Stop having this flawed assumption when setting goals

my friends. I'm so excited to share a mind shift that I recently stumbled upon. I am going to tell you about the common assumption that we all have when setting goals and how your chances for success increase when you flip this assumption around. I'm just amazed at how well it works and I can't wait to share it with you. Okay. Let's go. Let's start by painting the picture of how we usually set goals. Think back to the last time you set goals. Was it December 31st? Was it last Sunday when you were planning the perfect week you will have? Just remember the last time you created the plan, set some goals. I bet you had this underlying assumption going on, that you will be energized, motivated, well-rested, and overall excited about the goal that you're setting for yourself. This is the assumption that we all have, but we don't realize it. You base your desired action on this fundamentally flawed assumption. When you have a goal and this flawed assumption, your plan on achieving this goal is based on this wrong foundation. take weight loss, for example. Let me tell you how I usually set goals for weight loss. Let's say January 1st, and this was my thinking. It's the new year, new me. I'm so excited about the fresh start. From January 1st, I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to journal. I'm going to have a healthy smoothie for breakfast. I'll prepare a big salad for lunch, of course from the organic produce. I am going to journal. I'll find new and healthy dinner recipes every single week. I'll go to the farmer's market to get fresh produce every Saturday. I'm going to cook these dinners every single day. I'm going to be awesome. I can't wait. My life is about to change. I'm so excited and motivated. This was my thinking. I was truly excited, motivated, and energized when I was setting those goals. I would even create daily, weekly to-do lists that will have all the action points or the habits that I was trying to build. When I learned about time-blocking, I would try to time-block these activities as well. So it wasn't just thinking positive thoughts, I was creating the action plan. I was buying the planners, the journals, the sticky notes, and everything. The problem was that I could rarely stick with this action plan for a long, and I couldn't understand why this cycle was happening. But the thing that I recently realized, is that my action plan was based on a fundamentally flawed assumption. I assumed that I would have the same level of excitement and motivation throughout the process as I did in the very beginning when I was setting this goal. This is so subtle, but yet it is so important to realize that this is the assumption we have when we set goals. When we are excited and we set goals from the place of excitement and motivation, we often assume that we will feel the same way we are feeling right now, when it's time to actually show up for the activity. We assumed that tomorrow when we hear an alarm clock at 6:00 AM, we'll feel the same way we are feeling the night before when we just watched a motivational movie or a YouTube video and reset this alarm up for the next day. But what ends up happening is that we don't feel as excited anymore. We feel tired and sleepy. We so W snooze, we think that why bother and just give up without even starting, then maybe wait for the next weekend to watch another motivational movie. get inspired. Set new goals and hope for the best. A few months ago, I just sadly realized that this trap that you're in when we set big and ambitious goals. I was like, no wonder, we're having such a hard time sticking to our goals. So I realized that and thought to myself, what would happen if I set just one goal with a completely different underlying assumption. What if I set a goal but created an action plan with the assumption that I will be tired every single day when it's time to do this activity, that I will not be in the mood to do it when it's time to act on the goal? So, instead of assuming that I'll be excited, I decided to assume that I'll be tired every single day. I know some of you who watched the law of attraction, the secret, and all of that, you're screaming right now, but this was just an experiment and it worked. I ran the experiment for the past month, fitness and weight loss goal. And let me tell you, it just blew my mind. This is how it looked for me. I knew that I wanted to eat healthier and built a consistent exercise routine. Who doesn't, right? And I had this goal for the longest time, probably every month, every year, I would set this goal, but could never stick with it for a long time. Again, remember about the common assumption we all have, that we'll always feel energized and motivated when implementing the action plan that we create for the goal. About a month ago, I decided to switch this assumption to 180 degrees. It all started with my mornings. For the life of me, I don't know why it never occurred to me. In all these years, my action plan was based on the assumption that in the morning, I'll have all the energy to make myself a healthy breakfast, to journal, exercise, pack my lunch, read the book, et cetera. And some mornings were like that, but they're counted for like 2% of all the mornings that I had. Why did I keep assuming that something will change? I have no idea. Maybe, it comes from all the goals set in brainwashing they've all been sold into? I have no idea. I thought, what if I assume that I'll be tired and not in the mood to do these things every single morning? I mentioned in my previous episodes, I am not a morning person. I am not pleasant to be around in the first hour of the day. So I do wake up early, but again, not the best version of myself. So, why don't I just assume that I'm not going to be in the mood, that I'm going to be grumpy, that I'm going to be tired? I thought, okay, assuming that I'm not going to be in the mood to do all these healthy habits and tasks in the morning, how can I plan from that? For me, it meant packing everything up the night before. To make it even more obvious, I decided that I should pack everything before I clean the kitchen. To me, I can't stand a messy kitchen. I can't go to bed when the kitchen is messy. But packing a healthy lunch and packing my exercise clothes is more important than a clean kitchen. That was kind of like a trick that I made. I was like, okay, I'm going to pack everything. And only then I'm allowed to clean the kitchen. Oftentimes, I just wanted to clean the kitchen and didn't want to pack everything but because through was like, you don't get to clean the kitchen until you pack everything. So I just quickly packed everything and then clean the kitchen. If you can't stand a messy place, just make a rule for yourself that you have to do something before you can clean it up. Remember the assumption is that in the morning, I have no energy and desire to cook myself a perfect, healthy breakfast. I had to pack my breakfast, to pack my lunch, to pack my snacks and exercise cloth for the next day. Assuming that I'll be tired in the evening to chop a healthy salad for the next day, I'll be tired to create the fresh new dressing, what should I do? And the decision here was to buy pre salad at the grocery store. Everything is cut, packaged, ready to go. I know not the most environmentally friendly solution, but remember this was an experiment. I don't want to chop all the vegetables. So, the solution here was to buy those single serve salad dressing, and just have it in the fridge. When it comes to work out, again assuming that I don't to work out in the morning and assuming that I don't want to work out in the evenings, that was generally the case from my experiences, that I can never convince myself to do these things first thing in the morning and at night. The moment I come home, to me it's relaxation time as dinner time, and to force myself to do something after dinner. And so I was like, okay, this is the assumption. I'm not going to be in the mood to do it in the morning and I'm not going to be in the mood to do it after dinner. What options do I have? For me, it was finding a workout near my office and go there right after work or during lunch break. So, in the beginning I was going there during my lunch break, but then things got busy at work and now I just go after work. So I have a class at 8:45, at 5:15, and that's where I go. They decide on what exercises we're doing this week. I don't have to think about it. Perfect. Okay. Let's talk about dinners. In all my previous attempts to eat healthy, my assumption was that, be so disciplined. I'll do the meal planning. I was using this paprika app. Perfect app, by the way, if you haven't checked it out. Ideal for meal planning and keeping your recipes nothing wrong with the app. It's just, I was never in the mood to invest so much time every single week to look for the recipes on Pinterest. It will always take me like two hours to find all the recipes. And then I had to go grocery shopping. I was never been a fan of that activity. And so again, assuming that I'm not in the mood to do the meal planning, assuming that I'm not in the mood to go to the grocery store every single week, assuming that I'm not going to go to a farmer's market because it's a Saturday early morning, and maybe I just want to sleep in. Assuming all these things, how can they plan my life around? And So, I decided to sign up for those meal kits and it made my life a lot easier because all you have to do is just go there once a week, select your meals and they do the rest. Is it the most delicious food that I'm eating? Probably not. Could I find a recipe on Pinterest that would be healthier and more delicious? Of course, but the assumption here was that I will be tired and I will not be in the mood to do all this research on a weekly basis. When I designed my life with the assumption that, I'm not going to be in the mood to do all the planning, prepping and chopping all of that on a weekly basis, it's just, I became very consistent with my exercise, with eating healthy and everything else. It wasn't that hard. The funny thing is that for the first time in years, it feels like I finally understand the word of self-care. I am making it easier for myself to do good things. And self care, it's not about pedicures and facials. It's about this, assuming that you are just human, that you will have a bad day, that you will be tired at some point. And Based on your action plan On this, instead of assuming that you're a superhuman, you're never have bad days and you'll always be motivated. This is self care and it's life changing. So I've only had a chance to apply this new assumption switch to my weight loss goal so far. I can see it being useful in all the goals that I might set for myself in the future. I just couldn't wait to share it with you all. So, that's why I'm recording this episode. Probably a bit prematurely, but I think it's too good to keep a secret. Now ask yourself, what is the goal that you've been struggling with for the longest time? And how would your action plan look different if you assumed that you will be tired every single day when it comes to do this thing, that you will not be in the mood to do it? As human, it will happen hundred percent of the time, every single day. How should your plan change with these new assumptions? Most likely your action plan will not be as ambitious as before or not even that it's not going to be as perfect, but it will be realistic. Again, coming back to my eating healthy habits example, my perfect plan was that every Saturday I would go to the farmer's market, then I would bring all this produce home. I would wash it. I would chop it. I would meal plan it and all of that. Perfect plan, but not realistic. And my current plan, going to the grocery store once a week at Best. Buying pre chopped salad kits and ordering meal kits that are more or less healthy. It's not as perfect as is and as beautiful as the idea of going to the farmer's market every single Saturday, but that's realistic. It makes my plan more likely to happen. Therefore, making the goal more achievable. The most important part is that you will feel good because finally you'll feel like you're taking care of yourself. You'll be acknowledging that you're just human and you have bad days. You will have your own back during those days because your action plan is based on the assumption that these days will happen a hundred percent of the time. And if some days you feel super pumped up and energized, you just do more and count it as a bonus and feel even better. But during other days, when you feel tired, you feel taken care of. You feel the kindness that your past self had for your present self, because your past self planned for this to happen. She had this safety net implemented around this. So, you don't feel as bad. You don't feel like a failure. Have a good day everyone. Please subscribe if you want to get a freshly baked episode delivered to you next Monday.