You’ve done the work toward gaining insight and analyzing parts of you, your life, and your values that most of us never think about (in case you missed it, read how to here). Now it’s time to apply this awareness and knowledge toward creating the goals that will lead you to self-empowerment in these areas. To begin the next phase of setting goals while holding yourself accountable, you’ll need a road map or guide to help keep you on the path toward achieving self-empowerment goals. Here are steps within that road map:
Giving Negative Self-Talk the Boot
Harkening back to that barrier of negative self-talk and our inner critic, we must be able to override those thoughts with positive affirmations so that we are not constantly discouraged by these deeply ingrained, negative inner criticisms. When a negative, critical, or discouraging thought enters your mind, you must reframe it to be more positive, reasonable, and compassionate.
Our negative self-talk is usually pretty repetitive (i.e., ‘You’re never going to make it’, ‘Why waste your time?’, etc.), so identify what the ’usual suspect’ negative thoughts are and come up with a phrase to counteract their negative effects. If your usual suspect negative thought is ‘I just don’t have the energy today’, you can reframe that to be ‘I’m pretty worn out today, but I will do it tomorrow’ or ‘I feel wiped out, but if I do it, I’ll feel a lot better afterward’. Some other encouraging statements to use when reframing negative self-talk may be like these, but I encourage you to find ones that specifically work for you:
- I have control over my success
- I’m too important to neglect achieving this goal
- I worked too hard to stop now
- I can handle any obstacle that tries to get in my way
- I won’t let myself down
Verify the Achievability of Tour Goals
Next, write down your goals and assign priority to them. You can come up with as many goals as you want, but make sure you don’t overwhelm yourself with where to start or try to tackle them all at once. Pick one or two, given the degree of work involved in your goals, to focus on and chip away at the steps you’ve outlined toward achieving those goals. Ask yourself which are most important to you as well as realistic to work on at this moment in your life. Make sure your goals follow the SMART Model (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) so that you know your goals are reasonable and actually achievable.
Track Your Progress
Journal your progress so that you can use that as a tool of encouragement and motivation to continue your journey. We often can’t measure our progress or don’t notice our progress as life goes by and we’re distracted or caught up in our daily struggles. Taking the time to reflect upon our days, weeks, or months, is helpful in reminding ourselves how far we’ve come and how far we’ve got to go until we reach our goal (inevitably, less than we did before).
Create a Routine
Develop a routine so that each day you’re not tasked with outlining your day around the inevitable disruptors which throw us off course. Maybe you can benefit from having the goals you have set out for yourself that week predetermined to be on Mondays and Tuesdays, when people may be out and about less than on the weekends, or utilize your time while the kids are in school. If you have a game plan as to what achievable goals you have for the day or week (however you prefer to structure your routine), then you can knock those out earlier in the day so unexpected twists and turns don’t derail your progress.
Find that Friend
Get an accountability buddy so that you can aid each other in whatever endeavors or goals you are trying to accomplish. We all need support, and while we independently work on ourselves, it’s always helpful to have a ride-or-die with similar goals who can help keep us on our path while we benefit them in the same way. This symbiosis may be helpful in terms of achieving goals as well as providing a sense of support above and beyond what we’re used to in our relationships.
Putting all of the steps outlined in this month’s blogs to work is a huge task, no doubt, but remember the ultimate goal for doing so – to create a sense of self-empowerment to improve the quality of our relationships, sense of security, confidence, and trajectory throughout the remainder of our lives.
As Dictionary.com defines it, self-empowerment is “deriving the strength to do something through one’s own thoughts and based on the belief that one knows what is best for oneself”. If we all possessed this belief about ourselves, we would all be better functioning humans, more successful, and more satiated in life. These positive side effects also have trickling positive effects on the lives of our loved ones and others whom we encounter.
We all possess power beyond what most of us recognize. What power do you possess, how will you show yourself that power exists, and what goals and life achievements will you accomplish as a result of generating and tapping into that power? Please send a message describing your journey toward self-empowerment, and let me know if it’s ok to share so that message so that you may inspire others.