Terri's Tuesday Tip of the Week - January 30th

Your accountability partner keeps you on track and moving forward in all aspects of your development. – Mike Staver

People often say that motivation doesn’t last.  Neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. – Zig Ziglar

Accountability: The missing link in achieving your health and fitness goals. – thehumbledhomemaker.com

People who wrote down their goals were 42% more likely to achieve them than the ones who didn't. Telling a friend increases this rate to 78%. - Brian McCormick

As a goal-driven and pretty disciplined individual, I have never had an accountability partner.  I know what my dreams are and work towards accomplishing my goals to achieve my dreams.  However, this year I had a friend ask if I would be interested in being accountability partners and I said yes.  The plan was to meet once to discuss our goals for the year and then weekly we would communicate via email to discuss our progress.   

With it being only a month into the year, I have to say it has taken my drive to accomplish my goals to a whole new level!  For example, I have a goal to cook or bake something every week.  I have gotten away from both activities since I do not have anyone to cook or bake for and need to work on developing my skills again.  Knowing that I will have to give an update to my accountability partner sometime in the week, I am challenged to make sure I am working on this goal as it would be an easy goal to dismiss. 

And by having this goal, I had a first in my life…I was told by a friend that I was not allowed to make Oreo truffles for a while because they were amazing and way too easy to devour all of them! 

Challenge: Would having an accountability partner assist you in accomplishing your 2018 goals?  If so, start thinking about a colleague or friend who you could ask to be your accountability partner. 

Next week, I will give some tips and guidelines on how to set up an accountability partnership.

Terri's Tuesday Tip of the Week - January 23rd

Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.
― Barry Finlay, Kilimanjaro and Beyond

You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. – Unknown

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. – Henry Ford

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it. – Andy Rooney

If you never attempt the ascent, you'll never know the thrill of swooshing down the other side. - Unknown

Over the last month, Terri’s Tuesday Tip of the Week has discussed dreams, dream boards, goals and “mundane repetitiveness” (habits).  After a conversation with a friend last August, I had an epiphany.  Accomplishing our dreams is like climbing a mountain.  When we dream, we are excited about a new idea and are at the mountain peak.  We are drilling down on our dreams (going down the mountain) when we create our goals and our habits are the base of the mountain.  HOWEVER, to accomplish our dreams, we must climb the mountain.  We start at the base of the mountain by doing our daily habits, which helps us accomplish our goals advancing us up the mountain and we reach the peak of the mountain when we achieve our dreams.   

Last week, I listened to a Business Boutique podcast (see Resources for podcast) by Christy Wright that had a similar idea.  She stated that when you come up with an idea, you have to break down the dream into smaller goals.  In her podcast, she did a formula of breaking down a goal all the way to the point of knowing how many words to write in a day to complete a 70,000-word book in 6 months.  Like me, she is a runner and used a running analogy for the mountain.  She said the scariest part of running a hill is looking to the top and immediately trying to reach the peak.  Wright says that she accomplishes running a hill one step at a time, one milestone at a time.  After mundane repetitiveness of putting one foot in front of another, she reaches the peak! 

Life is like a mountain, the climb is hard, but when you reach the top, the view is amazing. - Unknown

Challenge: What mountain are you climbing this year?  What small steps do you need to do to reach the peak of the mountain? 

Resources

https://www.businessboutique.com/podcast/ep-38-hitting-big-goals-by-winning-small/

Terri's Tuesday Tip of the Week - January 16th

We are what we repeatedly do.  Success is not an action but a habit. – Aristotle

Success isn't always about 'Greatness', it's about consistency. Consistent, hard work gains success. Greatness will come...Success isn't overnight. It's when everyday you get a little better than the day before. It all adds up. – Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Will Durant

Rowdy Gaines started swimming his junior year of high school and soon discovered he had a passion for being in the pool.  Auburn University offered him a swimming scholarship and he became a five-time NCAA champion.  With the Americans boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, he thought his chance of competing for a gold medal had passed and he stopped swimming.  After encouragement from his father, he jumped back in the pool and started training again.  Competing in 1984 at the Olympics in Los Angeles, he won the 100-meter freestyle and participated in two relays for the United States, which they won.

After winning his medals, he calculated all the miles he swam in the 8+ years leading up to the Olympics and discovered that he had swam over 20,000miles in 50-yeard increments.  Rowdy Gaines said:

I swam around the world for a race that lasted 49 seconds.

Gaines had passion, desire and discipline.  He learned that mundane repetitiveness is the best way to master anything. 

Challenge: Your dreams are displayed on your dream board.  Goals are hanging in a location making it easy to daily review them.  Now it is time to develop new habits that will help you accomplish your dreams and goals.  What consistent habits do you need to incorporate into your life to accomplish your goals and make this the best year of your life?  

Resources

https://heatherquisel.com/do-you-have-the-grit-it-takes-to-succeed/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-you-have-grit-takes-succeed-heather-quisel/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowdy_Gaines

Terri's Tuesday Tip of the Week - January 9th

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning

Your goal should be just out of reach, but not out of sight.

-         Denis Waitley and Remi Witt

Are your 2018 goals written and located somewhere where it is easy to review them daily?  If not, it is not too late to write your S.M.A.R.T. goals to help you accomplish your dreams in 2018!

When I was creating my goals, I reviewed my benchmark data from previous years (June 27, 2017 to learn more: https://tuesdaytipoftheweek.blogspot.com/2017/06/terris-tuesday-tip-of-week-june-27th.html).  I noticed that I have exceeded my knowledge (reading and listening to books) goals over the last 3 or 4 years and I started thinking that I should make these goals a little bit harder this year to challenge myself.  Talking with my mom, I mentioned this to her and she suggested that I not make it too difficult because I do not know where life will take me in 2018 and her thinking was correct.  I took a couple days to ponder both sides of this issue…write a goal that would be easily attainable or set a goal that could be attainable based on previous years, but would challenge me.  Since I usually love a challenge, I decided to set “stretch goals”!  Additionally, I know that I will conduct quarterly goal reviews to see my progress and change either a personal behavior or the goal if something happens in my life that will prohibit me from accomplishing my goals.  Furthermore, when I accomplish these goal, it will mean more to me because I will know that I stretched myself to accomplish it. 

When I decided on my “stretch goals”, I started thinking about changes I could start making to accomplish my goals.  I know that I watch a little too much television in the evenings and often give myself the excuse of needing time where my mind does nothing.  I changed my mindset and determined that I can read to relax instead of watching television.    

When people sense victory, they sacrifice to succeed.  When people sense defeat, they give as little as possible. - Stretchyourself.org

Challenge: Review your goals.  Did you set easily attainable goals or did you challenge yourself where the goal is slightly out of reach?  To challenge yourself in 2018, write a “stretch goal” that is slightly beyond reach and go for it!  

Terri's Tuesday Tip of the Week - January 2nd

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. – Lewis Carroll

Setting goals is the first step from the invisible to the visible. - Anthony Robbins

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. - Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog

WELCOME TO 2018!  I am excited a new year has arrived and I am ready to take it on with a vengeance. 

As a goal-driven individual, I will admit that I have been thinking about my 2018 goals for over a month and I am so excited to start working on them.  It took everything in me not to start reading a new book on New Year’s Eve afternoon because I wanted to accomplish my whole reading goal in 2018! 

Listening to various podcasts, news shows, etc., I learned that 92% of New Years goals fizzle by January 15^th and only 3 out of every 100 individuals write their goals down.  HOWEVER, those people that take time to create, write them down AND review them are 50% more likely to achieve them than someone who does not have their goals written down (goalband.co.uk). 

DO NOT WORRY if you have not yet written down your goals because TODAY is a great day to start!  Below are three steps to help you think about, create and daily review your goals to catapult you to success:

1.       Ask yourself “What do I want December 31, 2018 to look like?” and write it down in detail.

2.       To accomplish that dream/vision, it is important to create goals to help you progress daily towards your ultimate outcome for the year.  Many successfully people create S.M.A.R.T. goals because Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Oriented goals allow the individual to know when they accomplished the goal.  Additionally, I break my goals down into the “6 F’s” (Faith, Family, Future, Finances Friends, Fitness) because these are the areas that are most important to me.   (In the resource section below are links to previous blog posts to help explain these ideas).

3.       Once you are satisfied with your 2018 goals, print them off and daily review them to remind yourself of what you are pressing towards.  I suggest typing the goals and saving them so that each year you can review your previous goals. 

Challenge: Create your 2018 Goals.

Resources

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2014/04/08/why-you-should-be-writing-down-your-goals/#

http://www.goalband.co.uk/goal-achievement-facts.html

S.M.A.R.T. Goals – December 15, 2015 (https://tuesdaytipoftheweek.blogspot.com/2015/12/terris-tuesday-tip-of-week-december-15th.html)

6 F’s of Goal Setting – December 16, 2014 (https://tuesdaytipoftheweek.blogspot.com/2014/12/terris-tuesday-tip-of-week-decembner.html) & December 8, 2015 (https://tuesdaytipoftheweek.blogspot.com/2015/12/terris-tuesday-tip-of-week-december-8th.html)