Last Updated on June 7, 2022 by Andrew Blakey
Creating An Environment That Supports Your Short Term And Long Term Goals
For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you’ll know how much emphasis I put on creating both short term and long term goals.
Creating goals allows you to use the power of manifestation to help guide your life in a certain direction and puts you in control of your own life.
That being said, one of the largest things getting in the way of your goals may be the environment you’ve created.
Assessing Your Environment
One of the best things you can do when it comes to reaching both your short term and long term goals is to assess your environment.
When I say environment I mean all the things and people in your everyday life that have an impact on the things you do. First let’s talk about the people in your life.
About 4 years ago I was doing my degree at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, Ontario and my grades weren’t as quite as high as I would have liked. After looking at my situation and my environment I realized that a part of this may have been because I was simply trying to do to many things at once.
I was trying to balance a full time job, school, college sports, and a relationship at the time. There’s an old saying that I remember and it goes along the lines of “Chase every rabbit and you’ll catch none”.
Let’s talk about how you can use prioritization in your life to help you achieve bigger goals.
Prioritizing “The People” In Your life
It’s time for you to take a deep dive and decide which people are important and are priorities in your life and cut out or reduce the amount of time that you spend on or with the others.
The people in your life can have an incredibly profound impact on your ability to achieve both your short term and long term goals.
There was a great quote that I heard from someone a while ago and that was “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime”. This is a quote that has stuck with me and has helped to make decisions on the people in my life I want to spend more time with, versus those that I want to limit the time I spend on them.
There’s nothing wrong with prioritizing yourself by choosing to make the hard decision to say “no” to that invite to the thing that you know is only going to pull you further away from your goals.
Prioritize “The Things” In Your Life
The next part of your life to start to clean up – is the things in your life.
When it comes to short term and long term goals, choosing to clutter your life with possessions or habits that cloud the path to your goals can be extremely detrimental to your future success.
For those of you who are into podcasts, I highly recommend you listen to this episode by Rob Dial and his show the Mindset Mentor.
In the podcast mentioned above, he talks about making life hard now so that it’s easier later.
All too often we focus on the instant gratification which usually brings us further from our goals instead of closer. I challenge you to make life hard by doing the tasks you know you need to do to start moving forward each day towards your short term and long term goals.
Make life hard today by saying “no” to the things that move you away from the person you want to be.
Prioritize “The Habits” In Your Life
The last priority we’re going to look at is the habits in your life.
This is arguable one of the most important aspects that can contribute to the success or failure or attaining your short term and long term goals.
When it comes to fitness and nutritional goals, it’s never about being perfect. It’s unrealistic to expect you, me, or anyone else to stick to their plan 100% all the time and I’m not asking you to.
What’s important is to simply be winning more than you’re losing. You need to string together a series of winning days to start building momentum in the right direction.
How Can You Do This?
I want you to close your eyes. Think about what your future self looks like. Really visualize it. The future self that you want to be.
What kind of person are you? What do you look like, what do you feel like? Really visualize it and see it in your mind.
Next I want you to dig even deeper, what kind of habits does this person do each day?
What Habits Does Your Future Self Do Each Day?
- Snooze through their alarm clock?
- Avoid exercise to watch movies instead?
- Order take out multiple times per week?
Answer honestly. Probably not.
But Does Your Future Self Do Any Of These Habits Instead?
- Make their bed first thing in the morning?
- Make exercise a daily habit?
- Eat healthy foods, prioritizing things like veggies and healthy options?
- Go to bed at a decent hour?
The above habits sound more like it doesn’t it?
So What Can You Do?
At the end of the day it comes down to discipline NOT motivation. If you’re reading this it means you already have some sort of motivation.
The difference is between: winners and losers, champions and runner ups, those who succeed versus don’t – is discipline.
Discipline is the biggest contributor to success. Do you know what helps to build your discipline?
Doing those little tasks that don’t feel important. Things like making your bed, throwing out the coffee cups sitting in your car, and not delaying tasks that you can do right now.
Just like exercise, discipline is a habit and it’s something you have to practice in order to get better at it. If you want to learn if your exercise program is sustainable or not, check out this article.
Short term and long term goals can really help take you to the next level. Will you embrace it or just let it pass you by?
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