Three mindset tips that will help you reach your goals in 2024!
Making New Years goals and resolutions is something that most of us do every January. And 80% of people will never follow through on them.
Some call it self sabotage- but I think it’s your nervous system operating perfectly.
Once you understand that you’re hard wired to resist change you can stop judging yourself when you quit and start getting curious about why.
Facts:
Your body is always moving towards what feels safe.
Your mind likes to save energy by doing what’s familiar.
It’s survival instinct.
When you decide to grow and set bigger goals for yourself- you’ll feel this protective inertia pulling you back.
So lets dive into three ways that can help you reach your goals by working with your nervous system instead of against it.
#1. Choose a thought that feels good.
A client of mine recently came to me with a goal to 3x her business in 2024. When I asked what she thought about it she said “I have no idea how I’m going to it”.
This thought, while factual sounding, was making her feel nervous about her goal.
The thought wasn’t true. She had lots of ideas, but the emotion of fear was uncomfortable enough that her nervous system was on alert.
The unconscious response to fear in the body is 3000x faster than your brain can register.
So without even realizing it, her thought sent her body into actions that felt more comfortable and familiar. She stopped working on her business and went to fold laundry, walk her dog and clean her house. All things she knew exactly how to do- which felt comforting to her body in the face of a fearful thought like “I don’t know how I’m going to do it”.
Procrastination and overwhelm are simply your body’s way of finding safety when emotions come up that activate your nervous system.
You don’t know why you suddenly got up from your computer and started sweeping the floor- but you did!
This is the time to catch yourself and notice what thoughts are running through your mind.
Write down every thought (good or bad) that you have about your goal.
Read through the negative thoughts and notice how they make your body feel. What emotions are coming up for you? Where do you feel them in your body?
Now read through the good thoughts and feel the impact they have in your body.
In our coaching session my client came up with a new thought that worked much better for her.
“I don’t know how to reach my goal right now but I do know how to get started”
This is called a bridge thought.
It acknowledges that she doesn’t have all the info yet to 3x her business but she’s confident enough to start the process and learn as she goes.
With this new thought, the fear in her body was much less and her brain offered up all kinds of “get started” ideas. She was able to create a list of actions to get going.
#2. Work with your brain, not against it.
Your brain doesn’t like to work hard. It wants to save energy by doing the things already knows and understands. This feels safe. From a survival standpoint- it’s a big win.
So when you set a new goal be prepared for your brain to initially resist the change.
Discipline and routines can work but if they create negative emotions in the body, chances are your hard wiring will win out in the end.
Only 9% of people keep New Years resolutions long term.
One way to help your brain go along with your new plan is to take it in easy, small steps.
The first action steps my client came up with looked like:
Create Client Email List
Send out Marketing Email
Write a weekly blog post
Offer monthly specials
While these are all great steps to take, her brain didn’t have enough information to tackle any one of these tasks.
I asked her how she was going to create a client email list and her face went blank.
She replied-“I’m not really sure how to do it”- and I could see her old thought had returned. She was spinning into overwhelm before she could even start.
That is because “Create an email list” is too big for an action step.
It’s more like a mini goal.
When she and I started to break it down the new list looked like this:
Create a Client Email List:
Call my web designer and find out how to access the emails stored in my website
Go through my phone and find all the contacts of past clients and put in one list
Arrange the dog schedule with my husband so I have two free hours on Saturday to enter all the emails onto a spreadsheet.
Can you see the difference?
Her brain knows how to do these individual tasks. With no resistance her brain will happily do task after task as long as it doesn’t feel confused and have to work too hard.
In fact the brain gets dopamine from checking off a list.
The more you can breakdown your goal into tiny easy tasks the better!
#3 Get Curious and Compassionate
All this may sound ridiculous to you.
You may be thinking; “Why do I have to carefully choose a positive thought and break things into baby steps? I’m an adult. I should just be able to push through, figure it out, work hard and never give up till I reach my goal.”
That voice of the culture is always in your head and it’s repeated that message to you since childhood- “If you fail you just weren’t trying hard enough”.
But actually, it’s not true.
You failed because you tried to ignore your internal needs in favor of an external reward.
Your body is wiser than your brain in many ways.
It isn’t going to let you move forward if it doesn’t feel safe.
You can force your body to perform for a while but eventually stress, exhaustion, depression, health problems etc. will emerge to stop you. (#America)
A much easier way is to work with your body’s needs and to comfort your nervous system as you go.
This is a skill not taught in our culture, in fact it’s often shamed as being too sensitive.
If you find yourself spinning in overwhelm or scrolling on your phone when you know you wanted to be working on your new goal just take a moment to reflect.
Notice what you are doing without trying to change it or judge it.
Simply observe yourself and get curious.
Ask yourself: What happened earlier that may have triggered an emotion that led me to scroll my phone to comfort myself?
Be an investigator and retrace your steps to see if you can find the thought or the emotion that’s in your body when you are frozen in overwhelm or ready to throw in the towel.
When you find the emotion in your body:
Offer it compassion.
Thank it for showing up to protect you.
Ask it what it needs and what positive intention it has for you.
You will be amazed by how powerful this simple 90 second check in can be.
Months of procrastination can be avoided by the simple gesture of a hand over your heart and allowing moments of grief, fear, anger, shame etc to be felt and processed.
Once you get good at noticing and being with your emotions, the energy you will save is enormous.
I’m convinced 90% of the struggles we face in life are due to the fact that we have never been taught how to choose our thoughts, process emotions and soothe our nervous systems.
Hopefully this helps get you started for the New Year with some new tools in your tool kit!
If you are interested in diving in deeper and working with your goals in private coaching sessions I highly encourage you to do so.
This process is much easier with a guide and it’s life changing stuff!
You can book a free consult with me here.
If after the consult you feel like the work is a good fit, I also offer your first full coaching session for free!
I would love to help you meet your goals in 2024!
Leave me a comment below if this piece helped you or if you have any questions!
xoxo
Ginger
