I’m sure most of you have heard the phrase, “Go big or go home!” For some folks, this is a call to action—to be bigger and better, to give it all you’ve got. For me? Honestly, there have been plenty of times when a little voice inside said, “Hmmm...home is nice. It’s got comfy couches, good food, fluffy blankets to pull over our heads... Yes, let’s go home.” That’s the voice that whispers to me whenever I:
make a 2-columned list of things that I will accomplish this week (usually less than a third of that gets done);
decide to meditate or exercise every day for at least 30 minutes (I’m averaging about 2 times per week)
declare that I’ll write 2 blog posts per week (ahem...this hasn’t happened yet).
To be quite honest, I found that whenever I tried to set a high bar for myself, my amygdala (that little fear and worry center in our brain) would get activated and my attention would end up focusing on a well-practiced thought pattern of doubt and frustration. Then I would end up spending an inordinate amount of time scanning social media and news cycles, all the while chastising myself because I knew that I truly wanted to experience growth, learn new skills, and bring healthy practices into my life. I’m quite certain this hasn’t happened to any of you. ;-)
Thankfully, in recent months, I’ve been incorporating the concept of the minimum viable step in my goal setting. This practice has helped me achieve the sweet sense of satisfaction that comes with a success experience—doing what you say you’re going to do...consistently.
For example, for the past ten years, I’d been having a really frustrating experience with writing. Every single time I thought about writing—journaling, blog posts, cheesy haikus—I would become so suffused with dread and doubt that I would walk away from just about every proposed writing project. Even so, I could still feel that I had a voice that was yearning to be expressed. But, over time, I regularly avoided writing and most other forms of self-expression altogether. Not very helpful if you’re trying to launch a business and share your vision. By the time this past summer rolled in, I truly had had enough and was ready to have a success experience.
So, I decided to buddy up with my dear friend, Kat, for a 30-day writing challenge. Our minimum viable step was to write one sentence each day. Seriously, just one sentence. While writing more than that was perfectly acceptable, we intentionally set a doable goal for ourselves. As part of our accountability process, we agreed to text each other whenever we finished our daily task—which absolutely added some celebratory sweetness to our accomplishment.
Additionally, because I suspected that my practiced resistance to writing would creep in at some point, I added a different kind of motivation to my goal—the vile disincentive. I promised my buddy that for each day that I didn’t write at least one sentence, I would donate $5 to a certain presidential campaign that I wasn’t thrilled about. Sure enough, around the 10th day of our challenge, I experienced a pretty sharp surge of resistance. I was tired and cranky and really just wanted to sleep. Then I remembered my vile disincentive. Almost immediately, I grabbed my notebook and wrote my sentence for the day.
This combination of setting doable goals, creating a buddy system, and adding a vile disincentive made accomplishing this goal sooooo much easier than I would’ve thought. By the time we completed our challenge, I was actually quite sad to let it go. So, within two weeks, I gave myself a new writing challenge to focus on. That was four months ago, and I’m on my fourth writing challenge. Whereas I once looked at writing with dread, I now look forward to engaging with my writing exercises; I now experience a bit more spaciousness in lieu of the old and familiar tightness in my chest. Ha! Who knew that I would end up finding such satisfaction in writing again!
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Have you been trying to go big and do it alone? How has that been working for you? What kind of support would help bring the sweetness of success to your life experience?