Daily Ramblings – Motivation Mondays – Failure is Not a Waste of Time

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Defeat, failure, Keep going, Learning, Setting Goals, Stretch Goals, The Journey

It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Bill Gates

As we wind down 2019, I wanted to use that time to address failure.

Failure is a teacher. It is not something to get upset about or worry about. Failure shows you how not to do something. It teaches us where we went wrong. If we pay attention. If you fail and learn nothing, the true failure is failing to learn something.

I set some stretch goals at the beginning of the year. Did I meet all of them? No. Was I planning to miss the mark? No. That’s what stretch goals are about. You stretch beyond what you did previously to see if you can pull it off. I’ll get into detail in a later post when I do my end-of-year evaluation and reset for next year, but when you achieve more, feel great! When you fail to achieve what you set out to do, learn from it. Did you stretch too far? Did you miss some principle or lack the technique or ability to do more? This is where the true wins are. You can fail over and over and over again. The key is to keep going.

Here’s my weekly schedule:

• Blog daily
• Work on my Story Beats daily
• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Socialize daily
• Journal daily
• Learn daily
• Code daily
• Share articles and quotes daily

When you set your goals for next year (hopefully sometime this month), keep in mind that you may fail to achieve some of them. That’s OK. Goals are meant to stretch us. Sometimes you can’t stretch enough to achieve them. The real benefit of this exercise is to continue to do better than you did yesterday.

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Getting Started

Tags

Baseline, Goals, habits, improvement, Mark Twain, Planning for 2020, Stretch Goals, Tracking

” The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain

Courtesy: Brainy Quotes

We are getting close to that time of year when we begin looking ahead to the new year. What did we do? Did we achieve what we set out to do? Did we give up on some things?

Take the month of December and think about 3 or 4 things you want to do next year. I would recommend setting a goal physically (health), intellectually (learning), social (improving/establishing relationships), and spiritual (if you follow a religious path).

When you select a goal, be realistic, set milestones you believe you’ll hit every 90 days, and track your results digitally or on paper. I’ll let you know how I did this year before the end of 2019 and will share my goals for 2020.

Goals don’t have to be crazy. Maybe you’d like to read more. Good! Set a goal to read 12 books this year. Physical goals could be about nutrition, losing weight, exercising more consistently or something along these lines. Intellectually, you could set out to learn something (instrument, language, computer programing, digital art making, etc.). Socially, you could join a local meetup, a book club, volunteer for charity work, or spend more time with your family and friends. If you are religious, set yourself a religious goal. Maybe you could volunteer more or read/study more, or get more consistent with the practices your religion asks of you.

The key is to start and start early. The best place to start is to find out where you are right now, then set some goals that will stretch you in the areas you want to grow in. I picked these four areas, but you may have more to choose from. It’s up to you. Take some time doing this, write out your plans, set dates and times when you look to be at a certain level and you’ll do well.

Well, that’s it for now. Here’s my week:

Before I get started, this is a holiday week for Americans. I have family coming in on Wednesday to celebrate Thanksgiving at my home. These days will be mandatory do nothing days to hang out with my sister and family.

Mon-Tue (Work); Wed-Thu – off for Thanksgiving; Fri-Sun (Work)

• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Work on my Fiction Book daily
• Blog daily
• Take my classes daily
• Code daily
• Journal daily
• Socialize in the community daily
• Read my bible and religious study daily
• Have some fun daily

Have a great week, everyone.

Until next time…

Dave