Have you been feeling frustrated about setting goals and staying motivated in moving towards them lately?
You are definitely not alone. More and more people are reporting that they are finding it increasingly difficult to stay positive and motivated to work towards any goal these days.
This could be due to how fast the world is changing and how quickly our available choices seam to change now. Many people are feeling like no matter what direction the move in, circumstances might quickly change due to things outside of their control and all their efforts will have been wasted. This makes it very difficult to want to even set any goals in the first place, much less find a way to stay excited to put energy towards achieving them.
What if there was a way to set goals that would guarantee that you would achieve them AND guarantee that you would stay completely excited during the process of achieving them no matter what changes might happen along the way?
In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a new idea that I’m calling “Effortless Excitement Now”. This is a new approach to goal setting that guarantees you getting more of what you want most as you move towards achieving any goal.
No matter what changes are happening or will happen around us, none of us have to stay confused, frustrated or unmotivated about moving towards a better and better experience.
Imagine getting up every day and having everything you do that day feel like the most exciting thing you could do now AND you can see how what you are doing is building towards an even better outcome than what you are experiencing now. How would that feel?
The steps are simple. They are basically a reverse version of what we’ve been taught about goal setting and achieving.
The traditional idea about goal setting was:
1) We feel something is missing in our lives 2) We set a goal and work towards it to fill in what we feel is missing 3) We hopefully achieve the goal and then hopefully get to feel more complete
We have all experienced how often this strategy doesn’t work, so I won’t go into more of that here.
In the Effortless Excitement Now model, the steps are:
1) Our #1 goal is to feel effortless excitement right now and always. We understand that experiencing effortless excitement right now does not depend on anything happening; that we can choose to feel this way no matter what is happening or what does happen. So nothing is ever missing.
2) We discover a possible future outcome that feels exciting to put energy into now. We choose to put energy towards this possible future outcome only to the extent that it maximizes our feeling effortless excitement now.
3) Any time putting energy into a possible future outcome feels less than effortless excitement now, we either: A) Discover and let go of a limitation we have or B) Stop putting energy towards it until it does feel effortlessly exciting again or C) Change the possible future outcome until it feels effortlessly exciting now or D) Let go of the possible future outcome all together
We now only set what we used to call goals (and now I’m calling possible future outcomes) as a way to help us focus our energy and attention to maximize our feelings of effortless excitement now.
Any goal is only is only as good as the amount of effortless excitement it helps you to experience now.
So we always get to experience the process of living as effortlessly exciting AND we get all the benefits of using goals to build towards better circumstances.
Now goals never become a hindrance to our happiness, they become a way to maximize it.
When effortless excitement now is our main goal, any possible future outcome we choose feels like fun icing on an already delicious cake.
-Andy
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