You Have To Put The Work In If You Want To Reach Your Goals.

How many times have you said the following:

• I can't be bothered.
• I don't want to.

I have a confession; I've said it too.

We all have goals that we want to reach, but we spend too much time focusing on the unimportant days, or wanting to reach them but not wanting to get out of our warm, cozy beds to do the work!

Hands up to those who have said,

"I'm staying in bed all day today!"

Yes, I have done that too!

These are some statements I have a record for:

• I can't do it.
• I won't do it.
• It takes too much time.
• I have other things to do.
• It's not worth it.

Here is the point you're not going to like,

If you spend half of your life wasting your time on negativity and empty statements; you're not going to achieve your goals.

We all have patterns of learned behavior. Not all of these patterns have been taught to us by our parents. Some are patterns we have developed ourselves!

Yes, some things are our fault, even if we don't care to admit it.

We are all responsible for our own lives, and for changing the negative self-talk; this is never easy, because many of us have lived with the same patterns for years.

But, what if we could channel that negative rubbish into something positive?

I used to be a victim of my own mind. I would downplay my needs, wants, and priorities in order to please everyone else but myself. It wasn't a good way to live; I wasn't doing anything to make myself happy, instead, I was doing everything the way other people wanted things done in order to get them off my back and make them happy.

The result: I spent almost twenty years of my life not achieving anything that I wanted to achieve, and I became depressed, unhappy, and dissatisfied with my life.

When I was in therapy; my therapist told me,

"Only you can change your life. You are responsible for your own life and you make your own choices."

I had a problem; there were far too many critics in my life telling me how to live it, and what I should do with it. I was listening to those critics far too much, and it got to a point where my life wasn't my own because instead of pleasing myself, I spent my entire twenties pleasing everyone else just to avoid the backlash.

I ended up living a life that made me feel like I was a child; only born to do as I was told, and I didn't achieve anything from that!

So; what did I do?

I started to change my life, despite what anybody thought about me. I started:

• Doing most things my way, even though everyone said it was wrong because who are they to judge? Am I not the only narrator of my life?
• I wrote down every negative belief I had about myself, and I wrote a positive belief at the side of it. I realized that the negative beliefs were the delusional perceptions that others had concocted about me and that the positive beliefs were my true beliefs.
• I wrote down all the positives and negatives that I felt were true about myself. I then set myself a task such as writing or doing something new every day (such as learning to sew, knit or fix something) that challenged my negative perceptions about myself.
• I wrote down my life goals in a contract signed by myself. This made me work towards them, because if I didn't; I only had myself to blame.
• I decided what was important to me, instead of working with what everyone else thought was important to me. It helped me to understand that my priorities in life were more important than what other people thought about me.
• I set myself little snippets of work to do every day, whether it was answering one question from my studies, writing a piece even if I wasn't completely satisfied, or working on a plot for my upcoming books
• I started turning the phone off or ignoring it so that nobody could bother me while I worked.
• I started writing a journal; not every day, but just on the days when I had a positive or negative thought. This helps me to put things in context and make sense of my feelings.
• I don't fare well with routine, but I get up every day and I focus on at least one goal.

In order to reach your goals, you have to actively work towards them. If you spend all your time listening to your negative inner voice, or the voices of everyone around you, then you'll only promote negative thoughts about yourself which will make it harder to reach those goals.

You could set yourself a goal book, and tick off all the goals that you achieve whether in a day or in a week's time. A goal book will keep you in a positive mindset by showing you what you are achieving and where you are heading.

I am putting a lot of effort into reaching my goals because I want to achieve them. It becomes all too easy to lay in bed all day, and say, "I can't do it," or, "I can't be bothered."Reaching your goals is all about having the right mindset, and working towards them even on days when you feel bad about them.

If you work towards one small goal a day, and make the effort to achieve it; you're going to feel better for it afterward, and you'll be motivated to work towards it a bit more, every day.