A Time for Change

You spent a lot of time figuring out what you are doing that is preventing you from reaching your goals. You have a list of roadblocks in front of you. Give yourself a pat on the back! You have achieved self-awareness!

Now, you get to take these ideas and put them into practice.

The next step is to STOP. Stop doing the things that are getting in the way of accomplishing your goal.

Many of the things we do throughout the day are done without thinking. Just as an example, do you know how many times you have picked up your phone to see if you have missed anything in the last twenty minutes?

Another example, what do you do when you walk into your house after work (you probably do the same things every day without thinking about them)?

Today’s goal is to begin to stop or interrupt automatic behavior.

We want to think about how we…

…react to an event (walking in the door at the end of the day or failing a test).

…go through our daily routine when it isn’t working (having a morning routine that seems to work, but missing the bus most days).

…avoid distractions when we are trying to achieve a goal (studying for an exam and the phone rings or I need a snack).

Let me share an anecdote with you.

There was a girl who had a paper to write. She had a clear plan to get her assignment done. She made a clear plan for when she would go to the library, get her research done, when and how she would take notes, and when she would organize those notes into a paper. The plan was sound, but it didn’t happen. Day after day there was a different excuse as to why the trip to the library was pushed off. So, she followed our plan. She identified the goal, and she went through her day to see what was stopping her. It turned out that the roadblock in this case was that once she got home at the end of a long day, she really needed time to rest before she was ready to tackle anything and by the time she was, the library was closed. Her problem lay in the reaction to an event- getting into her house. She needed to interrupt that behavior in order to move forward on her paper! The solution for her was not to go inside before the trip to the library.

We each have our behaviors that can be interrupted or stopped to allow us to succeed. What behaviors are you stopping this week?

I’ll share mine with you next week.