Resilience Tip: Know your own "standards"

Here's an easy way to organize your own thinking in life.  It's a way of thinking to give you more clarity and make you more resilient faster.

Standards: 

In every area of your life - health, fitness, relationships, spiritual life, career, finances - what do you want to do, have or be?  Or, to put it another way, what do you expect of yourself?  Define those now in each area, using no more than a few points for each.

Protocols:

What do you plan to do in order to achieve those standards?  What actions will you commit to?  How will you train yourself, develop the resilience, the mental, physical and emotional toughness to carry you through?  What specific actions will you take?

Best Practices:

Now that you've figured that out, what tools already exist to help you get there faster?  What are the best methods to use and the best mentors to learn from?  Who has already paid part of the price for you and figured this out?  Seek out those people and tools and write them down!  

If you want an example of a program that helps you set standards, give you protocols to follow and some of the best practices in the world, examine this:

http://bit.ly/6zEWFU

So remember, if you want to develop great clarity now and start making progress soon, always think about your standards, protocols and best practices.  Follow the blueprint...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Two Kinds of Goals

In any area of your life, you have a choice between two different kinds of goals, of targets to aim for.  

To illustrate this, let's look at fitness:

One kind of goal is the "results" goal - that's when you're aiming at losing X number of pounds / kilograms, fitting into last year's clothes or adding X inches / centimeters to those muscles. 

The second kind is a "performance" goal, when you commit yourself to taking specific actions at specific times over a certain, usually short, period of time.  You might commit to running 5 km twice a week or doing 100 push-ups a day or doing your yoga routine every morning without fail, for instance.  

And remember, in every area of your life you have a choice between these two kinds of goals.  Wisdom is knowing which to select when.  Fortunately, experience will teach you that.

In general, performance goals are the place to start, because if you don't learn to keep your commitments no matter what the obstacles, it's not much use to chase after results goals!  You just won't have what it takes to get there.  That's why every ancient tradition for training people physically and spiritually favored performance goals, knowing that performance automatically brings results.


This is also important because you don't always control the outcome - in relationships, for example, you don't control the other person's perceptions and reactions.  All you can do is act with integrity and let the chips fall where they may.  So in situations like that, a results goal is dangerous, because it makes you responsible for things you don't control - so beware.


So concentrate on your performance goals and the results will almost always follow.  They'll usually follow in the short term and will always follow in the long term.


Do you know YOUR performance goals for the week?  If not, pull out a pen and paper...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Tired of Flopped New Years Resolutions? Read This...

Well, it's that time of year; the time when people sign up for the local fitness club, go diligently for the first 3 weeks, then less and less often until finally, by mid-March, they're never seen or heard from again... until next January.

Just some thoughts from a veteran of New Years Resolutions, including, yes, some failed ones in the past.  Fortunately, I now know a few things about the reasons for all of our past failures that most people don't think about.


So here are my top 3 tips for making resolutions that WORK:

1. FOCUS

If you sit down and make a list of 15 or 20 resolutions, you're chances of attaining any of them take a nose dive.  Why?  Well, your mind simply can't focus on all that stuff.  So keep your resolutions to a minimum.  To be specific, I'd advise you to limit your resolutions to THREE.  That's right, no more than 3.  Your mind can't adequately focus on more than that.


And if you're adamant that you have to achieve more than 3 things this year, that's okay.  I understand and feel the same way.  However, you can save the rest for later in the year, after you've achieved your first 3 priorities.

2. DO THEM IN SEQUENCE:

Along with the sin of trying to do too many things is the sin of trying to do them all at once.

You need to prioritize your resolutions and do them in sequence, not simultaneously.  Again, you simply can't give your full attention to a ton of different things at once.  So don't try.  Set yourself up for inevitable success by going after one fish at a time.  Let the rest of that school of fish swim around for now; they'll still be there for you later.

3. MOTIVATE YOURSELF:

It's amazing how many people totally lose their original motivation within weeks, if not days.  Motivation is like food - if you don't go to the trouble of eating, you starve.  If you want to stay motivated for any one goal, you MUST build yourself a steady "diet" of inspiring books, videos, courses or whatever else you can get your hands on!  

I can pretty much guarantee that if you don't do this, you'll lose your motivation - the downward pull of laziness and the general busy-ness of life will take over and defeat you yet again.  For a rocket to put a satellite into orbit, it first has to achieve "escape velocity".  So do you.  And if you drop your inspiring "diet" at any point, you'll quite likely be sucked back into the atmosphere of laziness.  So motivate yourself continually!


There's also a fourth tip, but I'll save that one for another time.  In any event, if you put these 3 tips into practice, you'll be off and running for sure!  So don't wait.

Do you have your goals for the new year written down?  If not, stop reading and go do it now!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger