You don’t have to wait until the New Year to make changes in your life.

Map your success: approach each step as a separate mission and you’ll eventually arrive at the end goal. 

Setting goals, and reviewing them frequently, is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move you closer to toward where you want to go.

Serendipity

On the occurrence of a remarkable coincidence happening in my life or an extreme act of faith comes to be; it makes me feel that whatever mistakes I've made in the past, at that exact moment, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Illustration by Clayton Junior

The Backwards Law

The Backwards Law was popularized by Alan Watts, but it actually comes from Tao Te Ching, the 2000-year-old classic Chinese text which became the basis of Taoism. It is the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. 

The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. 

The more you want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. 

The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you. 

The more we pursue trying to feel better all the time, the more we reinforce this idea that we are fundamentally lacking and irreparable.

Watts describes it as being in a lake. If you relax and put your head back, you’ll float. But the more you struggle and flail around trying to stay afloat, the more you will sink. Thus, wanting positive experiences is a negative experience – and accepting negative experiences is a positive experience!

Be brave to suck at something new.

Six months of focus and hard work can put you 5 years ahead in life. Don’t underestimate the power of consistency and desire.

Grist to the Mill

Keeps your eyes open.
Listen.
Follow your curiosity.
Ask questions.
Sniff around.
Remain open.
Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvellous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

January 1st can be the first data point towards a new Goal.

Last year had its ups and downs, but has personally ended so badly and I've noticed I'm honestly losing interest in even the smallest things in life that used to carry such meaning up to now.

So I'm reminding myself how there are opportunities in just about every experience. Things I can learn from. Things that will help me grow.

A good friend recently said to me, what's meant for you won't pass you by. So whenever you have a negative experience, ask yourself, where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? Opportunity won’t knock until you build that door.

Wishing everyone the best in the years ahead.

G

Your ambition means nothings without execution.

Time to start those mid-year resolutions. You know, the ones you said you'd do back in January...

Every morning can be the first data point of a new goal. Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important, and to help you take action that will ultimately move you closer toward where you want to go. Yes it totally screams of effort, but the time is going to pass whether you do or don't. Pick something. Anything.

Success comes from being persistent.

2018

Happy New Year to everyone who has ever read this blog. If any post or part of it has ever helped you in any way then I'm happy. Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity in 2018. I'll continue to try to create some posts moving forward, but I feel this year is going to be my most industrious one so far. New year, new me and all that jazz.






"A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true" ~ Greg Reid

Little by little, a little becomes a lot...I hope

The grind to get to where I want to be is utterly relentless. Laziness may pay off now, but hard work has a future. I think I need to subscribe more to the adage of "enjoying the journey", and make the goal secondary. Hard though.

 

Testing times. 

Michelangelo Phenomenon

''Wait, I said IDEAL-self !!'



This is a pattern of relationship interdependence, in which close partners influence each other's dispositions, values, and behavioural patterns in such a manner as to bring both people closer to their ideal-selves. It suggests that close partners 'sculpt' one another's selves, shaping one another's skills and traits and promoting versus inhibiting one another's goal pursuits.

The concept was introduced by the US psychologist Stephen Michael Drigotas and several collaborators in an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999, reporting the results of four experiments designed to elucidate the phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly, it is named after the Italian sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564) who is said to have conceived of some sculptures as a process of bringing out figures already hidden in stone - by chipping away at the excess.

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''I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free''   ~ Michelangelo

Black Gold

For those people like myself that have pretty much an 'addiction' to caffeine, the reward cards you get in places like Starbucks and Costa coffee help fuel your need to want more.


Say for example you have the following two scenarios:



Scenario A, Card 1
You buy a coffee and are given a reward card with 10 spaces for stamps but none are already stamped


Scenario B, Card 2
You buy a coffee and are given a reward card with 12 spaces for stamps but 2 of them have already being stamped


You are more likely to get Card 2 filled up before Card 1.


This is down to what is called the 'Goal Gradient Effect'; that you will accelerate your behaviour as you progress closer to your goal. The 'shorter' the distance to the goal, the more motivated people become to reach it. Even though you still have 10 places to fill on both cards, with Card 2 you feel that you have already started something that you now wish to finish.

However, motivation and purchases plummet right after the goal is reached when you enter the post-reward resetting stage. If there is any second reward level, you will not initially be very motivated to reach that second reward.

For the coffee shop owner, they are most at risk of losing you as an immediate customer right after a 'reward' has been reached.


- I would drink tea but I don't know the recipe...
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Order coffee, the guy behind the counter goes, "You want the 32-ounce or the large?" Geez, how big is that large? "You'll wanna pull your car around back. I'll start the pump". That's a lot of fucking coffee, I don't know if I want to be awake that long in Tennessee.
                                                                                                                                                                    ~ Bill Hicks