Archive for September 2011
Goal Setting 101 – Chart Your Progress And Celebrate The Win – 2 Examples Of Goals We Materialized
September 26, 2011 | 
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How you feel is so tremendously important is it not? I mean really, when you feel good about an accomplishment it empowers you to do so much more. As a result recognizing that feeling is just as important. By recognizing the feeling I mean you need to celebrate it and by celebrating the process of that achievement you will feel better the entire time you are working towards the end result. Celebrating the process is best achieved by keeping a progress log, either in your journal or on the back of your goal card.
It really doesn’t matter how big or how small the goal is that you want to materialize either, no matter what, keep track of your progress towards it and celebrate the heck out of it once you have gotten there. Take a moment and have a look at a couple of goals that have been materialized recently and how we tracked them and then celebrated them.
In January of this year I set a goal to achieve a premium membership status with EzineArticles. Now from what I could figure out, that could be a relatively simple process or I could make it a difficult process. I knew that would be my choice. Like I have described in some of my past articles I chose to put focused energy into the task. I went about learning exactly what was expected of my for submitting articles that adhered to the guidelines of the platform, realizing of course, that it did not matter whether I agreed with the guidelines or not. I wanted to be posting articles there and as a result I had to adhere to their rules. It just was fortunate that I had no issues with the guidelines by the way.
I knew that the process could take anywhere from 10 to 25 submissions and I was on a mission to get the task done in 10. I charted every success on the road. I kept a log of my articles, when they were submitted and when they were approved until I reached what I had faith was the last one that I would need for the upgrade. Every time an article was approved I put a great big check mark and the date by it. Today I celebrate being upgraded by letting my entire list of associates and customers know about it, they celebrate with me and the positive energy around the articles is astounding. Now I realize that this is a small celebration, but it is a celebration none the less and I always feel better celebrating than anything else.
Now let me tell you about a bigger goal that we are going to be celebrating at the end of this month. A couple of years ago my wife and I set a goal to work from home, together, full time and profitably. Because we applied absolute laser beam focused energy into that goal, tracked every inch of our progress towards it we will be celebrating with the bottle of Champagne that we put aside just for this occasion. We put that focused energy into several areas:
Watching and tracking our progress (celebrating every small win and step towards the goal) Personal development Goal setting We carefully chose the business models we would use Responsibility, and Accountability
A long time ago we picked out the resort we wanted to celebrate at and we will be doing just that in a few short weeks. Living a life of design, our design is a wonderful thing.
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How to Recognise Negative Energy
Many of us know the harmful effect of negativity. Napolean Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich says; “There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it’s positive or negative.”
It is probably easier to be negative than positive. It is easy to slide into a blaming culture, the poor little old me mindset. We all know the importance of being positive and usually more effort is needed to a maintain positivity as it is easy to slide into negativity.
However, you can avoid negativity and disallow it to ruin your life by recognising them. Negative energy in our life can be ourselves and the people around us.
Personal negativity could come in the form of suspicion, mistrust and self doubt. Very often many of us allow negativity to invade our thoughts, for example, doubting the possibility that things are going smoothly, believing that there is a catch somewhere, always wary about being taken for a ride and being jealous of another person’s achievements. As we are the master of our own destiny and our thoughts can make or break us, such negativity will hinder our progress and even destroy something that is going well.
Negativity energy could also come from people could be our colleagues, our friends and family. When you are around people who say things to cast doubts in your mind, complained about almost everything and whatever other people are doing, it can have a negative effect on your emotions and behaviour. These people live in fear and worry. They can’t control their emotions and they are frequently angry. Being around negative people can drain your energy. Their negativity can lead you to making wrong judgement and decisions.
Sometimes, it may not be possible to stay away from negative people especially if they are family members. However, it is possible to walk away from a negative conversation. Stay away from people who make you doubt yourself or your progress.
You know you are becoming a negative person when your venture start failing and your progress get stifled. You will notice that positive people stay away from you and you are surrounded by people who are constantly negative. Eventually, you will become an angry and depressed person.
Remember, nothing gets solved being negative and it will only make worsened our life. Recognise the negative energy, stay away from it and make a conscious effort to be positive.
“Whenever a negative thought concerning your personal power comes to mind, deliberately voice a positive thought to cancel it out.” – Norman Vincent Peale
Developing Fitness Requires You to Plan Workouts and Monitor Progress
Have you made plans to continuously improve at each workout?
Maybe you should as monitoring your workouts may pay in the long run!
Exercise progress forces the body to adapt to higher levels of physical fitness, which develops a greater demand in energy metabolism and expenditure. At higher levels of physical fitness cell physiology is vigorous and helps force the body to control weight at a faster rate, even if the diet is relatively high in calories an efficient energy system can take care of the all calories without converting the excess into fat.
You can only improve your fitness by challenging the body to perform at higher levels, although this must be a gradual process too much too soon can shock the nervous system and may result in an over trained state. For an over trained individual the feeling of constant tiredness will reduce motivation for further workouts.
Record each session and use the information to plan future workouts.
By recording each workout you can plan a gradual climb to a higher level of fitness. The degree of effort required for an improvement can be estimated before starting any exercise. For example, if you walked 3 miles in 30 minutes then try walking 3.5 miles in 30 minutes the next time you decide to walk for a workout. Performance levels fluctuate all the time so it’s not just a case of remembering what you did it should be logged.
Monitoring your progress is easy it’s simply a case of writing down everything you did during a workout, things you should note include…
The day you trained Time of workout Type of exercise Duration Target heart rate level Estimated calorie expenditure
Make a record of food intake
It may also pay to note down what you eat on each training day, this information can help determine which foods give you more energy and possibly which foods make you feel sluggish. For example I discovered that rice eaten the night before a weight training session gave me much more energy. I could train longer and at a higher pace yet it was only discovered after I started recording food intake. This doesn’t mean everyone will benefit from eating rice the previous night however, logging your progress enables you to discover what works and what doesn’t for both exercise and diet.
Go for exercise progress and watch the muscle energy system develop into a fat burning machine!
Combine various types of exercise to speed progress!
The human body has a habit of adapting to all sorts of stress, it adapts to the stress of exercise that’s how we become stronger and fitter. What many don’t realize is energy expenditure also adapts, in other words we gradually burn less energy if we constantly repeat the same exercise for too many sessions. The simple reason for this fact is muscle coordination improves resulting in less contracting muscle cells to achieve the same movements. In fact it’s a little more complicated than this because there’s also improvement in neurons innervating the musculature, plus better energy provision and utilization within the cells.
Many of us have experienced the feeling of excess energy expenditure at some point, remember when trying to swim or ride a bike for the first time how breathless we became within a few minutes. As the bicycle clumsily swayed from side to side we vigorously contract other stabilizer muscles in order to control balance, when swimming we drove the arms through the water as the fear of sinking crept into the mind. These intense movements place a greater demand for energy from muscle cells.
Practice has taught us to move efficiently as a result most of us now glide through the water to complete a full length of the pool without becoming breathless; the result is we burn less energy than when we first attempted the exercise. On repeating exercises we gradually require longer sessions in order to burn the same amount of calories.
The answer is not to stick with the same workout too often maybe change it after 3-5 sessions and energy expenditure should stay above normal, or you could rotate the use of 3 or 4 different programs then as each workout is repeated try to improve on the previous performance. Providing you have clearance from your own doctor or physician you should be utilizing the benefits from trying out new exercises just remember to record everything for future reference.