Day 8 – Creating Your Motivational Action Plan – Focus on Where You Want to Go

Welcome to Day 8 of my 31 day Series “Creating Your Motivational Action Plan”   Yesterday, we reviewed the importance of clearing the trail.  By now, you should have a large piece of poster board or a white board, labeled with your Everest.  On the board, draw three columns.  In the right side column – place your “obstacles” that you wrote on sticky-notes on the board.  Some examples of obstacles might be “Debt” or “Out of Shape” or “Not enough experience” – For each obstacle, in the middle column, write the resources you have that you can use to get around that obstacle.  Resources might be a gym membership (if your obstacle is your health) or a friend or family member who knows how to create websites (if your obstacle is you need online-presence) or a class that is available to take.

When I was learning to ride a motorcycle, I went to a motorcycle safety course.  I was so nervous about riding.  Up until that point, I had only ridden on the back of my boyfriends motorcycle – I had never driven one.  My biggest concern was staying upright and on the road, and out of the ditch.  Corners freaked me out because in order to make the bike go where you want it to go, you have to lean, and push the opposite handle bar… so in other words, if you want to go left, you need to push right.  My monkey mind was having a field day making that concept more confusing to me than it needed to be.  The instructor finally said something that made sense.  He said “Your motorcycle will go where you are looking -so if you don’t want to hit the tree, don’t look at the tree.”

Sure enough, once out on the open road, when going into a corner, I would practice looking through the corner – not at the potential obstacles in my way like on coming cars, curbs or trees.  I flowed through each corner smoothly, and my bike magically followed my line of sight.  The lesson I learned in my motorcycle drivers safety course has carried with me in all areas of my life.  If you want to move through your life smoothly, look at where you want to go, do not look at the obstacles that get in your way.

So how do you get over, through, and around obstacles without looking at them?  How do you sail smoothly through the corners without ending up in the ditch?

Now that you have written your resources in the middle column of your MAP, I want you go to the left column, tear off the sticky notes and/or index cards, and crumple them up. In their place, in the left column – write  “Resources I have to ________” (lose weight, get out of debt, etc) ….. From this day forward, you will not look at obstacles that get in your way, only the resources you have to move you smoothly to where you want to go.

You are well on your way my friend…until tomorrow – Hit the Heights.

Priscilla Hansen Mahoney
The Natural Business Leadership Guide

This is part of my #write31days series – to read earlier entries – click HERE.