Work on my Secret Goal

Try this five step method:

1) discover a negative thought
2) write it down as a sentence
3) find three or four exceptions to this situation
4) write down the initial sentence + “except when” + exceptions
5) rewrite the sentence from step 4 using no negative words (words not allowed: “no”, “nothing”, “never”, “nobody”, “bad”, etc).

Example:

1) you never want to exercise and you feel you are getting fat (hey, this is an example, it is not at all about you)
2) write down “I never want to exercise”
3) a) except when I run with other people, b) except early in the morning, c) except when I give myself a small present afterwards
4) write down “I never want to exercise, except when I find other people to run with, or when I get up early in the morning, or when I give myself a present such as an ice cream”
5) write down “I do like exercising when I meet other runners, or when I get up early in the morning, or when I give myself an ice cream afterwards”.

When you get used to this, you will see your mind starts finding ways to do things, and you will start having a quite positive attitude :)

Hope this helps!

This is actually about goals, in general, not just about this goal.

Thinking about “goal-design” (smart goals and so, where SMART usually stands for S-pecific, M-easurable, A-chievable, R-ealistic and T-ime framed), I was checking what people say in internet about this (until some days ago I didn’t know they could be known with a backronym as “smart” goals). I have found that some people include E-xciting and R-ewarding to make “smarter” goals. And many more versions, of course.

Thinking about a new definition that suits more my point of view, I found the following: A-chievable is close to R-ealistic, and E-xciting is close to R-ewarding, so using just one of each and including three more ingredients (an interesting goal shouldn’t be too easy, should be split into smaller goals and should be reprogrammable, as everything should be reprogrammable, because life is always changing), I have got what I call “smartest” goals:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable (= Realistic = Not too difficult)
• Reprogrammable (= Transformable)
• Time framed (= With deadline)
• Exciting (= Motivating = Rewarding = Interesting)
• Split into smaller goals
• Tough (= Not too easy = Challenging)

Which of course is not new (as I have seen again in internet after thinking I created something new), but at least it suits my philosophy about how goals should be. Of course everybody has to find his/her own philosophy (different people’s mind works in a different way), so I’m not saying I’m the smartest guy here. For somebody else it might be different.