Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Setting Stretch Goals and Writing Your Bucket List

Tags

Achievement, Bucket List, failure, Goals, Learn, Pay the Price

“Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”

―Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living

Are you afraid of making mistakes or failing what you set out to do? If you are, I have an exercise you can work through. This exercise provides you a way to brainstorm your future. Write 100 things you would like to do before you die. This will be your personal bucket list. Assume you will accomplish these goals. You have the skills, talent, knowledge, and the money to do whatever you want. Try this. It is a great exercise and is the way I came up with my personal bucket list. This bucket list drives me to learn new skills and identifies new plateaus to shoot for.

I’ll be working on the 2^nd draft of 5 chapters this week. I’ll be checking my writing for grammar errors. I am scheduled to finish my 2^nd draft this month. Rewriting processes vary from author to author. I am working through my process hoping I can solidify this process for future non-fiction books. My writing efficiency will improve dramatically once I have this process completed.

My workout routine will stay at home using exercise bands. I got a new set this week that duplicated weights up to 50lbs. My home routine will be the routine I stick with while the weather here in Michigan makes driving conditions too dangerous to drive in. My goal is the same as last year. I want to get to 200lbs with about 10% body fat. I’ll get there. I’m slowly chipping away.

I’m on track with my blogging. I am at 516 followers, with a 1000-follower goal by year’s end. I use Sunday to read other people’s blogs and follow blogs I am interested in. I follow back everyone who follows Daily Ramblings. I am continuing to refine my content to continue to deliver top-level content that will keep and attract new followers.

My meditation schedule is daily. My reading involves 5 books. One book is a fiction book, another book is a history book, another book is spiritual, another book is on philosophy, and the final book is a self-help book. Each time I finish a book I replace the finished book with a book of the same category. I’m on track with my reading plan for the year. I finished book 8 of the 48-book goal I have set for this year.

I am also on track with my course load. I am taking a lecture series on YouTube, a political course on Coursera, offered by the University of Pennsylvania, and I am plugging through my programming course on Codecademy. The goal this year is to finish the Web Path I am enrolled in.

I hope all of you are on track with the goals you set in December like I did. If you are having trouble with deciding about what to do, take time and write 100 things you’d like to do, assuming you will not fail. When you have completed your list, write the reasons you would like to pursue these goals. The goals that have the strongest reasons are the ones you should focus on. Goals that motivate you will be the goals that are easier to incorporate into your daily schedule. Goals that don’t have a solid “why” will be those goals you place on a someday/maybe list. Your goals will change. Some will stick while others will teach you are not willing to pay the price that goal requires. It’s ok. Try things out. You never know.

As always, I wish you a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Fear of Failure

Tags

Accomplishment, failure, Fear, Frank Herbert, Mistakes, motivation, Overcoming Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”―Frank Herbert,Dune

Fear. It causes us to pause, to procrastinate, to react to all those hidden demons our minds create. Fear warns us that we are not good enough. Fear predicts our total ruin. Fear predicts the destruction of our reputation. Fear is an enemy to be dealt with if you are going to do anything meaningful with your life.

We all deal with fear in one way or another. Fear can come in many guises. We can be fearful of a confrontation with a colleague or a loved one. We can be fearful of failure. We can be fearful of standing up for ourselves. We can be fearful of moving forward with a project we really want to accomplish.

I have found that the best way to conquer fear is to eliminate the ego. How many wars or arguments could have been avoided if both parties put their egos to the side. The ego is something you’ll never get rid of, but it can be put to the side. When you are creating something new, you will make mistakes. Embrace mistakes. Embrace failure. These are two things you have to get through if you are going to achieve anything. If you avoid assigning failures and mistakes to yourself personally, you will feel bad, upset, angry, etc. Instead, play a game. Laugh at yourself. Realize what you’ve learned. Look at the failure or mistake and dissect it. How did it happen? What did I miss? More importantly, how can I avoid this mistake in the future?

Set your goals, establish a plan to achieve the goals you have set, and stake out actions to move you through your road map. Make your daily contributions so minuscule that you’ll do them without resistance. You’ll make mistakes. You will discover your plan has problems and needs to be adjusted. Failure occurs only when you fail to act or give up on your goals and dreams. Keep this in the forefront of your mind—failure occurs when you quit. You avoid failure if you keep moving forward.

I had a heck of a time yesterday with my Dad watching the Superbowl. We were a little disappointed in the game. The commercials were OK, but not barn burners. The game was exciting toward the end, but the first half was boring. In the end, however, it was nice watching the game with my Dad.

Tomorrow is the State of the Union and I’ll be engaged with that most of the day. This week I’ll continue my reading, writing, exercise, meditation, and learning schedule. I interact with a lot of authors online and discovered a great writing tool. It’s called Scrivener. I just downloaded it today and will be working through tutorials and such for most of the week. Once I’ve got a good idea of how to use the tool, I’ll begin moving my book to it. I discovered that using a word document straight up is probably not the most efficient way of putting together a book, particularly now that I am in the re-write phase of the operation.

That’s it for today folks. Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday

Tags

Achievement, Astro Teller, failing, failure, Google X

Find out how the Google X laboratory thrives on killing its own projects. Astro Teller provides the narrative. Google has found that failing is complementary to achieving our dreams.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday

Tags

failing fast, failing mindfully, failure, Leticia Gasca, Teacher

I enjoyed this one. It’s about failure. It’s about how failure teaches us. Note: There are a few F-bombs in this one.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday

Tags

Consistency, failure, Mistakes, Perseverance, Persistence, Planning

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

I like quotes like these because they truly reflect reality. There is nothing that you will do in life that will not result in mistakes. Mistakes are what makes us human. If we fear to make mistakes we will never accomplish anything. Those of us that accomplish a lot also fail a lot. Those of us that accomplish a lot are not afraid of making mistakes.

The lesson: Make mistakes. Make many mistakes. Continue pushing forward and make more mistakes. If 10 mistakes result in achieving something—make them and achieve.

Take some time today and look at some of the goals you have set for yourself. Which ones have you put off? I bet there’s a little fear inside of you telling you that you are not good enough, you don’t have the right skills to do that, or you don’t know where to start.

Today, I challenge you to grab one of those goals and think about what your life looks like when you achieve it. Then, once you know where you want to be, put together a rough plan. Don’t do anything else, just put together a plan.

Tomorrow, look at that plan and flesh it out a bit. Get some specifics in place. Set a few milestones (deadlines) for those specific actions you have created for yourself.

On Friday take one of those initial actions and do it. On Saturday look at your plan and schedule execution on another one of your action steps to be finished next week. Try this out. You’ll find that once you’re moving on these action steps you’ll begin to feel better and better about achieving your goal.

One of my major goals is to lose weight. I’m down 28 pounds so far. When I started, I went through the same actions above. Has my weight loss been consistent? Has it been perfect? No, to both questions. I have had to continue to adjust, realize I made some mistakes, fix them, and get back on track.

When you are looking to lose weight, you must do one thing: create a calorie deficit. We analyze what we are currently eating by monitoring our food intake for a week. We don’t adjust yet. We just write down what we are eating every day. Then, once you’ve done this for the week, you know what you are currently eating (calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins). Then we adjust. I’m at 2300 calories per week, but do not hit that calorie goal every day. I lose about a pound a week. That’s all I want to lose. I’m not in a rush, I want to keep off whatever I take off.

My plan:

• Collect food intake
• Determine total calories consumed each week by macro (Carbs, Fats, Proteins)
• Then reduce the calories by 500 (3500 calories in 1 pound of body weight)
• Stick to the new calorie goals

Assumptions:

• This is not an exact science
• My body will react differently over time as it adapts to the diet
• I will need to adjust as I go, but the adjustments need to be gradual and consistent

You see how simple this is? You can do it too. You just need to take a little time to create a plan, break the plan out into actionable steps, and execute each step. You’ll get there—I promise.

If you are stuck and still don’t know what to do, feel free to reach out. I like helping people with achieving their goals. Simply reply in the comments and tell me how to contact you. I’m not looking to make money here, just help others to achieve what they want to achieve.

Making mistakes is part of being human. Make them. Fix them. Move forward.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Log

Tags

adaptation, Bodybuilding, failure, form, off day

Today’s workout

Today is an active rest day, which means I won’t be in the gym today. This week resulted in the completion of week 1 of the final phase of the Shortcut to Size program I’m following from www.jimstoppani.com. This program has been great. Next week we are in week 2 and we’ll be lowering the rep ranges from 12 – 15 to 9 – 11, which means we’ll also be increasing the weight on each exercise we do this upcoming week.

Adaptation

While I’m here, I’d like to chat a bit about adaptation. Whenever we exercise we are damaging our body. This damage is microscopic in nature, but it’s still there. This is the reason you experience a little soreness a day or so after a workout. Your body is sore because you taxed it beyond its normal limits (hopefully). When you do this kind of damage to your muscles, the body adapts by overcompensating the repair of these muscles. In other words, the muscles adapt and get stronger. Subsequently, when you lift weights and work a particular movement to failure, the muscle fibers rupture and the body has to repair them. This repair causes muscles to get bigger.

Failure

“Working to failure” means we execute a movement until we cannot continue to make that movement with proper form. Proper form means we aren’t twisting our body in weird ways, we aren’t jerking the weights, etc. This is where the honesty of the gym comes through. You can’t cheat the weights, nor can you cheat the exercise. Using improper form will cause injuries. Injuries will keep you out of the gym. If you’re out of the gym you lose all you’ve worked for. Bodybuilding is not a race; it’s a marathon. If you keep going, keep altering your workout routines so your body has to continue to adapt to these routines, and use the proper form, you’ll see improvements over time that will blow you away.

Happy Friday everyone! I hope each of you has a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Until tomorrow…