overnight, but I guarantee that the difference over the course of six months or a year would be profound.

One of my big goals, early on, was to improve my ability to speak.

Mine was going south in a hurry, and I would have gladly given up a lot of other things to be able to communicate effectively. Talk about motivation!

It turns out that this is one of those bigger, multi-faceted goals that I needed to address in parts.

Based on research and my experiences – how I felt – what did I know about it?  How would I address each area?

Stress is a huge factor. I could feel its effects almost instantly, and I knew it was a target.  But how would I deal with it?

Meditation, positivity, and going with the flow were all important factors, here.

Sleep certainly seemed to be an issue.  The more tired I was, the harder it was to speak clearly.

Then there’s confidence.

It was important that I increase my self-confidence.  This almost seemed to be self-perpetuating – it made things better or worse in a hurry.

So by breaking down the bigger picture, even when it seemed too vague, into smaller components, the overall goal was not as daunting.

I found that when I had them figured out and moved passed them, those small victories kept me motivated and worked towards the bigger goal.

More parts mean more victories!

Make Sure your Goals are Time-sensitive

If you don’t create milestones or a deadline, what’s the point?

Completion for me meant that I was doing it, or I wasn’t. That’s pretty easy to measure, isn’t it?

Because of the nature of my overall goal, I was really just looking to be doing the things that I hadn’t been or that I had at least been inconsistent about.

I have applied this method to other things, too – writing, for example.

Rather than simply saying that I should get a post in next Tuesday, I can tell myself that I need to complete 1,000 words (as Harleena talks about here) per day with the overall goal of having a draft together in three days.

That’s a manageable piece, and it’s time-sensitive, so it moves me towards my ultimate goal of having a rough draft ready in three days.

I can set the next set of goals (leading to a final draft ready for submission) when I complete the first.

Achievement of those smaller goals keeps me motivated and gives me a better idea of what’s realistic for the next set.  This is a learning process, after all.  Right?

Are there steps I can take to get to the end points that I’ve decided on? One thing’s for sure – there wouldn’t have been if my goal had simply been to “try and get better.”

Keeping the goals realistic helps you to make them time-sensitive. These all build on one another.

You can’t measure your progress on a goal unless it’s specific. You wouldn’t know where to start!

You can’t take action on something that’s impossible to achieve – that’s not realistic. Doing any of those things is pointless if you don’t give yourself a deadline!

You have to hold yourself to a cutoff date if you intend to get anything done.

That doesn’t mean pushing yourself so hard that you stress out about it – be realistic. Just make sure you have a deadline, so you follow through.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” ~ Jim Rohn

Set your goals high but break them down into small pieces and give yourself time-frames.

Time frames that are short enough that you don’t lose interest and long enough that you aren’t overcome with anxiety.  That will make you not want to do it again.

Wrapping It Up

You need to set yourself up for success!

Just follow these rules – these “SMART” rules for success – and you can complete them.

SMART stands for –

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Realistic
• Time Sensitive

I can honestly say that my life is a lot different because of SMART rules for success.

Over to you –

I would love to hear your stories and what you’ve done to achieve your goals and make a difference in your life!

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17:35:00 - By Vincent 0