3 Shifts in Thinking That Helped Me Reach My Goals
Creatively, January 2021 was a pretty solid month.
January 2021 was one of the best months I’ve had.
I experienced major growth, both in my personal and business life. I made more money from freelancing than I ever have in my 23 years, read 5 books, and filmed and edited 12 YouTube videos.
I’d say it was a pretty damn solid month.
My goal for February and every month after is to keep up the momentum and stay in an elevated, positive state of mind with positive expectancy, knowing that my goals will be achieved.
The way I plan on doing that is by following three simple steps that you, too, can utilize to help make the next 30 days (and so forth) the best and most productive ones of your life.
1. Expect positive things to happen to you.
I’ve always been a pretty negative person. I believed that not having expectations would prevent me from being disappointed.
However, as December was coming to an end, I did some self-reflection. How often did my negativity help me? Never. So why was I constantly self-sabotaging myself? Why was I telling myself that I probably wouldn’t achieve any of my goals?
Psychology Today says that one of the biggest reasons we self-sabotage ourselves is that we want to control our own failure rather than face the possibility of them blindsiding us and taking us by surprise.
Instead of being hopeful and excited about the accomplishments we could potentially achieve, we tell our subconscious mind that it won’t happen for us, and we might as well not even try or manifest them into fruition.
There is nothing that can prevent you from having what you want. Others have these things, so why can’t you? What makes you less capable?
I entered January with a different mindset. I wasn’t expecting anything specific; I was simply expecting things to work in my favor if I put in the effort daily.
I wrote out realistic but ambitious goals at the beginning of the month, and I expected to achieve them. Every day, I reminded myself why I was doing what I was doing. My reasons were things like financial freedom, happiness, the growth of my career, etc.
Having a list allowed me to re-shift my focus anytime I felt down or frustrated. Just because you don’t see progress daily doesn’t mean it’s not there, so I continued to work despite a lack of results.
January ended up being a huge success, and I’m approaching February with the exact same mindset. When you expect a goal to happen and infuse your thoughts with it, the chances of you getting what you desire are significantly higher.
How to apply this:
You won’t be able to know your own fullest potential unless you try to test it.
At the start of each month, write down what you would like to accomplish. Be realistic but ambitious.
I’m not going to start telling you to meditate every morning and daydream about what you’d like to achieve every moment of the day. I will say, don’t be negative. If you want to achieve a goal, apply yourself and put in the necessary work required to accomplish it.
2. Don’t worry about how or when.
I told myself that January would be a great month for me, which allowed me to focus solely on 30 days. 30 days of hard work, and 30 days of effort.
Those 30 days allowed me to build discipline, and they allowed me to instill habits that I could transfer over into the next month and so forth.
In January, I woke up M-F at 5 am on the dot to get my workday started. I followed a productivity method called time-blocking to stay on top of everything.
I wasn’t worried about how I would achieve my goals. I didn’t think about the fact that I set out to write 30 articles in 1 month; I simply did what I could do to make it happen. I ended up publishing 22 articles, and I have 6 in my drafts that are completed.
I didn’t think about when I would start seeing results; I simply focused on putting myself in the best possible position to receive them.
For me, this meant writing consistently at the same time every day and creating a content calendar for my YouTube channel. I put in the work despite not knowing the end result.
How to apply this:
Stop focusing on the time frame. Some people achieve their goals in 5 years, some achieve them in 10. I’m not making any promises or saying you’ll achieve everything you want out of life in 30 days.
I am saying that with the right mindset, discipline, and consistency, you’re going to be a hell of a lot farther on day 30 than you were on day 1.
Consistency and perseverance were my biggest contributors to my successful month.
3. Take actions daily.
The more you do something, the better you’ll get at it. Pablo Picasso once said,
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
The hardest part is always starting. We all have grand ideas, ideas that could change the course of our lives forever, but the problem is that we don’t take action. We say we’ll do it tomorrow, or we’ll wait until our environment is better suited, or whatever other reason we have up our sleeves.
However, the longer you put it off, the less likely it’ll happen for you.
Taking small actions towards your goals daily is 10x better than waiting for the right day or the right time. Once you create momentum doing something you love to do, stopping becomes impossible.
Motivation is fleeting, but habits are forces of nature.
In Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habits, he says that small successes are the building blocks of bigger wins.
Small changes will often have a ripple effect. For example, research shows that people who work out just once a week also begin to eat healthier too.
If you want to achieve something, focus on the little things you can do daily to help you inch closer towards your goal.
How to apply this:
Write down your top 3 goals for the month.
Write down the action steps of achieving those goals and start applying them every day.
In the month of January, my goal was to write consistently and stick to my uploading schedule on YouTube.
This meant that every morning, I sat down to write at the same time. I didn’t care if I felt uninspired. I didn’t care if I wanted to literally do anything but write, the small action of simply journaling my thoughts or whatever I was feeling in that moment enabled me to create a habit that I will carry with me.
Remember, small amounts of progress is still progress.
Everything you do today is for the benefit of your future. You have the opportunity to make it great. Start small, and allow your small wins to eventually turn into big ones.
As this brand new month approaches, keep the following in mind:
- Expect positive things to happen to you. You’re just as capable as others.
- Don’t worry about how or when. Focus on doing and putting in the necessary work.
- Take actions daily. It might seem minor now, but eventually, a little bit of consistent effort will amount to more than you could imagine.
Good luck and have the best month ever.