First, as discussed in my first post, you must take full responsibility for your life in order to move beyond where you are at right now and become successful at goal setting. There is a direct relationship with how much responsibility you accept and how much control you feel you have over your life. (Conversely, if you choose to not take responsibility for your life, then you may feel out of control right now….) Taking responsibility also results in a positive mental attitude. Every time you have a negative thought you can replace it with the phrase, “I am responsible.”
The exercise below will help you identify the people and situations, both past and present, that may be causing negative feelings in your life. Negative feelings are fatal to goal setting and achieving, so this is a crucial step to get to where you want to go.
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Label the left side: People or situations that I harbor negative feelings toward and label the right column as: I am responsible for this because. Now go through all the things, both past and present ,that you may feel negative about. (For me personally, I was blaming things like the way I was brought up (my dad!), lack of time, not enough money, and not enough support from my husband.) The list that you make are the things that may be standing in the way of your goal setting abilities; however, the reasons you come up with on the other side of the paper will be the solution in moving on with your life and mastering the the skill of goal setting.
The beauty of this exercise is that it not only identifies the excuses you may be using that are keeping you from success, but it also forces you to take responsibility. Responsibility is forward looking. It is proactive, it is a response to a situation. An excuse, or blaming other people or situations, is backward looking, it is reactive and closes off the possibility for forward movement.
So do this exercise honestly, and get ready to move forward on setting goals and reaching your full potential!
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