Tag: Goals

Dream Foundation

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: The fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

What’s your dream? When was the last time someone asked you about your dream? When did you ask yourself about your dream? Most of us haven’t even asked ourselves about our dreams, let alone how we would answer that question if someone asked us.

Dream Again
Most of our dreams remain dreams and we never take action because of a number of reasons. The biggest one is fear.

Don’t let fear keep you from moving forward Click To Tweet

Fear can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Fear can look like procrastination when we find ourselves coming up against the same hurdle over and over. That’s just one example. We overcome fear by having a solid foundation to our dreams. What makes up a solid foundation?

1. Habits

Our habits make us who we are. No matter what you want to achieve in life, it’s your habits that will hinder or help you. Your habits determine your life. If you want to have a strong relationship with God, then you need to have a habit of prayer and Bible study. Do you want to be a good husband? Then you need to have a habit of continually working on your marriage. Our habits can determine so many things about us. They can also be changed to that we can chase the dreams on the inside of us.

2. Attitude

As much as our habits determine where our life is headed, our attitude is just as important. Our attitude is related to our outlook on life. Sometimes life happens where there is a job loss or some other unexpected setback. Those things happen. How we handle it and how we choose to see it, is determined by our attitude. We can control our attitude. That’s the power of the human mind.

3. Rest

Rest is more than the number of hours that you sleep. It is more about giving your body a chance to let go of the stresses of the day. It’s about giving your mind time to calm down. That’s why prayer and meditation are so important. It’s having time to quiet down and find peace before you move on to the next thing.

This list doesn’t include everything, but the things listed above are some essentials to seeing our dreams come to past in our lives. Can we achieve our dreams? Absolutely, but it will come at a price. The price of changing what we do now to doing what is needed to achieve our dreams.

Discussion Question:

What dream do you have?

How Habits Are Formed

“You can be overwhelmed by every small setback in life, or you can be energized by the possibilities they bring.” Caroline Leaf

 

This month has been a month of looking at our habits to see the impact that they are having on our lives and where we are heading. We’ve looked at why habits are important and how to change our habits Can Habits Change?, both are important to changing the course of our lives. Now let’s look at how we can form new habits.

I’m not a trained physiologist, and if you want a more scientific take on habits, then the only place I can point you to is Google. I can tell you what I’ve done to help me develop habits and what hasn’t worked.
Let me start with my morning this morning as an example of what hasn’t worked. I have a morning routine that I try to keep every day. It helps me accomplish some of the more important things that I want to do.

This morning, however, what ended up happening was I sat down at my computer and just stared at the screen. I didn’t meditate or read my daily Bible reading plan. What did I do? I watched a couple of superhero shows, ate some cereal and then decided I would try to start my morning routine about an hour or so later than I wanted to. It really just made me feel bad because I didn’t have a good reason for slacking and it just pushed me further back than I wanted to.

So what has worked for me? Let me give you what I have learned and what has helped me to form new habits.


1. Establish the goal


A new habit won’t last if you don’t know what the end goal is. For me, a part of my morning routine is reading my daily Bible plan and also writing 500 words. My end goal for both of these are things that I want to accomplish this year. With my daily Bible reading, the goal I have is to read through the Bible in a year. Writing 500 words every day will help me reach my goal of publishing two books this year and reaching more people with my blog.


2. Don’t dwell on the mistakes

I’ve probably had more days than I would like to admit about messing up my morning routine or missing it all together. However, I don’t beat myself up over it. I try to tackle some of the things throughout the day, but I make sure not to beat myself up over it. If anything I push it aside and try again the next day.


3. Reward Yourself

Too many times in developing a new habit we want to wait until we’ve reach the goal or the end until we reward ourselves. For me, I like to set rewards along the way. Rewards along the way reinforce the habit I’m trying to develop. That’s what it is all about. Solidifying the habit is the goal.

Hopefully these things help you and you don’t beat yourself up if you have a misstep. Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity.



Discussion Question:
What habit are you trying to develop?

 

Can Habits Change?

Have you ever wondered why you keep doing the same thing over and over. It feels like you’re in this place where it seems as if life has you in this continuous loop. Something good will happen and then something from your past keeps coming back into the picture. Or the time that you decide that you’re going to start a new diet is when a co-worker decides to bring in sweets into work. Then it seems like we have to restart our diet all over again.


So can we change our habits? Are we stuck they way we are? The simple answer is that yes we can change our habits! No, we’re not stuck being the same person forever. We can grow and change, but it’s up to us on how to do it.

Your habits determine your life Click To Tweet


Here are a couple of ways that we can develop the habits we desire and move in a different direction.
Habits are like paved roads in our minds and actions. We do things a certain way because at some point we paved a way in our mind of how it should be accomplished. That paved road became easier and easier the more we traveled it. Developing a new habit isn’t tearing up the old road, but it is laying a road that we need to travel instead of the old road. This is why sometimes we can fall back into old habits and ways of thinking.


1. Identify the Cues


There is usually something that triggers a habit. When it comes to bad habits it can be stress, or an environment that will bring certain feelings and then the habit. Your alarm going off in the morning may be triggering you to hit the snooze button.


2. Disrupt the Cue


Once we are able to identify the Cue, then we can change the triggers. With our example of the snooze button. If we’re hitting the snooze when the alarm goes off, then to disrupt the cue, we would move the alarm clack to the other side of the room. Actually having to get up out of the bed and walk across the floor disrupts the cue.


3. Replace the Cue


Ripping up the old road is a lot harder than paving a new one. Basically it is easier to replace a bad habit than it is to completely stop a bad a habit. The new habit will interfere with the old habit and stop us from going into autopilot.


4. Forgive Yourself

 

The whole process of starting a new habit takes time. We can be our hardest critics, so forgive yourself when there is a slip up. The entire process of changing a bad habit is not an easy one. Know that there will be hiccups along the way. Just don’t allow the hiccups to stop you.


Discussion Question:

What habits do you want to change?