Category: Goal Achievement

1/17/2018

Why Change Can Be So Hard

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It is now 2018 and the start of a new year. For many of us, it represents a time to look back on a year of accomplishments and success. It also allows us to reflect on things we wish we could have accomplished yet maybe we fell short in some way.   We may look toward the next 12 months as an opportunity to move past the barriers that prevented us from making the changes we wanted to make in the previous year. This new year will be different, right? This year will be better? You will be better?   Maybe this sounds familiar to you?   Are you contemplating making some changes for yourself in the New Year? Is this how you remember thinking last year, and maybe the year before that? Reflecting back on failed New Year’s resolutions is enough to make the most motivated person give up before they start in their attempts at change.
Change can be very difficult. Resistance to change is very common, even though that person recognizes that change can be very beneficial to them.   It is one reason that as a counselor I tend to not be heavy on advice-giving when with a client. I recognize that for every miraculous and truly spectacular solution I provide to a client (in my humble opinion), I am likely to be met with an equally rational and well-considered problem with any solution that I am able to conjure.    Why? This is largely because people can be strongly resistant to change, even when they see the benefits of change. There are many reasons for this.

Defining the Problem Identifying the problem that requires change is the first step to making a change for yourself. However, if you don’t know what the problem is, or if you falsely identify the change that needs to take place, positive change may be doomed from the start. The overworked, underpaid, heavily drinking husband might think that a six-pack per/day is just what he needs to cope with the stress of everyday life. He might think that, “If my wife would just leave me alone in the evening and stop complaining about my drinking, everything will be fine!” The person that works out aggressively every day for 2 or more hours a day in order to achieve their fitness goals and lose weight may not achieve the goals that they want if they continue to eat ravenously after every workout or when they eat to mask painful feelings.   The mother that knows that yelling at her children is hurting her relationship with them may show some insight into this unhelpful behavior until she begins to justify this behavior by thinking “My children are simply hard-headed and this is the only thing that works.”   She misses the possibility that yelling at them may contribute to resentful feelings they experience that influences oppositional behavior. Sometimes we are not always as insightful about our own behaviors that require change until we hear enough complaints or concerns from friends or loved ones and it eventually sinks in that the problem is within ourselves, not external to us.

Old Habits    The old adage, “Old habits die hard.” is real!     Isaac Newton knew this. “An object in motion tends to stay in motion.”    We are creatures of routine and habit.   It is often hard to break from that routine.   There is a ton of research that shows that in order for a behavior to become a habit, it requires that behavior to be repeated, consistently, generally over a long period of time.   The time it takes for a behavior to become a habit varies widely and is largely dependent upon the behavior.    The more complex the behavior, the longer it takes for the behavior to become routine.   For example, in the book by Jeremy Dean, “Making Habits, Breaking Habits”, it was suggested that if you wanted to routinely drink a glass of water after breakfast every morning, it took approximately 3 weeks. If you wanted to do 50 sit-ups in the morning, this could take up to two months before it becomes a habit. More complex behaviors can take nearly a year before they can become a habit. While old habits are hard to break, it appears that forming new ones can be just as formidable.

Ambivalence   According to Google’s dictionary, ambivalence “is the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.”   I like to think of ambivalence as holding two seemingly opposing ideas in your mind at the same time.    For example, “I want that nice big piece of chocolate cake.” while simultaneously telling yourself that “I know it is not good for me and I really shouldn’t eat it.” Ambivalence is also very prevalent in the world of addiction.   “I want a drink.” vs. “I want to quit drinking.”    In reality, we tend to gravitate toward those behaviors that are harmful to us if we perceive some benefit from them, as long as that benefit is perceived as greater than any cost or consequence we experience from the behavior. It is only when the consequence is perceived to be greater than the benefit of that behavior that we even contemplate change.   Weighing short term consequences against long term benefits of change, (or long term consequences of not changing), can help one push through ambivalence and move toward change.
Fear   This can take the form of lack of confidence in oneself.   “I’m not good enough.” “I don’t have what it takes to make this happen for me.   Negative emotions are powerful motivators, but they often motivate us in the wrong direction. According to one study by McGregor & Elliot, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167204271420   their results, “demonstrated that individuals high in fear of failure reported greater shame upon a perceived failure experience than those low in fear of failure.”    Taken another way, if you have experienced failure in the past, (pretty much all of us), and have a high sense of fear of failure, this can have a dramatic influence in making any further attempts at change.   It would not be difficult to assume that those that have a high fear of failure also experience poor self confidence. “ I’m not good enough.”   “I have little control or influence over what happens to me.” It is my experience that those individuals that struggle with poor self-confidence tend to gravitate toward more negative thoughts and feelings that lead to discounting or ignoring any evidence to the contrary.   Thus the person tends to exhibit thinking fallacies or cognitive distortions. “I always fail.”   “I’m totally worthless” “Nothing good ever happens to me.”   Thoughts influence feelings.   The person that exhibits strong tendencies to think negatively about themselves will experience shame, fear, guilt, and self-loathing.   Those feelings then influence that person’s behavior, and a sense of being helpless to change.   Can you imagine how a person will respond to a desire to change if they experience this kind of negative thinking? Fear to take risks is what prevents us from moving forward. The famous author J. K Rowling once said,   “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing.”

Need for Immediate Gratification Let’s face it, we live in a world where results are expected right away.   We seem to be running short on time in our increasingly busy lives; and in our frenzied lives, if we run into obstacles that impede us in our goals, we make a judgment call about whether or not we are wasting our time, and may abandon our attempts.   Other times we may just get impatient, and if it doesn’t work as quickly as we would like, or as easily as we would want, we simply abandon our efforts and cling to a likely irrational belief that “it will never work!” “Why try?”   “No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.” - Chris Hardwick

I must be perfect Perfectionistic thinking is another kind of distorted thinking that may prevent someone from achieving their goals. A perfectionist on the one hand can work very hard toward their ambitions.   Yet, for many, this kind of thinking can also contribute to an irrational sense of failure. “If I don’t do it perfectly than I have failed.”   A sense of failure often prevents you from persisting in your attempts at success.   For a perfectionist, there is no “good enough.”    It either has to be perfect or there is no success. Someone once said to me, “Don’t make Perfect the enemy of Good.”   Sometimes Good, is good enough!
Unmet needs & emotional pain In order to solve a problem, work toward change, you must first understand what the problem is before applying the correct solution (or solutions). For many, I find that unmet needs and emotional pain is the crux for their inability to change.   One might tell themselves, “I can’t stop drinking because I’m not strong enough.”   “Alcohol gives me what I need and helps relieve stress/anxiety/pain.”    So often I experience clients in emotional pain, struggling with change because they have experienced so much emotional pain or adversity, that they continue to engage in unwanted behavior because it fills an emotional need, or masks emotional pain.   Often that behavior is a way to avoid a feeling.   “I’m too stressed. I need a cigarette.”   “It's been a rough day, a pint of Mint Chocolate Chip is just what I NEED right now.”    Those that avoid emotional pain by engaging in harmful behaviors don’t lessen their emotional pain, they only prolong and potentially compound it. The often develop unhealthy habits that lead to other consequences, thereby increasing their emotional pain.   While we all have feelings, we are not defined by them. We have feelings however we are not our feelings.    Feelings are fleeting. They come and go.   The first step to managing emotional pain is not to avoid it, but to allow yourself permission to be sad, hurt, angry, frustrated, or unhappy.   Many people, while in the midst of a powerful emotional experience, fail to recognize that “This too shall pass.”   They simply tell themselves that their experience in the moment is intolerable, and they want it gone as quickly as possible, thereby resorting to some vice that numbs their experience, rather than confronting and working through their feelings.   You have the RIGHT to feel.   Give yourself permission to do so, so that change can happen for you.

If you are thinking about making some changes, or have set some New Year’s resolutions this year, I encourage you to read my blog I wrote a couple of years ago, I Challenge you to NOT Make Any New Year’s Resolutions This Year - Success in Achieving Your Goals.

I wish you much success in the new year!

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1/25/2017

Living With Intention

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The virtues of being Mindful

What is a purposeful life?   If you are not living a purposeful life, what kind of life are you living? Is it accidental, unintentional, or does it seem at times as other forces are influencing what you do on a daily basis? Do you get to decide how you think, feel, and behave every day or do you feel less in control of who you are in the moments that pass throughout the day?    Are you driving the car or are you letting the car take you where it wants to go? Sometimes it can seem that the car takes us away and that we somehow magically arrive at our destination as we seemingly detach from the driving experience as we are in the process of driving. That sounds a bit silly but when you stop to think about this for a second, I bet you can think of several times when maybe you adopted a more passive role in your life and waited for things to happen rather than taking the initiative to make things happen the way you wanted or intended.

Living a purposeful life starts with being in the moment and being mindful of your thoughts and feelings. Being in the moment is simply focusing on the here-and-now. It is sometimes easier to describe mindfulness and being in the moment by first stating what it is not. Mindfulness is not thinking about what will happen later today, tomorrow, or later this week. It is not spending hours of the day trolling through social media, texts, and email on your computer or cell phone. It is not worrying about if something bad will happen, being in a rush to get to school, splitting your attention among multiple projects, or sitting on the couch while you unconsciously eat a pint of Rocky Road ice cream.   There is a growing movement in the field of mindfulness research that shows that being present and in the moment and being intensely focused and mindful of yourself and your immediate surroundings leads to reduced emotional and psychological distress and a greater sense of well-being. (Carmody & Beer, 2008; Lau et al.,2006; )

Being mindful is simply being aware of what is going on in and around you. It's being aware of thoughts and feelings, allowing them to occur, not attaching our judging them, but simply observing and experiencing them, as if you were watching them from the bank of a stream as they float by.    Mindfulness can be a form of meditation. For thousands of years, meditation has been well documented in its effects of increasing a sense of well being and positive health.

Mindfulness has many practical purposes and has been used globally, in meditative circles, for centuries, if not millennia. Professionally, mindfulness has been utilized for decades in the treatment of anxiety, depression, stress management, PTSD, AD/HD, weight management, and chronic pain management.   Take anxiety for example.   When you worry about something, you are thinking about something you anticipate happening in the future. Some have referred to this as praying for what you don’t want.   You hope it doesn’t happen, but you worry that it might. If the unpleasant thing does happen, that is unfortunate. Hopefully you have taken active steps to minimize its effect on you. If you spend hours or days worrying about it, you have essentially doubled your stress about it. If it doesn’t and you continue to worry about it, you still have contributed to the stress in your life. Your thoughts become fixated on the thing you choose to worry about, and you likely miss out on what is happening around you, at that moment With mindfulness, you choose what to do with your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You can continue to fixate and ruminate about these thoughts. You can try to ignore the thoughts. Or, you can be mindful of the thoughts and feelings as they occur. Keep reading for an example of mindfulness meditation.

I believe that to first start living a purposeful life, one needs to truly be aware of what they value the most. Many of my clients have told me that what is important to them, among other things, is their health, their career or academic achievements, family, exercise, leisure and recreational time, safety and security, spirituality, meaningful friendships and relationships, and emotional stability.   It is often what we value the most the guides our behavior. Yet I think many people who aren’t living a purposeful life, often get de-railed or sidetracked from what is important to them. This may be, in part, due to stress, competing demands, or other distractions that lead us in different directions than we intended.

There are so many electronic devices, gadgets, and social media outlets that purport to help you get and stay organized, connect with others, and network with the world at large. I'll be the first to admit that many of these devices and outlets do this very well. Yet I wonder sometimes if the electronic revolution that keeps rolling on at break-neck speeds is truly enhancing our quality of life. After all, we spend so much time planning for the future, connecting with others, organizing our busy schedules, and working harder at being successful, I wonder if we are missing what is happening right now, in the present moment, within ourselves. Are we failing to appreciate the here and now and all the wonderful potential things that happen in the moment. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” .

Example of Mindfulness
I was driving home the other evening after a long day of torrential rain. The clouds in the west were starting to break up just as the sun was setting. It looked like the sky was on fire as the sun reflected beneath the storm clouds. There were wonderful hues of orange, lavender, red, pink, yellow, and orange. I had just finished a very busy and rather hectic day in the office and my mind was still racing with the events of the day. Yet this moment so strongly captured my attention that I had to pull the car over and soak in the moment. In that moment, it felt good to just be.

At that moment I became intensely focused on the beautiful sight in front of me. I started to focus simply on my breathing. I had been listening to some soft music in the car that simply became background noise that I did not let interfere with what quickly evolved into a very mindful experience for me. I continued to simply focus on my breathing and the visual masterpiece in front of me. Thoughts of the day passed through my mind. I did not become disturbed or irritated with this. I simply and casually observed my thoughts and gradually brought my attention back to my breathing and to the visually stunning colors in front of me. I continued to remain in this scene for many minutes. As those minutes passed, I noticed the tension in my body, casually observing and noticing while continuing to breath. I noticed sounds around me. I did not let them distract me and gradually and effortlessly returned my attention on what and where I wanted to focus.   I began to feel more calm and peaceful in the moment and generally felt a sense of general well being begin to grow within me.   As the sun began to diminish and the sight began to fade, I returned to my surroundings in my car and proceeded to continue my journey home.   Yet in doing so, I continued to be very focused on what was around me as I resumed my breathing in an uninterrupted way.

This experience reminded me that often enough, the more things we have in our life that purport to improve the quality of our lives, only distract us from being more centered and focused on what is important, ourselves and our overall well-being. Returning to what is important, and being mindful in the present moment, helped me to reduce background stress, quiet anxiety and stress- filled thinking, and helped me to foster and inner peace that I think is so elusive today in not just my life, but most people’s lives that exist in the very busy and frantic world of today.

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12/15/2014

I Challenge You to NOT Make Any New Year's Resolutions This Year - Success in Achieving Your Goals

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Now there’s a thought! How about resolving to not make any New Year’s resolutions this year?

Do you remember all of those New Year’s resolutions you have made, say in the past 5 years? I’m sure you made a few. So, what were they? Five year’s ago, what was your promise to yourself? Maybe you remember them. Maybe not. If you are like nearly half of Americans, I bet you resolved to accomplish what you didn’t resolve the previous year, which you failed to accomplish to resolve the year prior, which was the same resolution the year before that, etc, etc.

According to the Journal of Clinical Psychology, a Study conducted by the University of Scranton and published in January 2014, researchers found that nearly half of Americans, about 45%, make New Year’s resolutions. What they discovered is, that out of that number, 49% have limited or infrequent success and 24% never succeed or simply fail. When it comes to achieving their goals, the study found only 8% of respondents who made a New Year’s resolution actually achieved success. Only 8%! Yikes! Its enough to make someone want to give up before they even start trying. Which goes back to my original point about not setting a New Year’s resolution this year. OK, don’t get discouraged. Stay with me and keep reading.

My opinion about New Year’s resolutions is thus: In the human psyche there is something magically special about January 1. Its a new year. People perceive this as a new beginning. They look back at the previous year, and maybe they regret what they failed to achieve or accomplish during that time. So they make a promise to themselves that the New Year will be different somehow, simply because its a fresh start. Yet often times, as is evidenced by the statistic mentioned earlier, people fail to make meaningful changes in their lives that bring about the results they desire. Failure to achieve a New Year’s resolution may lead to discouragement in setting any goals. This kind of defeatist thinking tends to take on a momentum of its own and can easily spiral out of control. Yet with the right tools and mindset, I believe one can very realistically achieve the objective they seek. I started this blog as if it were about New Year’s resolutions. But really its about achieving one’s goals.

Individuals set resolutions for many different reasons. They may set a goal about losing weight (#1 New Year’s resolution by the way), or improving finances, spending more time with family, quitting smoking or drinking, or some other personal or professional goal. Where I see problems happening for many is right out of the gate. The individual making the resolution fails to make a plan. They don’t make an explicit and measurable goal and they lack a well thought-out plan that is both realistic and within their means to achieve. Furthermore, there is too much focus on the end result and a lack of attention on the process. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that nearly everyone that makes a New Year’s resolution has every intent to see to its success. However, without a well reasoned road map to success, the person is less likely to see their well intentioned ideas succeed. Don’t wait until January 1 when it is tradition and quite frankly fashionable to make a goal that only 8% of you will enjoy success. Start now. Why wait? Its time to move forward.

Sit down and explicitly write out your goal or goals. This is one of the most important aspects associated with goal success according to research. Instead of the goal “Lose weight”. Set a goal of “I want to lose 10 pounds.” Or more specifically for example, “To lose one pound per week by restricting my net calories to 1500 per day. “ If you have an employment goal, your objective may be to “Have a new career or job by March 1st.” Instead, set a general goal of a new job and create a measurable objective by stating, “I will send out three applications/resumes each week.” You have little control over the decision of someone to hire you. You do have control over your own actions in applying for jobs. Regardless of how general or specific it is, write it down. Spell it out and make it real.
Develop a plan. If you have a business, or if you need to accomplish a special project at work, in most cases you need a business plan to achieve success. In this plan, you create goals and measurable steps of how you are going to achieve these goals. You consider the resources you have at hand, your strengths if you will, and how you will use them to achieve your goals. You also need to consider areas of weaknesses, what has worked against you in achieving success, and how you can manage these to prevent them from obstructing your progress. Don’t just think about the plan, write it down in as much detail as you can muster. You plan should also incorporate other suggestions below.
Recognize success along the way and allow for self-affirmation. How do you know you are making progress toward your goal? If you can’t easily and efficiently measure this, you are likely to give up quickly. By recognizing small successes along the way, you can more easily take responsibility for your progress. Progress is success. This is like giving yourself a little turbo boost or energy shot that will help you get to the next measurable step in achieving your target. Sharing your success with others can also be very rewarding and amplify the affirmations that are critical to goal success.
Motivate and commit yourself to the plan. Achieving one’s goals takes commitment. When you commit to change it often is because you are experiencing more negative consequences from the unwanted behavior instead of positive results. Weighing the pro’s and con’s of change is a very effective way of maintaining and reaffirming one's commitment to a goal. Remembering negative consequences and imagining and experiencing positive results is very important and drives to the heart of why you set goals in the first place. Remembering the reasons why you started your journey and reinforcing this on a regular basis is needed fuel to keep you moving in the right direction.
Don’t deviate from the plan but allow for flexibility. Some of the most successful people I know are also the most motivated, driven and focused at what they do. They have a routine, a schedule that they live by, and they are focused at making sure they accomplish what they set out to do on a daily basis. They are very steadfast in their devotion to making sure their daily objectives are attained. Yet, even the most fervently tenacious individuals have to allow for some flexibility sometimes. Things come up that are sometimes unavoidable, such as illness, family commitments, small crises, and other emergencies that force us to take a detour from our regular routine. Don’t let a short-term deviation from your routine derail your efforts. Start where you left off and expect that the occasional course correction will occur. If you have to set a deadline for achieving your goal, pad in a little extra time to allow for the unexpected. Overestimate rather than underestimate the time you need to achieve your goal.
Recognize and eliminate defeatist and negative thinking. What we say to ourselves in a given situation generally determines how we feel, which then influences behavior that can easily become habitual. Negative self-talk is a learned habit. Negative self-talk can start with just one incident or example. Someone having difficulty with a project at work may say to themselves, “I can’t do my job. I must be a failure.” This can lead to feelings of futility and simply giving up. They forget all of their other successes. This in turn influences their thoughts about their success as a person. It took only one task that is particularly demanding to make them think of themselves as a failure. They may try to avoid anything else that might be more challenging. In turn what is actually happening is they are reinforcing their belief that they can’t be successful or they are not competent enough to succeed. By avoiding the things that we fear, we give power to that fear and reinforce and validate the negative thinking associated with that fear. We make it less likely to overcome barriers and achieve our goals. Being able to counter negative self-talk with positive counter-statements is not easy, but with practice, can yield very positive results in being successful.
One thing at a time. The saying “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” has merit. Those who start multiple projects with multiple objectives in the context of a “complete makeover” may be setting themselves up for multiple disappointments. If you have multiple goals you would like to work on, prioritize and focus on the most important first, ensuring a more satisfactory outcome for your top goal before moving on to the next item on your list.
Focus more on the process, less on the end point. If you focus more on the process and what you need to accomplish each day to achieve your goal, this is more likely to bring more rewarding results on many levels. This has the advantage of breaking a sometimes large goal, which may feel overwhelming at first, into much smaller and more manageable objectives. It has the added benefit of being able to feel a sense of accomplishment and rewarding yourself more frequently. For example, “I was able to stay under budget today at the grocery store.” as opposed to a monthly savings goal. “I rode the bike for 30 minutes today.” as opposed to exercising 5x per week.
Share your goal with those most important in your life. The term “recovery” comes to mind when I think of those who have struggled with a significant mental health or substance use issue. Those in recovery learn quickly that sometimes their work toward success is so challenging, they need other people and resources in their life to be successful in maintaining recovery. Sometimes the daunting notion of success in changing something significant about yourself is lessened to a large degree when you share the experience with those important in your life and ask for their support. Its even more meaningful if someone close to us has the same goal. Its the notion of “I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine.” You mutually support and encourage each other and keep each other focused on what you need to do to achieve success.
If it isn’t working, doing the same thing is unlikely to produce a different result. Ok, this is kind of paraphrasing Albert Einstein’s quote about defining “insanity”. Yet it is so true. Many get discouraged by their efforts because it isn’t working. They tend to blame themselves and see themselves as failures after repeated failed attempts. I believe that we learn more from our failures than our successes. Let your unsuccessful attempts alert you to the fact that what you are trying isn’t working and that it is time to try something different. Re-examine the problem or maybe modify your plan of action. Regardless, its time to try something different.
Have confidence in your abilities. Remember your successes. Think about your strengths. Make a list if you have to. Write it down in black and white. Admire your accomplishments. Reflect on what others have told you that they like about you and what you do well. Then focus on how all of these positive attributes about yourself can be put to good use in achieving your goals. Leave no room for doubt or negative thinking. If you find your resolve in your abilities starting to wane, go back to your support network for a well-needed boost.
Expect setbacks, distractions, and disappointments. Short-term disappointments or setbacks are probably the number one reason why people fail in achieving their overall goals. Let me be blunt. It will happen. Expect it. Plan for it. Work through the disappointment and push through the barrier. So you missed a day or two in your schedule.. You are still further along than when you started. Move past it and Keep Moving Forward.

Here’s to continuing to Keep Moving Forward in 2015.

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I Challenge You to NOT Make Any New Year's Resolutions This Year - Success in Achieving Your Goals

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I Challenge You to NOT Make Any New Year's Resolutions This Year - Success in Achieving Your Goals

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The virtues of being Mindful