Why did I struggle to obtain my goals for years?
What was the reason for the inconsistent effort I knew would get me there?
How was I going to get better at maintaining motivation and indeed my progress.
We all try the usual solutions like SMART goals which are valid in of themselves.
But I am not talking about those Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time sensitive goals. That for another article.
Today what I am talking about is your FLOW STATE.
If the amazing book by Mihaly Csikszentmihaliyi, entitled Flow, he outlines a fantastic frame and chat that made so much sense when I was first shown this by my NLP teacher Rik Schnable.
As a result I purchased his book immediately and started to absorb the ideas inside.
The main premise of one of the charts in hos book is this,
When your Skill is high, and your challenge is low, you get bored.
When your skill is low, and your challenge is high, you get stressed.
Note the chart below.
Successful action and motivation.
When you set a goal you ‘think’ you can achieve, but is also a challenge, your motivation sits in the flow state, and you find yourself motivated and consistent.
Your mind can see the finish line and the goal is in sight, there is hope, there is progress, there is daily actions, there is measurement, it is energising.
Think about it. When you achieved something in the past, recall that memory. You would have had to be motivated to take the 50 steps of action taking the achieve it. Some of the steps may have been difficult, but you persevered because you thought it within your grasp, your skill was on the edge, or even within your skills, but you found yourself learning new things as actions lead to learning new things.
This is truly exciting to have expanded your experience and to have learned a new skill, all via actions. These actions fed into a framework a bigger picture.
Why did you succeed, the short answer is progressive action, but the deeper reason was you believed you could make it, which stretching yourself a little more than before.
Unsuccessful action and deflation.
Now lets touch on a time when you set a goal, or tried to complete a project and your lost motivation.
Was the task too hard? Was it overwhelming, hence out of your experience and skill set? Was it reducing your energy? These are all tell tale signs you were our of FLOW. From the above definition you were set a challenge that was far too high for your skill set, and you lost all belief you were going to get there. Put simply the task was too large.
Without that belief that the goal was possible, the brain starts to conserve energy. And looses all motivation.
Now there are other reasons for this that may be in play such as values conflicts, ecology issues where a part of your world may be disrupted if a goal is achieved such as lost time with family, lost finances causing stress on your home payments, or a fear that you might lose status in your community. But the real test is keeping the goals within the realms of possibility in your belief system.
And so today, I invite you to look at a goal. Any goal and ask yourself this question.
Q1 Is this goal within my skillset? DO I believe it is possible, even a little stretch but still possible?
Q2, is this challenge a small enough stretch that I believe I can get there?
These 2 questions are powerful. As you might have set goals that were too big a stretch. Why too big? Because your skills needed more development.
Now here is where the real work might begin.
What do you need to learn to take the next step in your goals?
IF losing 10kg (22lb) to get into better shape, you might need to learn a better workout lifestyle. Or learn how to create a meal plan. Or learn how to stick to a meal plan, or workout. Or learn where the fitness groups are you can make friends in the gym or join a sport to keep moving. This needs to be within the realms of possibility. If too foreign to normal life you will stop. If too easy you might also stop the motivation. It needs to be a blend of easy to help get started, with hard to keep motivated.
Next time you are setting a goal, ask yourself the 2 questions.
Can I get to this goal? If not simplify the goal to something easier that is still an expansion to what you are doing now. If getting fit, and your starting point is zero exercise, go for a walk each day of that is out of character. If you walk regularly, then up the game to walking briskly. If walking briskly is normal, then break out into a job for 10 minutes. You get the picture, then you can go longer, and build up.
The key is consistency, and as you consistently act, a funny thing happens, you enter flow more often, and you start to shift your identity, one action and habit at a time.
So get out there and set micro goals using flow as your template. Remember not too hard, and not too easy, but juuuust right as goldilocks once said famously.
Warm regards,
Matthew Tait. Matthew Tait Coaching
