Fifty-two Week Challenge: Week 9, Drifting

I don't know how you perceive the headlines news, but to me it appears to be more negative and designed to persuade rather than inform. Watching or reading most of it tends to raise my blood pressure and leaves me questioning its accuracy. Very little of it is neutral or objective reporting; the talking heads or newspaper reporters seem to interject their personal views more often than not.

We are greatly influenced by what we read and see. Whether or not you agree with the way stations or papers report life around us, they greatly influence many of us on how we see the world. The media's hidden agendas often tend to bend your thoughts away from the neutral and toward their way of thinking.

However, if you have a clearly developed set of goals and work on them day-in-and-day-out, you can avoid being set adrift in the news media's, or other’s, own world. Personally defined goals and destinations prevent you from falling in line with false aims and goals that are not your own. Your goals provide legitimate ways to improve yourself and prevent others from persuading you toward their ends.

This week, renew your faith in you own goals and then turn off the TV news, stop reading biased reporting, or being persuaded by other people’s concerns. If you are serious about improving and making positive change for yourself, don't listen to others, but concentrate your efforts on self-improvement and building your own potential instead. You can transform your world and you don't need others, especially the news media, to tell you how.

“Every day you spend drifting away from your goals is a waste not only of that day, but also of the additional day it takes to regain lost ground."
- Ralph Marston

Fifty-two Week Challenge: Week 7, Course Corrections

"Everyone has a plan — until they get punched in the face." - Mike Tyson

Your goal, like a travel destination, requires movement in the right direction and lots of corrections to arrive at the final point. When a pilot takes to the air flying to a destination, the flight is not a perfect line. Instead, due to weather deviations, wind, other traffic, controlling agencies, and lots of other outside factors, the plane and the pilot have to make corrections. These corrections can be little or large.

In a similar manner, when you go off course seeking your goal, you must correct back. That requires making adjustments in attitude, enthusiasm, and methods. You wouldn't want a pilot to turn around and land as soon as he took off because he encountered normal winds that shifted his course. Instead, you rely on him to make attitude adjustments to get you to your destination. Likewise, you encounter factors that will shift your course. Don't quit with the first signs of a threat. Instead, shift your path and continue onward.

Deal with the threats as they arise and have a plan to correct back toward your goal. Much like flying, these adjustments require forethought and planning. If plan "A" doesn't work, then resort to plan "B". Contingencies are better thought up ahead of time than in the middle of flight when the threat appears. Each threat is an opportunity to grow and change course, adapt and rework your plan.

The shifts will require adjusting your energy and attitude. Try to stay fit and healthy. Staying up late, overeating, getting drunk, skipping meals all force you of course. Tack back to the right direction with healthy living. Look after your mental, spiritual, and emotional energy as well. Take time to relax and enjoy life; too much pressure to achieve often prevents its accomplishment. Find the right mix of energy and continue on toward your goal; when the winds blow strongly, get back up there - upwards and onwards.

Fifty-two Week Challenge: Week 6, Planting seeds

Robert Lewis Stevenson said, " Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." Movement toward our goals requires constant action- a planting of seeds, so to speak. We can't sit ideally and expect big things to happen. We must move and adjust.

This week we have to keep moving and do something that makes us uncomfortable. We can't be afraid to try new actions. So, you must to pick something you haven't done before and attempt it. Take a step outside of your comfort zone. I have. I got Invisalign braces for my teeth. Although they were recommended by my dentist to correct an alignment problem, I could have talked myself out of it.

Excuses like: I'm too old; my teeth look good as they are; it's really not a big problem; I can live with it; and, it will take too long. I came up with lots of excuses not to do it, and most of them were out of fear. But, I went ahead and got them even though I was a little scared (I was the oldest patient in the Orthodontist's office when I visited, but not his oldest patient overall). Now, I am moving forward in correcting that problem and achieving another goal. I feel very good about my action.

What are you afraid of in moving toward your goal? Scared of joining that spin class? Panicked about submitting your novel to an editor? Are you afraid of going back to school? Don't want to hire that trainer to help you lose weight? How about playing your musical instrument in front of others? The list of excuses is enormous as are our fears. So, this week, just do it. Action is the key. Plant the seed and you will enjoy the future harvest.

"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps." -Confucius