3 Ways To Remain Consistent on Achieving Your Goals
It’s easy to stay hyped up at the first of the year. Now that we are 3 months in have you lost sight of your goals? Not sure how to get back on track? Here are my 3 Ways to Remain Consistent….
Welcome to a brand new episode of Raney Day Talks Podcast, I’m your host Jennifer Sakowski, and we are going to be talking about how to remain consistent. We are in month three of 2020. How many of you started off January 1st, got your goals, how you’re going to tackle big great projects, or how you’re going to elevate your business, how are you going to lose weight? Who here is struggling three months in, that drive is starting to taper off? You are who I’m talking to today, okay? So just sit down, grab your coffee, whatever you’re doing, I want you to zone in on this because it happens.
It happens to the best of us. We’ll start with the very best intentions, especially at the first of the year, first of the month. For me, it’s like, “New day, new you,” right? Whatever it is, it is very hard when life happens, to remain consistent. This month, I’m focusing all about habits. Habits in our workplace, habits at our home. Habits that overlap. Habits to help you show up. Well, for me, to remain consistent, I have to remain focused. And so today on this podcast, we’re going to bring three main points that have helped me remain focused and I hope you find it helpful.
01 It Takes Planning
Let’s get started right away. Number one, it takes planning. That should be a no-brainer to you, right? It’s a no-brainer for me. The more that I plan ahead and set myself up to success for the next day, the next week, the next month, the better it is. The easier it is to show up. For example, let’s take home life. I work… I have to days a week that I have help taking care of the kiddos, so that means two days, I cram in as much as I possibly can between meeting with clients, taking calls, working on my sales, meeting with the team and pushing projects forward, and then the creative content. That’s a lot to cram into two days. How I do that and able to successfully check off that day, is that I plan the night before.
It starts with, I set out my clothes. I set out the kid’s clothes. I pack lunches, I pack the bag, I set aside my stuff that I need to take. I look at my calendar and I start to block out times that I know, “Okay, if I’m traveling to a meeting, I’m going to have to block in travel time.” And a lot of times in my travel time, I’m either Voxering or catching up to messages. I might be listening to podcasts, I listen to my Bible a lot of times when I’m in commute, to keep up on my Bible reading.
Whatever it is, I start to just mentally set those intentions for the next day. Because what happens when we wake up, and if you’re like me have kids home, maybe you don’t, maybe you have an animal, maybe it’s just you, and it’s easy to get sidetracked. Whatever it is, we wake up and if we don’t have those intentions in place to where we can start to go through the motions, it’s so much easier to get frazzled, to get off track. So once again, it comes back to planning.
How do you plan a week ahead? Right now this is Sunday. If you need to refresh, go back to one of my earlier podcasts about routines, and how you set your daily habits up, and what I do. I map it all out there for you. Go back and start on a Sunday. Okay, this is my schedule, this is my significant other, this is my kid’s schedules, and then start chipping away time to where I know I can put complete focus on this task, this project. What are my goals and what am I going to accomplish this week, that’s going to move me closer to the end result that I’m trying to accomplish?
So number one, that is our foundation. We have to plan, and it comes down to those intentions that we set for the following day, the following week, the following month. It seems like a lot of effort, but I promise you, the effort that you put into this, it will help you when you are present in that day. It will help your day go much smoother, and if stuff happens, it will allow you to bring your focus and bring yourself back at what you have to accomplish. Because let’s face it, I cannot tell you if one kiddo is having a meltdown, or somebody’s sick, or we run out of something and I have to run to the store, it pulls me away. But if I have that list, that calendar, that plan that I can come back to, it brings me full circle. And then I’m still able to accomplish something at the end of the day.
02 Dress Up to Show Up
Number two, so this one I use every single day, it’s dress-up to show up. Let me break it down to what it means for me. I may be home today, but I still got my little self ready, put on makeup, I did my hair, I changed out of my pj’s and I went through the motions, right? I went through those motions, even though I may not see anyone outside of this house, I still showed up, because I know that I have to come up here and do work. So, I have to make sure that I feel good when I do show up. For me, it’s dress-up to show up. On days that I’m just rocking out meetings here in the office, I go in, I get ready, I drop the kids off, and I slide right into my day. So for me, it is about my appearance. It is about feeling good in my own skin. I’m going to take that a step further. It’s not just so much about getting ready every day, but it’s also about how we feel.
And how we feel matters. If you are tired and run down, you need more sleep. That’s number one. You have to focus on taking care of yourself and getting sleep, getting rest. I don’t care who you are. I know I can go off very little sleep for an extended amount of time, and then I hit my wall and I’m done. I am toast. So, if you’re one that, “Oh, I don’t need sleep, Jen, I can run off four hours,” great, call me when you crash, because our bodies are not made… I know there’s a percentage of people out there that can do that day in and day out, but our bodies are not made to do that. So you have to get rest.
The second part of show up is, you got to move your body. Whether it’s getting outside and go for a walk, whether it’s YouTube a workout. Do you all know that there are tons of workouts on YouTube? There’s no excuse if you are like, “Oh, I can’t afford to go to the gym. Or I don’t have the time.” Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Because if you’re planning your days and your week, you will be creating buffers to allow yourself 30 minutes to move your body. So many people were like, “Oh, Jen, I’m so tired, I don’t think I can get to the gym.” No, if you want energy, you have to create energy. How do you create energy? You move your freaking body, and even if you don’t want to. That’s a whole other episode, is doing things when you don’t want to.
If you got goals, and you are trying to accomplish something big that you set out for the year, you have to break it down. You have to plan, you have to dress up to show up. And to dress up and show up, you got to feel good. And if you’re not feeling good, address those issues, get them under control, and then move on.
03 Desire Trumps Excuses
Number three is… Do you ever just make an outline and then when you’re in it you’re like, “Yes, this is good?” This is number three. Desire trumps excuses. I’m going to let that marinate for just a minute. Desire trumps excuses. Okay, going back to, it’s month three. It’s month three and you set out to grow your business, grow your contact list, increase your sales, hire a new VA. Maybe it’s just to launch, maybe it’s to lose weight. Whatever it is, you’ve lost that mojo, right? You’ve slacked off, you allowed life to get in the way. How do you get it back? You go back to why you wanted to accomplish, insert your goal here.
What would it matter to you in your life, your family, if you achieved that goal? Go back to why. And then once you refreshed yourself on why you have this goal, and why you need to accomplish this, then you get to work. Then you start planning, and then you carve out time to take care of your body, your self, so you can show up. And then, three, you go back to that desire, because sometimes you’re going to get up and you don’t want to work out. I got on the bike for a 20 minute hit ride. I didn’t want to do that. I’m going to work out tomorrow at the gym, I did not want to do that. But, I made my butt get over there and get on it because I know as soon as I get off it, I’m going to be like, “Heck yeah, I did that. I got a good sweat on and now I’m ready to work.”
So you have to dig deep to move past the excuses because I’m going to quote my friend Jocko, “Excuses are lies.” Stop telling yourself that, “Oh, I’ll start tomorrow. Oh, I don’t feel good. I don’t have the time.” Yes, you do. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. It’s how you utilize it. So when you start to slack off, and the excuses start to arise, remind yourself of why you started. Dig deep. Dig deep, because if it truly matters, then it’s a priority. And what you prioritize, is what you’re going to get done.
Always, always, when you start to feel yourself to pull your foot off the pedal, remind yourself of where you started, because if it’s that big of a deal to you, then it should refocus you, refresh you to get back to work. This episode is short and sweet and to the point, but I hope you take it, and I hope you put it on repeat to remind yourself of why you’re here. Why you got started, why you set those goals out on January 1st. And I hope that you take a little bit of nugget about how you approach your every day, your every week, your every month to push you closer to success.
I’m Jennifer Sakowski. If you found this helpful, do me a favor, hit subscribe, screenshot this episode, tag me in it. I’m going to put a little extra plugin, if you’re a mama out there that’s struggling to carve out the time, you’ve got the little humans at home, I have a Facebook group for you, and we’re ramping it up on JenniferSakowski.com. If you’re a business owner and you’re like, “Jen, I just need some accountability, I need some help on setting these goals and accomplishing them,” check out raneydaydesign.com. We’re here for you. I hope you all have a great week.
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Thank you to our Sponsor
A huge thank you to Mark at Mark Lavender Production for sponsoring season one of Raney Day Talks Podcast. I’m very particular who we partner with and Mark was a no brainer. Mark does all of our video editing and puts all of the components and pieces together for our YouTube channel and podcasts. If you are looking to publish your own YouTube series podcast or need photography work, please contact Mark through marklavenderproductions.com