How is your Attitude today?
Did you make any New Year Resolutions? How are you progressing?
Would it surprise you to know, that in the UK 78{2d8ca8a57a2be9c4e7c5f608c633b8d2972cbc20ea13f00e48eca0a2f3e4a9f8} of people who make New Year resolutions fail to meet their goal, according to a study by the University of Bristol. Other research indicates that the majority of us will have given up on our resolutions 4 weeks into the New Year even though the goals may be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Time phased.)
Goals are often not met when one vital catalytic ingredient is missing: Motivation. Your motivation gives you the energy and the persistence to keep going and take whatever actions are necessary to reach your goal.
Motivation is needed in everything you do, regardless of whether the goals are personal or business orientated. Only you can supply the motivation, as it comes from deep within and therefore only you can influence how much motivation you apply to your daily actions.
The first step in ensuring that you reach your goal is to understand what fuels your motivation and what drains your motivation. Your motivation is fuelled by
- creating a strong desire to achieve your goal,
- possessing a strong positive attitude and
- having lots of confidence.
If you are lacking in any one of these qualities, you will not experience the same levels of success that could be attainable in reaching your goal. In fact you are most likely to be a contributor towards the 78{2d8ca8a57a2be9c4e7c5f608c633b8d2972cbc20ea13f00e48eca0a2f3e4a9f8} statistic.
Out of the three motivational ingredients needed, attitude is the most influential, impacting on both your desire and confidence levels.
Your attitude comes from your thoughts, feelings, evaluations and experiences influencing your beliefs about yourself and the values you hold, which in turn impact on your behaviour. These values represent what you believe to be true and do not need a rational or logical explanation to justify them. We each behave in accordance with our beliefs as if they were true, thus making them true. Examples of attitude influencing behaviours include not walking under ladders or stepping on paving slab cracks if we believe it to be unlucky, no further self-explanations are needed.
Therefore, if you believe at a subconscious level your goal is not achievable, chances are, you are right. This means no matter how SMART your goals are, until you believe that you can achieve that goal, the thought of taking actions will drain your motivational energy because of your subconscious belief. To believe you can achieve that goal you need to have a strong positive attitude to match.
Your attitude fuels and strengthens your beliefs and it does not matter whether your beliefs empower or limit you. Be consciously aware of what your beliefs are, and whether these beliefs are helping or hindering your progress.
The good news is, it is easy to change your attitude in order to generate a high motivational energy state to ensure that you reach your goal. You can change your attitude, provided you are totally committed and brave enough to do so. The key is to reprogram your beliefs by being positive and open minded. Reprogram your embedded beliefs by continuously focussing on positive and empowering thoughts. Rephrase any negative beliefs you have about yourself into strong positive affirmations. Instead of telling yourself “I can’t, it is impossible”, tell yourself “I can and it is possible”.
Once you have mastered positive thinking, combine it with a strong desire to achieve your goal and create an empowering belief to grow your confidence and then experience your motivation grow and your goals being smashed.
So how is your attitude today impacting on you achieving your goals?
