Learn how to become a Pro in self accountability and achieve any goal you set for yourself.
In her latest book, I Am Enough, Marisa Peer talks about how there is no shortcut to goal setting and accountability, but there is a guarantee. Marisa explains:
“I always get asked: ”what makes a successful person stick to their goals?” The answer is that there is no single shortcut to this.
We live in a culture that’s obsessed with life hacks and quick fixes, but when it comes to the path to success, there really isn’t one outward trick. However, in place of that, there is a kind of guarantee: if you show up to something, each and every day, you’re guaranteed to get closer to it. If you don’t, you won’t.
I’ve worked with a lot of Olympic athletes and they always serve as a good role model of this. Viewers at home see the moments of glory as they compete and win medals. The athletes, meanwhile, see the years of pain and sacrifice it took to get there. As Olympic swimmer, Matt Biondi, is quoted as saying, “persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.” The same is true for you.
A great example of the power of consistency is what usually happens around Christmas and the holidays. We can enter the month with a solid workout or health routine and say, “I’m just going to take four days off.” And then, all of a sudden, it’s mid-January and we haven’t been to the gym in three weeks.
If you allow yourself to remove the guarantee of “showing up,” the habit very often falls apart and ceases to be important to you. But when you take action every day – even if it means just going for a brisk walk or doing some stretches for example – you
continue to move closer to it with ease. Once again, there is no shortcut, but there is a guarantee: show up and you’ll see results.
As you move closer to your goal, your goal will begin moving closer to you
Doing one thing every day, without fail, in service of who or what you want to be is a guaranteed way to improve the reflection you see of yourself. Once you do that, everything improves, as you begin to believe in yourself and your own capabilities. Then it becomes far easier to move towards everything in life that you want.
It’s not “too good to be true”
“But Marisa, can just five or ten minutes a day doing something really make me successful?” I can hear your doubts from here. The answer is yes, it can.
It’s not too good to be true because the effect of this practice multiplies across your life and, more importantly, your attitude towards your life. When you feel better about yourself you start to conduct yourself with the air of someone who is successful, which in turn makes you successful.
It doesn’t matter how big or small the daily action is, what matters is that you’re beginning to act like a winner.
Self accountability: Make your mind accountable
You should really begin to think of your mind as a goal-seeking laser. Just as it listens to the words and pictures you tell yourself to inform how it thinks, it also loves to have concrete goals to work towards. The more specific you can make these, the better. So, it’s not “I want to be successful” but rather, “by next year, I want to have written a book draft” or “I want to lose 100 pounds by February” or “I want to commit to cooking more healthy foods during the workweek.”
You may think: “Well, I’m not the kind of person who can stick to anything; I always give up.” But that’s just a story you’re telling yourself.
What stories are you telling yourself and how do you show up?
If you go to the finish line of any marathon and ask the runners if they’ve always loved running, a stunning number of them will insist “NO!” They went from couch potatoes to marathon runners because they began to form a habit of action that they showed up for.
They changed their minds about who they are—and you can do the same. It just requires being specific and relentlessly showing up.
Start small
I will say, though, that when you are first getting started in establishing this habit of action, you should think carefully about what the one thing you’re going to start with might be.
It doesn’t have to be an extreme commitment. Too often, I see people take on overly-ambitious goals and set themselves up for failure. Just as with a client who wanted to get fit and lose weight, I don’t instruct him to start running 10K every morning; I told him to simply walk around his neighborhood every day. Once he did that, the motivation to do more began to appear. One of my favorite sayings, because it’s so true is…
Movement Manifests Motivation
This is all about choosing to commit to something that is going to make you feel like a winner and move you towards your goals.
In the best-case scenario, I want you to choose to do something every day that takes you closer to your goal, be it writing, meditation, exercise or working on your business plan.
Accountability mechanisms
Another way to set yourself up for success with your new habit is to have an accountability mechanism. This can really help people stick to a goal.
Tell your family or partners (so long as they’re supportive of you) about your new goal and ask them to encourage you. Join a social media group of like-minded people sharing their goals or set up a workout buddy you can text with once a day. All of these will increase your chances of sticking to your new goal.
Whether it’s a career goal, a self-care goal, or a personal, spiritual, or creative goal, pick one thing you’re going to commit to doing every day for the next few months.
Believe in it and enjoy watching the consistency play out in your life in beautiful and unexpected ways. And remember, what you want, wants you. What you are moving towards is moving towards you. You just have to take the first step.”
You can also get a coach or have a session of Rapid Transformational Therapy to help you achieve your goals and accelerate your ability to master new positive habits.
Alternatively, you can even become your own coach and practice self accountability. This free quiz reveals your unique super power as a coach.
Make time – book out your diary as you would for anyone else
Schedule time in your diary to focus on your goal and stick to it. Everyone else schedules your time, so why shouldn’t you? Prioritise yourself – you are the boss of you – and you have a job to do. As Marisa says:
“The habit of action is so essential: Do one thing each day in the direction of your dreams…
Once you do that and begin doing one small thing a day, you will see how powerful the practice of habit and repetition really is.
Do the things that successful people do and you will become successful too
When you do the things that very successful people do, you unknowingly become more and more like them. This is very true when it comes to this habit of action. You see, committing to a small task every day in service of your dreams of success makes you feel like a winner.
Once you feel that way, you begin to act differently. You begin to take on the air of a successful person and believe that you are successful. This can have an effect on how other people treat you, how you treat yourself, and what you attract into your life.
It may seem like a small step, but it’s in service of a much bigger goal.”
You can read more practical advice in I Am Enough, designed to transform you from the inside out, to achieve success in every key area of your life. Using Marisa Peer’s Rapid Transformational Therapy proven techniques, this book is written in a style to help change you personally, making a deep and lasting impact on how you feel about you and how others feel about you.
Marisa Peer’s I Am Enough complete online transformational program is designed to radically redefine the key areas that impact your life. This includes your confidence levels, purpose, relationships, your career, creating wealth and abundance and enjoying a phenomenal sex life. Delivered in eight modules over eight video and audio tracks, the program will give you the same reality-shifting, epiphanic effects experienced in person by her high-profile clients.
For further information visit: www.iamenough.com/resources
