Today I’m going to challenge you a bit but trust me, it’s out of love. When it comes to your life, your circumstances, your situation, no one knows it like you do. Therefore, no one is more prepared to make a decision about your life than you are. The problem is we spend too much time waiting to be told what to do because we don’t trust our own ability to do the right thing. Well let me tell you this, you already know what you need to hear. You just aren’t doing it.

Your intuition is strong and it is there to guide you, you need to honor that. Like any normal person doubts and fear will creep in and try to paralyze you, and if you let it be successful it will stall your efforts and prevent you from getting where you need to go. That’s why it helps to take advice from a mentor or coach, because it provides some authority behind the action steps that need to be taken. This is helpful in getting you to step past your doubts and forces you to get uncomfortable in a necessary way. 

But ultimately, no one knows what that step is better than you. Yes, seek advice and understand how other people have done it in the past, but think for yourself in the way you apply those learnings in your life. You already know what you need to hear, you just need someone else to tell you to do it.

When it comes to today’s topic, I could not agree more. As we strive to make progress on something and create change, consistency is king. Fortunately I’m not the only one who thinks this. Ricky Mendez touches on this in a compelling way.

The universe doesn’t reward scale, it rewards consistency. And I want to go a step further to breakdown why. When it comes to neuroplasticity and literally changing the way your brain is wired, it’s a matter of frequency of activation not intensity of activation. On occasion intensity can implement change, think of trauma or iconic moments, but those moments don’t happen often.

However with frequent and consistent activation your brain can begin to recognize patterns and start to develop in a way that accounts for those patterns. So believe it, it’s not just me saying it, consistency matters, even when it’s small because everything counts!

We live in such a comparison based culture and I’m guilty of it like everyone. We seek to evaluate ourselves in relation to those around us. And what this does is it creates a competitive undertone in everything we do, which yes, is effective in a capitalistic society, but it has an unfortunate consequence when it comes to our self worth. We constantly position ourselves relative to others just to see how we measure up, so that we can be more secure about our relative placement.

Which brings me back to the core thought - Many people view “winning” as coming in first. Logically what that means is that you can only succeed when you beat others, when your performance is deemed to be better than others, and it creates this inferiority-superiority complex. But we need to realize that this is all motivated by the ego, our eternal desire to make everything about ourselves, and it greatly affects the way we relate to others.

If you can reject your ego and overcome the need to compare yourself, you’ll see winning for what it truly is - Self-mastery and personal progress. Not the competitive mess society has crafted it to be. Winning isn’t reserved for only one person. Winning is abundant! We all can win at the same time. In fact, one person winning invites the opportunity for more people to win, cascading and compounding in a contagious way.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself that’s down the road, but let’s start at the beginning with our awareness. “Winning doesn’t always mean being first.”

Something we all have in common is that we want to have a better future. That’s not to say that you can’t be grateful and mindful for what you have, but the desire to make progress and grow is innate inside each and every one of us. But when it comes to wanting to have a better future, how do you actually go about pursuing that?

Something I’ve learned is that we are all creators. We all hold the key to every door we want to open, we just need to connect with that possibility to make it a reality. And something I do to make that connection is I choose to see my future.

The first way of doing this is by letting your future exist in your physical environment. Write out your goals and put them on the wall, create your vision board, change your laptop screensaver. When you do this, and as small as it may seem, you begin seeing your future on a daily basis just based on the stimuli around you. The more accessible the visual is the more exposure you get, and the more your mind can develop around that idea.

The second way of seeing your future is through visualization. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal future and imagine it in vivid detail. Find a way to revisit that space often because each time, it primes your brain to seek out opportunities that will help you to ultimately create it.

I know, when it comes to building your future there’s more to it than just imagining it or looking at pictures - You need to take action. But seeing your future cultivates an awareness and makes the future you want to have more top of mind, more often. And you can’t get there unless you start seeing it!

I learned a lesson in 8th grade that really stood out to me, and 13 years later it’s something I think about often because it left a strong impression on me.

My math teacher, Mr. Smith, had us do a really interesting and reflective exercise. At the beginning of the semester he asked us to set intentions about how we were going to show up to class. But the nuance here is he encouraged us to think in a realistic way so that we could actually deliver on the intention. Instead of saying “I will give 100% in class everyday”, he suggested we say “I will give everything I have on any given day”, helping us acknowledge that things aren’t always going to be perfect and we need to plan around that.

Typically in goal setting I focus on stark objectivity, but this idea introduces a necessary subjectivity. Each action you take exists within the context of the day, and many things beyond your control. It’s hard to be enthusiastic and excitable when a loved one passes away, or you hear other bad news, or you didn’t get enough sleep for some reason. And that’s going to happen, so introducing some subjectivity gives you the leeway you need to handle a variety of different situations. 

Marshall Goldsmith, a world leading executive coach,  does this perfectly. He asks people to establish a number of priorities, and then everyday evaluate their performance toward that priority by asking themselves “Did I do my best to…”. In this way, you make it about the effort, not the outcome, which is always in your control. 

With this in mind, I recently adjusted my goal setting and tracking to be more compliant with this. I’ll let you know how it goes!

When it comes to feeling guilt, we usually relate to it in a negative way and hold a negative perspective toward it. I want you to challenge that, specifically by way of this reframe I learned from Brendon Burchard. 

First, what is guilt? And I don’t mean guilt in the court of law, I mean the emotion of feeling guilty. Guilt is a negative reflection of how something went, something that didn’t go according to plan, where you feel partially at fault for some unintended negative consequences.  At first glance this seems like an entirely bad thing because something bad happened, but if you go a layer deeper and think about what that guilt actually represents you’ll quickly realize a silver-lining.

When you feel guilty you acknowledge that you were responsible for the way things went.  You are internalizing what it was about your actions, choices, and behaviors that could have been different. What this means is you recognize that you didn’t meet the standards you set for yourself, and your feeling guilty is a reminder that you are capable of doing better.

Guilt is an emotion that brings our awareness to the fact that something was off between what we did and who we want to be. That’s a huge deal! If you’re not guilty or remorseful for something, then you have no desire to change how things went. So when you feel guilty, even when things didn’t go according to plan, at least you can know that you expect better from yourself moving forward.

And that’s what I want guilt to mean for you. Sure, the end-result may have been less than desired, that’s life, but how do you handle those moments and use that to make a better future?

Task orientation is the philosophy that you only focus on the next thing that needs to get done. You can overcome the overwhelm and disempowerment you face when trying to accomplish your big goals by narrowly thinking about the next step you need to take. The doubt you experience when thinking about your dreams arises because it’s so far out and imperceivable. But the truth to making real progress, and achieving your dreams, is it doesn’t happen all at once. It requires incremental steps in the right direction, and that’s what task orientation does.

If you want to run a marathon, focus on this week of training. If you want to start a new business, determine what paperwork you need to file first, and how to get your first customer. If you want to mend a relationship, take small actions now in whatever way is appropriate. When you become really clear on the objective you can break down what needs to get done in order to meet that objective. This also allows you to set short-term expectations that you feel like you are capable of meeting, motivating you to take the necessary action.

So if you want to implement task orientation in a daunting area of your life - Filing taxes, being honest with a partner, incorporating a new morning routine, anything! - First think about the steps you need to take to get there. Once you’ve done that, then you focus on taking those next steps with full faith that they are in the direction of your ultimate goal. It’s okay to dream big, in fact I encourage it, but when you do break up that goal into smaller elements that illuminate your path to achieving it.