HEALTH Making positive life changes – Part 4

Values, goals … action!


Personal Trainer
Paul O'Brien

Making positive life changes
Part 4

Good, you’re still with me! Truth be told, most people find the steps of identifying your core values and establishing your goals quite manageable. It’s the fun part. I’m now going to ask you to put all that good work into practice. From this point on, it’s a lot easier to become unstuck, to give way to your habitual actions and let yourself off the hook as regards your goals. We’ll see why in this article.
Taking action is the single most important step in the achievement of any goal. Actually, it’s a series of steps as taking action happens continually and progressively. You move a step closer to your target with each action. As soon as you begin to take action, you are on the playing field. No longer a spectator in your own life, you’re now looking for the ball and want to run with it. This has a number of major benefits, among them:

1. Taking action commits you – as soon as you take action it becomes harder to quit. Quitting is a lot easier when you don’t take action. With each step you take, your motivation and desire to succeed increase, making it much less likely that you’ll quit.
2. Taking action is a learning process – once you begin to take action towards your goals, you will start experiencing results, the outcome of those actions. Sometimes the results will be positive and you move onto the next step. At other times you’ll make mistakes. Mistakes are a fantastic opportunity for learning. I have learned to embrace my mistakes and learn from them. They give me the opportunity to reassess and move on. Successful people welcome mistakes and make far more of them than unsuccessful people.
3. Taking action attracts support – it’s a great law of the universe that once you begin to move toward something, it also begins to move towards you. Focused action towards your goals will see all sorts of help cropping up along the way. Some people call this synchronicity – the right person turns up at the right time; a well-timed article speaks to you; things generally begin to fall into place.
There are times when, despite laying the groundwork of core values and goals, you simply do not take action toward your goals. In these cases, ask yourself the following questions:
Do I really want this goal? Why? Is it because someone else thinks I should do it? Are you worried people will think less of you if you don’t want this goal?
Another good question to ask is whether you are seeking this goal out of fear or lack. For example, do you want to be rich simply because you don’t want to be poor or have no money? This is not a very powerful motivator and your focus on lack may well give you more of the same.

Taking action
Once you have really examined your motivation for wanting the goal, it’s time to take action. The following tips will support you in doing this:

• Enlist the help of a close friend or family member. Ask them to help you manage your goal. Meet once weekly and discuss your progress. Tell them what actions you will take each week and report back to them. Discuss the reasons why you did or did not take action and use the feedback as a learning exercise to reassess and progress your goal. This will be an invaluable help.
• Take daily actions. You most likely have a number of goals you want to achieve. It’s vital that you take some action every day towards your goals. Write a list out in your weekly support meeting, with an action for each day of the week. Daily action builds momentum and increases your motivation.
• Dream big. Try visualising the achievement of your goal. See and feel what your life will be like when you have achieved the goal. Try a vision board; using pictures or motivational quotes that you can look at every day to inspire you.

Action is the difference between success and settling-for. To quote Martin Luther-King, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Paul O’Brien is a personal trainer and life coach based in Westport.