When envisioning the change you want, it feels great to dream big:  picturing yourself 20 pounds thinner, completely smoke free, or driving to your new job.  These images get you excited and motivate you to take action.  The problem with dreams, however, is that the bigger they are, the scarier they are.  The reality of what it will take to get to your dream (restricting your diet for months on end, never, ever having another cigarette, or leaving behind financial stability) can overwhelm you and cause even the most dedicated person to panic.  So while it’s motivating to dream big, it’s also important to plan small.  Break down your long term journey into manageable steps that enable you to stay on the path.

There’s a good reason for the phrase “one day at a time.”  Human nature makes it awfully hard for us to imagine giving up something forever or making a change we will have to stick to for the “rest of our lives.”  That is a lot of pressure.  Instead, it helps to focus on the immediate day at hand, offering us a challenge that feels possible.  One day turns into another day, which turns into a week, a month, a year.  No matter how near or far off your goal is, you still need to make it through today to get there.

And as you make it through each small success, your confidence grows.  You learn skills in how to get through cravings or setbacks, which further builds your belief in yourself and your ability.  There is no substitute for increasing your confidence than actually doing what you hope you can do.   So when looking at your long term goal, it really helps to break it down and create opportunities for little successes along the way.

For example, a woman in our group wanting to improve her health felt totally overwhelmed when her doctor suggested losing 35 pounds to address her diabetes.  She told everyone that she hadn’t even been able to lose 5 pounds, so she felt completely hopeless about losing 35.  Class members worked with her in creating a plan of smaller actions she did feel she could handle.  For the first week she was to walk 4 days around her neighborhood and stick to her nutrition plan.  Once she had achieved this, she added distance to her walks and made it through a second week of her eating plan.  With that, she had lost a little weight.  She felt more optimistic, so she added another day of exercise and a few more weeks of healthy eating, resulting in a little more weight loss.  At this point, she was surprised to see some actual improvement in her blood sugar levels.  Because of her small successes, she began to see the possibility of actually reaching her goal.  When she hit a plateau, she got discouraged.  Again, committing to what she could do in the short term helped her ride out her fear of failure, and helped her push through it.

So while it’s great to engage the heart in what you most desire, also engage the mind into what is practical.  What can you do this day or this week?  Even if it’s just one phone call to a potential employer, one new healthy recipe, or one time of saying “no” to something you usually say “yes” to, you are making progress.  Big dreams envision the impossible, but small steps make them possible.

Last week’s blog talked about the importance of meaningfully connecting to your goal as a way of enhancing motivation.  The next step after deciding you really believe in your goal is to assess if you really believe you’re capable of achieving it.  This second step is often quite subtle, but research shows the assessment of your own potential can be an important factor in whether you succeed or end up giving up on your desired change.

Choosing your goal involves envisioning your ideal result, or the outcome.  Next is choosing the process, or the path you will take to reach the outcome.  Self-efficacy is a term in psychology used to describe a person’s belief in the process.   It involves having both the confidence in your plan and the confidence that you have the necessary skills to enact your plan.   Consistent findings show that people who have high self-efficacy not only perform better, but also choose more difficult goals, show more commitment, are more flexible in their choice of task strategies, and are more likely to stay committed despite negative feedback.  In other words, if you believe you can do it, you are going to try harder and stick to it, even when you have setbacks.

Sounds good, right?  So how do you get self –efficacy?  Actually, confidence breeds confidence.  If you see your successes as coming from luck, or other people’s efforts, it will be hard to feel you have what it takes to overcome a challenge.  So look inside to determine what traits you do have that are powerful and effective – are your creative, stubborn, or funny?  How can you use these natural assets to help support you along your journey? Think about the successes you have had in your life.  What characteristics did you have and what actions did you take to get there?  How can you apply those to your current goal?  We tend to focus on our failure, and forget about all the achievements we have attained.  In this way, we underestimate our abilities and the skills we do have to apply to a new challenge.

Another step to building self-efficacy is to be proactive and put your effort into preparation.  What keeps you from feeling confident?  Once you can identify these areas, then you can address them.  This is a process where it really helps to have help.  Learning from others and gaining new knowledge can do a lot to increase your self-efficacy.  So it may be well worth your time to attend a class, join a group, get some coaching and do some research.  Seeing the path that works for others is a good model for building a plan you can also believe in.

Be realistic in your assessment of your abilities.  If you are too unrealistic about the challenges, you may get discouraged and give up, just as if you are too pessimistic.  Change is an active process, not only in your actions, but in your beliefs.  Plan, practice, share, and reward yourself.   Fill up your bank of confidence, because the more deposits you make, the more you will have to draw from in order to say “Yes I Can!”

A 2014 study from the University of Scranton found that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolution goals.  (Does this number surprise you or does this make you feel better?)  There are a broad range of reasons why people fail to reach their goals, but one factor often overlooked, I find, is the nature of the goal in the first place.

Goals must have relevance and meaning in order to sustain our attention and to be worthy of the necessary sacrifice to make them happen.  People often choose goals that seem like obvious desires, such as losing weight or quitting smoking, because they are habits that they have been trying to address for a long time.  But if these habits really mattered, why have they not achieved these goals already?  What I find in working with people who are frustrated in failing to reach their well intentioned goals of better health and personal growth, is that they don’t feel a real sense of connection to the goal.  The goal is more of a “should do” than an “I want to do”.  Making long term change is hard, and if it is driven by a nagging feeling of should, rather than a deep personal connection to a desire, it will most likely end in rebellious backlashes of “cheating” and eventually giving up.

Finding meaning in your goal is a really important process as you begin your journey of change.   In many of the Health Education classes I teach, I work with people in exploring all the possible motivations for a change, and help them identify the ones that most resonate with them.  For example, in quitting smoking, a man was told by his doctor for years he needed to quit and every year he attended quit smoking classes and started the year with the nicotine patch.  It wasn’t until he made the connection to his grandchild, who he felt had become old enough to understand what he was doing, did he want to quit.  The “I should” went to an “I want” to, and although it was still hard to quit, he embraced the process and achieved it.

Finding  meaning in and a deep connection to your goal is an ongoing process of motivation.  People who set goals and then journal about them frequently find it a good way of deepening their connection to their goal.  It serves to help them integrate the goal and its value into their daily lives.  another way is to visualize yourself living as if the new goal is achieved and seeing how your life would be different.   Make a list of all the “whys” you can think of to attain your goal and then rate them from 1-10 in how much each reason matters to you.  Circle the highest ones and then spend some time each day reviewing these factors.

If you have no “10s” on your list, you may need to reconsider.  Sometimes we choose goals that others want us to change or that we feel we should want to change.  Change is hard, but it certainly is much harder if you don’t really want it.  So, do yourself a favor, and choose your goals wisely.  Put your time and effort into goals that really matter to you.  If your heart is not in it, perhaps you need to readjust your goal to match your desire rather than trying to match your desire to your goal.

.

I just returned home from a trip to visit with family.  Lugging my overstuffed suitcase everywhere, I got to thinking about the way I pack as a good metaphor to help me with changes in the New Year.  You see, I am an over-packer.  I tend to start with a list of things I need, and then with every extra inch of space I shove in all the things I worry that I’ll need,” just in case.”  What if it rains, snows, gets hot, or cold, or what if one of us gets sick, or forgets their gloves, or needs an extra pair of socks.  Before long, every inch of my suitcase is stuffed, making it not only a burden to carry, but actually hard to see and use the things I really want.The things I carry out of fear have a way of holding me down on many levels.  It makes me wonder what kinds of worries or negative thinking is crowding my mind and slowing me down in reaching my goals.  Self doubt has a way of slipping into empty spaces, as do resentments, crowding out creativity or daydreams.  So I ask myself, how much room do I give negative thinking in my time and energy?  How much space do I stuff in with worries that make it hard to see the growth and joy that I really want?

Letting go of unnecessary mental baggage is truly liberating.  The first step will be for me to resist the urge to think that “more” is better, trying to be prepared for one more concern or “just in case” situation.  Sometimes thinking less actually gives more clarity and more flexibility in handling what is happening in the moment.  I need to ask myself, is this thought something that will free me up or will it weigh me down?  Is it a positive plan or a worry?  Is it a motivation or a self judgment?   Going lighter might just be a better way to travel and make my life’s path a more enjoyable journey.