Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 27

Visualizations, Process Orientation, and Regular Rewards to Boost Motivation

Are you sick of setting goals and failing to achieve them?

I’m going to share my recent discovery to help you to stay motivated until you reach your goal.

The Importance of Self-Discipline

I’ve a poor track record when it comes to achieving my goals. I’ll always start off super-eager but along the way my motivation has a habit of fizzling out. I now know this lack of self-discipline is due to my approach to getting things done.

One the main motives behind my recent experimentation with juice fasting has been to increase my level of self-discipline. I want to develop the tenacity to see things through to the end – no more excuses.

I used to believe self-discipline was all about doing things I didn’t want to do. My recent adventure with controlling my food intake has shown me the opposite is true:

Real self-discipline involves making the process of achieving my goal highly desirable – so I want to do the work.

The problem with the white-knuckle version of self-discipline is that it is not sustainable. This is why most of us will struggle to get lasting results from diets.

I can force myself to do something I don’t like, but it requires a huge amount of effort. There is a limit on the energy reserves available to power this unnatural form of self-discipline so eventually I crash and burn.

Sustainable Self-Discipline

There is a way to remain self-disciplined indefinitely, and it involves harnessing the power of desire. By getting excited and enthusiastic about what I’m doing, it provides an endless supply of motivation.

I can tap into this free energy for self-discipline by repeatedly visualizing how great I’m going to feel when the goal is complete. I make myself feel these emotions as if I’d already reached this target.

Another trick I’ve started using is to set myself regular rewards for achieving targets – this means that every time I hit a target my motivation receives a boost. Instead of feeling guilty for spending money on myself, I now see that this as my payment for a job well done.

I’ve also found out that it is important for me to celebrate my successes and revisit my memories of achieving goals. This allows me to see that the effort is going to be worth it. I now try to think back on old wins at least once per day and before I begin any new challenge.

Process Orientated Self-Discipline

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”

John Lennon

There are two paths towards achieving anything – one is goal orientated and the other is process orientated.

In the past I’ve tended to be goal orientated. This meant my mind was focused on the final destination, and I viewed the work to get me to my goal as in the way and undesirable.

The problem with the goal orientated approach is that I spend the great majority of my life working towards goals rather than achieving them. By focusing all my attention on the goal, I spend 99.9 per cent of my life waiting for something better to happen – this is not the life of a winner.

Process orientation means enjoying the work involved in doing anything just as much (if not more) than the goal itself.

This ability to appreciate the process of steadily moving towards a target means there is no strain to remain motivated. It can be like making it to the top of the mountain every day.

How to Stay Motivated Long Enough to Achieve Your Goal

Here are my five tips for staying motivated long enough to hit your targets:

• Learn to love the process of working towards your goal

• Remember your past victories

• Feel excited about what you are doing

• Imagine as clearly as you can how you expect to feel when you achieve your goal

• Set small rewards for reaching targets along the way to your goal

• Be sure to celebrate your achievements

Another Ten Weeks of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

I recently completed a 15 day juice fast, and today I’m launching into ten weeks of 5:2 intermittent fasting. This means that I’ll have two 24-hour periods each week where I won’t be eating anything. I attempted this same challenge last year, but I only made it to eight weeks – this time I’m going all the way.

The Goals of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

I found the juice fast to be an enjoyable experience, and this had a lot to do with having clear goals from the beginning. I undertook the challenge in order to gain some control over my sugar cravings and increase my self-discipline. I sort of lost sight of my goals with the last period of 5:2 intermittent fasting, and this is why it became so easy to quit – I didn’t have a good enough reason to continue. This time my goal is clear:

I want to improve my ability to differentiate between real hunger and the urge to eat for comfort. I also want to learn to enjoy the feeling of being hungry.

5:2 Intermittent Fasting to Recognise Hunger Pains

My experiences with mindful eating has shown me that I often mistake feelings like tiredness or boredom for hunger. This means that I’m regularly stuffing things in my mouth when there is no need to. I want to use the next twenty fast days to help me become better at recognizing hunger.

5:2 Intermittent Fasting to Learn to Enjoy Feeling Hungry

Feeling hungry is the way the body tells me that it is time to eat, but I can go months without ever really experiencing hunger. This is because I’m ‘grazing’ all day long so my stomach is never empty. I don’t believe this is healthy, and it is during these months of never feeling hunger that I pile on the weight.

It is only since hitting middle-age that I’ve stopped allowing my stomach to go empty. It’s not something that I’ve consciously decided – I work from home so grazing is easy because I’m never far from the fridge. When I worked as a nurse there were days when we were too busy to take a break. I didn’t mind because it felt so nice to eat after being hungry for a couple of hours – they are right about it being the best sauce. I want to regain my appreciation of hunger during these ten weeks of fasting, so I can stop grazing all day like a cow.

I’m Not Weighing Myself during My Ten Weeks of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

Another big mistake I made with my last 5:2 intermittent fast was getting on the weighing scales too regularly. I stopped losing weight about half-way through, and I became disillusioned – this became a drain on my motivation. This time I’m not going to weigh myself at all until the end. My weight after the juice fast was 82.2 kg, and it would be nice to get it a bit closer to 75 kg over the next ten weeks.

The other things I’ll be doing differently with this juice fast include:

• I will eat 500 calories on the morning of the fast day and go twenty-four hours without food – so the time I finish this meal will be the time I start eating the next day.

• I’m going to be exercising far more than I did during the last attempt – I’ll stick to walking on the fast days.

• I’m going to be careful about what I eat on the other five days of the week when I’m not fasting.

• Over the next ten weeks I’m going to do research on healthy recipes, so I’ll have changed to a diet that is more nutritious and delicious by the end of the fast.

Successful Addiction Recovery is Not about Handouts

In this video I discuss the importance of taking action to make things happen in recovery. If we sit back and wait for the universe to shower us with goodies, we could be in for a long wait. Press play to watch the video:

Remember Past Successes for Motivation Today

Spending too much time thinking about the past or future is the fast-track to depression. Living in the moment is the key to happiness, but I’ve found that strategically thinking about the past can actually bring some benefits.

The Danger of Not Savoring Success

I rarely think about my past successes, but I’m learning that this is a mistake. I wrote a post on here a few months ago about how I am not proud of my achievements. It turns out that my lack of appreciation for my progress actually makes it harder for me to be successful in the future.

Achieving anything significant in life involves sacrifices. The way I develop the motivation to succeed is by thinking about future rewards. I become willing to work hard today because of what I am going to get tomorrow. It’s a good system but problems occur when I cheat myself out of the reward. This happens when I fail to savor my achievement – instead of getting a reward I give myself a new goal to work on.

It may be due to low self-esteem, but it sort of feels unseemly for me to feel proud of my achievements. I feel uneasy with compliments, and I don’t even like to celebrate my birthday. I want to keep pushing myself forward to the next goal, but my unwillingness to enjoy my victories means that this is getting harder to do.

I like this saying:

‘Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me’

When I set myself a goal with the promise of a reward at the end, I cheat myself by not fully enjoying my victory. This means that I need to work harder the next time to develop the motivation to achieve the next goal (fool me twice). The reward I promise myself may be in the form of a physical item (e.g. some new music), but it is really the satisfaction of achievement that I’m anticipating. Without this reward my life becomes an endless slog towards a target that is always moving further away from me.

Remembering My Achievements to Boost Motivation

The problem with looking forward all the time is that life becomes a race towards death. It is hard to stay motivated when the only benefit of achieving one goal is to be given a new one. This is why remembering my past successes can be such a great help. By spending a little time each day patting myself on the back, it gives me the strength to keep going forward – it is a reminder that doing this stuff is more than just a way to waste time.

Mental Gymnastics Turn a Loser into a Winner

I’ve found reverse-snobbery to be helpful when dealing with those areas of my life where I underachieve. Using clever mental gymnastics I am not only able to justify mediocrity, but I can almost feel superior because of it. The only problem with this brand of cognitive dissonance (the art of pretending you don’t want what you want) is that reality always finds a way to break through – this can be painful when it happens.

Smart People are Dumb

I got kicked out of school at fifteen before I’d time to gain any qualifications. I compensated for my lack of education by pretending that it gave me an advantage in life. I became convinced that university students were as dumb as plankton – they had no common-sense. I surrounded myself with like-minded souls who shared my passion for mocking the educated – we congratulated each other for qualifying from the ‘school of hard knocks’ as we knocked back our first beers of the morning.

My reverse-snobbery towards students lasted until my early twenties. I held onto it like a life-raft during my years working as a barman in Oxford – I regularly over-changed the university toffs as a type of idiot-tax. Reality intruded into my life when I began dating a third-year student. She might have had shitty taste in men, but she certainly wasn’t dumb. My mocking scorn of the educated turned to bitterness. Being with this girl forced me to face my dark secret – my lack of education meant I felt like a loser.

My insecurity around our differences in educational attainment ruined the relationship, but it was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I spent the next eight years studying. At the beginning of that journey I couldn’t even spell ‘university’, but in the end I walked away from one of these institutions with a degree – I now even have a post-graduate qualification.

Fighting Cognitive Dissonance on a New Battlefield

Getting an education didn’t mean the end of my reliance on reverse-snobbery to protect my ego. In recent years it’s allowed me to justify my turbulent financial situation. I console myself with the idea that successful people aren’t really happy. I play down their achievements by pretending they are just lucky or that they have benefited from a rich mammy and daddy. Of course this is all complete bollocks – the reason these people are successful is that they are willing to do things I haven’t been willing to do.

Cognitive dissonance is a poor substitute for achievement. It is a drug that provides a temporary source of comfort but comes with a heavy price. Life is too short for the mental contortions I need to perform so I can pretend I don’t want what I really really want. It is much easier to just get out there and achieve something.

Financial Security by Age Fifty

Becoming financially secure by age fifty is now my priority in life. I have slightly less than six years to achieve this goal – it seems like a long time, but I know it will pass by all too quickly. I’m going to tackle this project with the intensity it deserves, but there is going to be plenty of fun along the way.

My current financial situation is unacceptable to me. Living from month-to-month was fine as a single guy, but I now have a family. I’ve wasted far too much time worrying about my finances – if I’d used this energy to actually do something constructive, I’d be in a much better position now. I’m completely to blame for my current situation and now is the time to put things right.

What Does it Mean to be Financially Secure?

‘Financial security’ is a bit of a woolly concept. My current definition of what this means is modest and would include four elements:

• Clear my debts – I owe €6000 (about US $8000)

• Buy a house – a starter-home here in Rayong averages 1,000,000 THB (about €25,000 or US $31,000).

• I need to be earning the same amount of money from writing as I would get working as a nurse back in Europe (my old career) – this would be about €30,000 (US $39,000) a year. I’ve no savings or retirement plan so it needs to be at least this amount.

• I need to be earning the bulk of my money from my own writing rather than the content I provide for clients.

I know that these goals are realistic and achievable within a six year period.

The Cost of Financial Worry

Worrying about my financial situation has cost me a great deal of money. This stress has been a drain on my motivation, and it has interfered with my ability to make good decisions. Worry makes me tired and depressed. It means that my focus is always on the obstacles rather than the opportunities available to me. Worry is just an excuse for failure, and I’ve already overindulged at the self-pity pot.

I work as a freelance writer, and there have been a few periods when the work has dried up. The truth is that these periods don’t justify my financial struggles. I regularly turn clients away with the excuse that I’m too busy. My problem is not really lack of work, but my inability to make the most of my opportunities coming my way. Up until now, I preferred to waste time worrying rather than doing the work that would lead me to financial freedom.

The Motivation Needed to Achieve Financial Security

I didn’t break away from my almost two-decade long alcohol addiction by worrying – that is what kept me trapped for so long. In order to escape, I needed to make it my number one priority in life. I’m going to do the same here. For the next six years I’m going to make achieving financial liberation my main focus. I’ll start by eliminating everything that is getting in the way of reaching this goal – this means worry, negativity, and excuses have to go (no exceptions).

I’m going to make everything in my life serve this goal of financial security. I will exercise daily and eat sensibly because this will give me the energy I need to succeed. I’m going to continue to meditate every day so I can enjoy good levels of concentration. I’ll make time for my family because taking care of them is really what this goal is all about. I’m also going to have plenty of fun because otherwise there is no point in trying to achieve any goal.

Enjoy the Process of Achieving Financial Security

A mistake I’ve made too many times in the past is focusing on the destination rather than the journey. The problem with this is that life happens on the way to a goal – that’s where the real happiness is to be found. I feel super-excited about this six-year project. It is going to be such great fun to work on this challenge – it is going to give my life a new meaning and purpose.

Why Some People Fail to Find Happiness after Quitting Alcohol

Some people who have been sober for many years may even end up committing suicide because they feel so depressed. A common reason for why this happens is that people enter recovery with a sense of entitlement, and they fail to put in the work required to create the life they desire. Press play to watch the video – you will find the podcast of this episode below:

Press play to listen to the podcast:

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Wonderful Sense of Renewal at the End of My Fifteen Day Juice Fast

“I no longer associate juice fasting with deprivation – it is a pleasurable process that rejuvenates the body, mind and spirit”.

This fifteen day juice fast has been a life-changing experience. I’ve enjoyed doing it, and I’m now experiencing a real sense of renewal in my life. The motivation for this period of fasting came from a desire to beat my sugar cravings and to improve my self-discipline. I also wanted to make up for failing to complete a 15-day fast last year. I’ve achieved my goals, and this feeling of renewal is a wonderful bonus.

Juice Fasting is Life Changing

There is a great deal of talk about the powerful detox effects of juice fasting. I’m not qualified to provide a judgment on this, but I definitely do feel as if my body has been completely cleansed. There has also been a definite shift in my thinking, and I feel far more positive and in control of my life. It could be that by freeing the body of the chore of digesting solid food meant there was ample time for repair and rejuvenation. I do feel rejuvenated not only physically, but also mentally, and emotionally.

I’ve achieved lots of great stuff since walking away from the life of a drunkard seven years ago. I’m deeply grateful for my second-chance, but I do sometimes take it for granted. The last two years haven’t been so great for me. I’ve had financial worries, and I’ve given my fears too much control over my life. This has meant periods of depression and sometimes even feelings of hopelessness. I’ve felt cheated because life hasn’t been serving up all the good things that I’ve come to expect. I can now see that this way of thinking is self-defeating bullshit – the only thing I deserve in life is what I’m willing to go out there and take.

This juice fast has brought me to a new turning point– maybe that’s the real purpose of undertaking this type of challenge. Many great spiritual teachers underwent a period of fasting before they began their mission. I’m no spiritual teacher, I can barely take care of myself, but I now understand why they did this. What better way is there to enter a new era of your life than going through this process of rejuvenation and renewal?

Weight Loss from My Juice Fast

I didn’t weigh myself during the fast but at my weigh-in this morning I felt delighted to see that I’d lost 6.2kg (13.6 pounds). I’m still overweight at 82.2 kg (181 pounds), but my next challenge is 10 weeks of 5:2 intermittent fasting so that will mean a further reduction. It is easy to put the weight back on after a juice fast, but this is part of a process for me – it will ultimately lead to a sustainable way of healthy living.

I felt so excited about eating again today that I woke up at 4am. I ate an apple but afterwards felt too full to eat anything else. It’s now the afternoon and so far all I’ve had is a bowl of cereal and some Philadelphia cheese on cucumber slices (fewer calories than crackers). My wife predicted that I’d raid the fridge after the fast (I did the last time), but it hasn’t happened. I don’t even feel hungry.

I’ve no plans for my next juice fast, but this is something that I do want to do again. It might be a good idea for me to do this once a year. I no longer associate juice fasting with deprivation – it is a pleasurable process that rejuvenates the body, mind and spirit.

Juice Fasting to Increase Self Discipline

The only thing I’ll have is self-pity and maybe enough cognitive dissonance to fool myself into believing that I didn’t really want to achieve anything in the first place.

I’m 44 years of age and still have months where I’m struggling to earn enough to pay the bills. I’m getting better at dealing with my financial worries, but the reason I have these fears in the first place is my lack of self-discipline. One of my motivations for undertaking this current juice fast is an attempt to increase my tenaciousness, so I can get more done.

Juice Fasting for Self-Discipline

I am now on day twelve of a fifteen-day juice fast. When I attempted this same challenge last September, I gave up after ten days – this meant that I walked away feeling like a bit of a failure. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was just a blip in an otherwise clean record of self-discipline, but this is not the case. I regularly make commitments but fail to live up to them.

Juice fasting is a good way to increase self-discipline. I love to eat but fasting means that I deliberately deny myself this comfort. Drinking juice provides me with enough calories to function, but it is just not the same as eating. I haven’t been missing food as much as last time, but it still takes self-discipline to not give in and cook a burger. I know that finishing this fast is going to give a boost to my feelings of control over my life – just like failing to complete the last fast did the opposite.

My Need for Self-Discipline

I work hard but lack of self-discipline means that I’m not doing as well as I could be. I put in long hours at the computer, but there are just too many days when I’m unproductive. There is an unacceptable amount of time wasted on worrying about the future rather than doing something to secure it. I work as a freelancer so this means it is all too easy for me to goof off when I’m not in the mood for work – I’m easily distracted.

The other area where my lack of self-discipline is obvious is my relationship with food. Every few months I make the decision to clean up my act, but it is business as usual within a few days or weeks. I give in too easily to food cravings, and I keep on repeating the same mistakes over-and-over again. This is not the way I want to live.

I habitually fail to follow through on my decisions – it’s usually just little things, but it soon adds up. I’ll commit to earning x amount per day, but I’ll quit a few dollars before hitting this target. I’ll make the decision to exercise for an hour a day, but I’ll only do 50 minutes. These failures never seem like that big a deal at the time, but they are because they further reduce my level of self-discipline. Being a quitter becomes my normal mode of operation, and this means that I’ll never have any chance of achieving my goals. The only thing I’ll have is self-pity and maybe enough cognitive dissonance to fool myself into believing that I didn’t really want to achieve anything in the first place.

I do know how to be self-disciplined, but it comes and goes. I need to make this a more permanent fixture in my life. The way I do this is by always following through on my daily commitments. If I say I’m going to exercise for sixty minutes, I don’t stop before the time is up. If I say that I’m going to earn X amount today, I don’t leave my computer until I hit this target. It is by refusing to compromise these smaller commitments that I’ll develop the self-discipline to make my larger goals a reality.

Day 12 of My Juice Fast

It is hard to believe that this is day 12 of my juice fast – it’s whizzed by. I felt relieved to make it past day 10, and I know that it is all downhill from here on in. I’ve enjoyed this challenge far more than I expected, and my body feels lighter and cleaner, and my thinking sharper. I’m not going to get on the scales until it is over, but it is obvious I’ve lost a reasonable amount of weight. After this I’m going to be doing 10 weeks of 5:2 intermittent fasting – another opportunity to strengthen my self-discipline.

Less Thinking Equals More Happiness

Thinking must be the most overrated activity on the planet. This incessant stream of bullshit is always getting in the way of my happiness. My thoughts function like a petty tyrant as they attempt to poison every moment with opinions, judgments, and demands. It is only by ignoring this cacophony that I can enjoy a beautiful sense of ease in the world.

Seeing the World Like a Young Child

It is probably a mistake to overly-glamorize the world of a young child. Kids can be unreasonable, moody, and erratic, but the one thing they are incredibly good at is experiencing the world as it is delivered to them. They have not yet fallen under the spell of the running commentary inside of their own heads, so they enjoy things for what they are.

I love watching how my son interacts with the universe. Timmy has just turned six and for him the world is still a magical place. He can watch the same cartoon over and over again, and he will enjoy it every time. My son is perfectly happy in our home and with his life, and he is not tormented by ideas about how things should be better. We live in the exact same environment, yet the difference in how we experience the world means we might as well be living on a different planet sometimes.

Adults have lots of responsibilities, and it seems to take plenty of thinking to keep our world functioning – so is it reasonable to suggest that we should be thinking less? When I play close attention to my own thoughts they are at best banal and at worst pretty vicious. All of the insights that help me make the most of my life occur when I hit a wall in my thinking – when I’m not trying to think of anything. It is like these insights are only able to make an appearance when the mind is still.

Thinking Less to Experience Flow

My periods of happiness always occur when I’m not caught up in the carnival of my thoughts. It is then that I’m just experiencing what is in front of me without all of the judgments and opinions.

Psychologists refer to this escape from thinking as flow, and it occurs whenever we become completely lost in an activity we enjoy. All of the greatest human achievements have been accomplished by people who were in flow. There is nothing magical about it – young kids seem to experience flow most of the time.

The secret of experiencing more flow in my life is to engage in less thinking. The way I do this is by refusing to entertain the bullshit in my head. Mindfulness techniques can be helpful for this, but all that is really needed is for me to be less gullible as far as my thoughts are concerned. It means letting go of the idea that the answers to my problems are going to come from thinking hard about them. I now try to treat all of my thoughts like little pain-bombs, and I mentally deflect them with the words ‘not now’. It is not easy, and I still miss far more than I catch, but the rewards of doing this make it well worth the effort.

Pain is my best teacher. It is only by clearly seeing how my thinking gets in the way of my happiness that I’ve become willing to stop kicking the hornet’s nest. I’ll probably never be able to regain the innocence of early childhood, but I can get to enjoy living in a world of magic again.