Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – End of Year Recap

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2020, Achievements, Failures, family, Friends, Goals, New Year, Planning, Strategy

Here I am for one day to document my goals for 2019 and how it all panned out throughout the year. When I return finally on the 2nd of January 2020, I’ll post my 2020 goals. I wanted to get this out to you before New Year’s Eve as promised. So here we go!

Physical

1. Develop a life-long workout routine for home and gym
2. Reduce Weight to 200 lbs
3. Get to your Dental Appointments
4. Get Annual Physical
5. Chiropractor monthly to keep back and joints in order
6. Eye exam

Learning

1. Complete 12 courses online this year

Financial

1. Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Spiritual

1. Complete Book discussions
2. Participate on panel at Regional
3. Participate at HI retreat if invited
4. Kick off the Art of Spiritual Dreaming
5. Complete Light and Sound Discourse
6. Send in 12 Initiate reports
7. Spiritual exercises 20 minutes per day
8. Read Shariyat (My Bible) daily

Reading

1. Complete 48 books by year’s end

Writing

1. Finish Recruiting Book this year
2. Learn outlining for nonfiction books
3. Learn outlining for novel creating steps

Blogging

1. Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Social

1. Stay in touch with family and friends

So everything that is in red is where I fell short of my yearly goals. Here’s what I learned.

Reduce Weight to 200 lbs – Missed

Losing weight is all about calorie deficit. You won’t lose weight if you do not decrease your intake. This is hard, no doubt about it, but I’ll be adding this again to my yearly goals for 2020. I’ve purchased a food tracker and will continue to strive to build a nutritious diet that is sustainable for the long-term. If any of you have followed my blog for this year, you know I gave the KETO diet a try. It didn’t work. I lost weight, but could not sustain the diet for the long term. Back to the drawing board.

Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Again, another tough one. You would think it was easy, but when you’re on a retirement income, it is not. I have morphed my budget in the last few months that should help me with this goal. This will also go back on my list for 2020. I plan on saving more than this, but this is the goal, since I couldn’t hit it this year.

Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Another tough one. I thought I would make it, but have just recently breached the 650 mark for followers. This will be a goal of mine again, but this year will be more realistic. I’ll shoot for 800 by year’s end 2020. I’ve got some plans to change out some of my content for the upcoming year, sticking with the topics people enjoyed and leaving aside those topic areas where no one seemed to be too interested or where I wasn’t getting the traffic I wanted.

What I’m going to keep.

I had great success in the areas of book reading, classes taken and completed, and book writing. I also knocked it out of the park on my exercise, my spiritual areas, and my social areas. I haven’t finalized what my goal list will look like yet. I’ll be thinking about those things tomorrow and New Year’s Day.

I know a lot of people have given up on setting New Year’s resolutions, because they seem to fail or lose interest after a few months. I would urge you to set them anyway. Just don’t set too many. Shoot for one or two areas you’d like to improve this year and stick with them. Who cares if you miss the mark, the key is the process of trying to meet them. It really makes life very interesting. You will also make some progress. Relish that! That’s where you can become even more motivated. When you begin to see progress in an area you want to improve, you’ll be that much more driven to keep pushing!!

One thing I discovered is that my goals were not specific enough in some areas. I will reword them this year, so they are measurable. Tracking goals is really important. To properly track them, they have to be specific metrics. You’ll see this in my upcoming goal’s list.

Well, that’s it for today! I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season. I did. My brother and sister came out for the holidays and it was terrific! We had a great time as a family.

Happy New Year, readers! I hope all of you have a wonderful time at the parties you are going to or hosting. I also wish each of you great happiness, adventure, love, and an outstanding 2020! Remember: You can’t lose if you don’t quit!!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – The Journey is More Important than the Destination

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Achievements, Consistency, Goals, motivation, rituals, Systems, The Journey

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Zig Ziglar

I have always been motivated by goals and achievements. In the last few years, I have evolved. After reading books like Mini-Habits and Atomic Habits, I am now more focused on the systems that support achievement. These systems or rituals are more important in my opinion.

For example, I set a goal in the Goodreads’ reading challenge to 48 books this year. I achieved and moved beyond this goal last month. How? By reading 1 chapter a day. That’s it. Simple, right? My system of reading 1 chapter a day helped me hit my goal, which occurred without even thinking about it. If they system supports your goal, you’ll achieve it. You cannot do anything else but succeed.

 

Systems or rituals can be used to achieve all of your goals. If you select the right things to do, you’ll achieve your goals unconsciously. It’s just that simple. It’s the rituals and systems that are more important because they build habits or patterns in your daily life that should be beneficial. Reading, writing, exercise, meditation, connecting with friends and family, are all important and beneficial things. Create systems that allow you to touch the things that are important to you every day and your life will be rich and fulfilling. On to my weekly schedule.

Weekly Schedule:

• Read a chapter daily
• Write a section of my book daily
• Code daily
• Meditate daily
• Blog daily
• Exercise daily
• Spend time with friends and family daily
• Run a monthly book discussion (today)

I’ve also started a habit of getting out and about daily. This could be a meal at a restaurant, visiting a library, or setting down at a coffee shop. I also go to the gym and run errands. I try to interact with different people each time I go out. It’s great fun!

Happy Monday! I hope all of you have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Let Divine Spirit Do It’s Work

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Achievements, answers, Confirmations, Divine Spirit, Faith, Goals, Intuition, Patience, questions, Trust

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay

When you don’t put a definite shape to what you imagine, Divine Spirit can have unlimited freedom to fill that mold. But if you put a limit to it, you often strike out because you’ve allowed for only one possible outcome.

—Harold Klemp

The Language of Soul

Think about the last thing you wanted to do or accomplish. How did you do it? Did you visualize an outcome, did you have a vague idea about what you wanted, or were you trudging along blind?

I began experimenting with what Harold discusses in this quote a few years ago. It came about because I was doing the opposite of what this quote posits. I was putting a definite “how” to accomplishing my goal. As stated, I kept running into problems, frustration, and ultimately gave up in anger.

I don’t know what your beliefs are, but I started to believe this quote when I tried again with achieving something that I wanted. This time, I just kept my eye on the end state of the goal, not on how it would come about. I became relaxed. I knew my daily actions would get me to the goal; I knew I would make mistakes; I knew obstacles would come up during the journey, but I soon discovered that it also provided me with ways to work around these mistakes and obstacles. I followed my instincts or perhaps an inner intuition that said, “Ok, no problem. Do this now.”

I believe in Divine Spirit. I believe that it passes on little clues or tidbits of information to achieve what we envision. It doesn’t do this because we are special or particularly holy or worthy. The mechanism is the visualization of what we want and keeping a focus on that picture day-to-day. Whenever I run into a problem or difficulty, I ask, “So what now?” As I wait for the answer to come I continue to plod along with the daily tasks I have set out for myself that will edge me closer to the picture I have in my mind. You know what? The answers come.

I have talked with friends and family about this and they all concur. Each of us gets an answer to our questions. One thing I have discovered is not getting wrapped around the context of what that answer will be or what form it will come in.

Have you ever had a question answered by coming across a website that spells it out? What about a passage in a book? How about a conversation you have with someone or what you overhear someone talks about? Have you ever found an answer coming across in a radio program, podcast, or a billboard?

This is what I am talking about. If you ask a question and remain patient, aware, and open, the answer comes. It will probably not be what you thought it should be. It will be clear. Now comes your ability to have faith in the response. Sometimes, what comes through is something that makes little sense. How do you compensate for that?

You test it. Let’s say you ask about your current job? You recognize some tell-tale signs that things might not be going well with your employer. You read articles in the paper; You see people leave the organization. These signs tell you that your organization is going through some financial stress, despite the positive notes or messages the leadership is passing out to everyone. You ask and wait.

The answer comes and says, “Time to look for a new role.” Before you do that, ask for a confirmation. The confirmation can be anything. I used a yellow bird as a confirmation. I waited patiently.

One morning, as I’m looking through some articles on Flipboard, I see an article about a business laying people off and within the same web page that displayed the article’s headline, was a yellow bird, depicted on the page. I got my answer and a confirmation. I left that job and within two weeks after my leaving that position for a new role in a different state; I heard through the grapevine that company laid off my entire team, including our market president.

Random? Lucky? Unbelievable? Maybe. This is one thing you must prove to yourself. It’s the only way for you to understand what I’m talking about. Experience this for yourself.

Imagine being able to ask these types of questions and getting answers to them. I don’t care what topic they relate to. Maybe you want to find out whether to continue a relationship. Maybe you are considering a move. Maybe you are considering a new project. Whatever that is, ask and figure out if this works for you. It may; It may not. If it works, imagine how powerful that is? It works for me and I trust it more and more.

I’ll stop here. I wish all of you a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Bonus Content

Tags

Achievements, Bonus Content, Character Traits, Goals, habits, Thank you

I’ve got a few things to cover today. The first is to offer my thanks for all the new followers this week. Thank you so much for following Daily Ramblings. I really appreciate it. The next thing I want to cover is my new character trait I’ll be adding in February. February is the month I pursue the character trait of detachment. So far, I have the following character traits on my list of pursuit each month: discrimination, tolerance, forgiveness, and contentment. This has been an interesting journey.

I have also been monitoring the habits I’ve been establishing for the last year. My daily journaling and blogging are finally wired in. I literally cannot go a day without getting these done. It is interesting when you think about how our brains work. Initially, the brain resists the addition of a new task or habit. Then it begins to tolerate the habit. Finally, it expects the habit to be accomplished. This is the one surprise I attained over the last year. I have always been looking for some form of a trigger or sign that I have truly mastered a new habit. My realization over the last week was proof to me that these habits are ingrained. Now, I can begin looking at other habits.

We’ve got snow again last night and it is clean, crisp, and white. I love the Winter season. It is nice to feel the cold when you walk outside to shovel the driveway and sweep off the walkways. It is nice to feel the temperature difference when you come back in and pour yourself a nice cup of coffee. I finished the rough draft of my book and will begin the rewriting process on Monday. I have been contemplating the writing process or just the process of creation in general, and writing a book is no different from painting, sculpture or any other type of art form. You always start out rough and slowly transform the creation into a final product. I am glad I began this project last year and stuck with it.

I hope all of you have a terrific Sunday!

Until next time…

Dave