At the beginning you feel like you’ve thought everything through and you’re really motivated to get going. Everything seems to be going great! Your plans have paid off and your journey towards your goal couldn’t seem easier.

So… why do you begin to slip?

Unless something happens to get you back on track, your goals seem to fade into obscurity.

You find yourself missing the odd gym session, and not being quite as organised. Whatever it is, you can feel yourself slipping back into your old ways. Unless something happens to get you back on track, your goals seem to fade into obscurity and before you know it, weeks have passed since you did anything you initially planned so hard for.

Often you can come up with a whole host of reasons why things faded away. But it always boils down to one thing:

Being accountable for your own actions gets harder

More important than what happens, is how and why it happens. There can be a whole host of reasons:

• You don’t feel you are progressing fast enough, so things get boring
• You find the going gets tough and other things seem to keep getting in the way, so you start to let them
• You aren’t sure you even want this goal anymore. You find it hard to remember why you thought this was a good idea!

I’m sure you can think of lots of other reasons, but the great news is that the solution is always the same.

GET ACCOUNTABLE!

If any of the above sounds familiar to you, then now is the moment to change it. Get someone else to hold you accountable to your own goals. Share with them your reasons for wanting them in the first place. Other people seem to have an amazing memory for repeating your own words back at you! If you feel things start to get tough, tell someone, ask for help, advise, tips, tricks, anything to help you get over your current hurdle. Finally, give them permission to check in on you once in a while to see how things are going.

You can even ask me to personally help you with this. Just drop me an email with what it is you are trying to achieve. I’ll help you keep that motivation bubbling along. An even more effective method, is for you to post your goal, plan and any expected hurdles here in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.

So there you have it, Email / Comment  or Facebook. Choose whichever one feels it will be the most effective for you. Let us, help you.

As part of being a member of the BNI (Business Networking International) I’m entitled to some quite good training events. I’ve recently attended their new members training and during that session they also talked about how to prepare for your 60 seconds. The type of information you should be looking to cover and how to structure it best. So with my new found leaning from the course I went home and put together my 60 second speech.It really surprised me at how differently I had to write to make it work. Writing for an article to be read, is totally different to writing something that is going to be spoken out loud. I had to really simplify my language so that each word flowed into the next. Any time I practised the speech I would find a spot that I would have difficultly in saying, so I’d see if I would simplify it more. I tested the speech out on a couple of friends who helped me tweak it some more and timed me to make sure I was hitting as close as possible to the 60 seconds.

Last Friday I went to the BNI group again and used my 60 second speech. I was almost dead on the 60 seconds and had just a few seconds to ad lib at the end. I was delighted. It wasn’t the most exciting 60 seconds, but it was effective, it covered all the points and was fluid. So how does this relate to personal development you ask?

Well this type of action is a fantastic way of building your confidence in an area that you feel needs a bit of work. By giving it a format, a structure that covers everything it needs, you are giving yourself a basic template also known as a Boilerplate. The purpose of this isn’t to then use it permanently unchanged. The idea is that once you have the basic format in plate you DO change it.

Your boilerplate is your base line, your starting point, not your end point. From your boilerplate you know what must be in place, from there as you grow in confidence and your skills develop, you can adapt it. Either with some additional preparation or, if you feel daring enough, on the fly and ad lib some new bits into it each time you use your boilerplate. That way you have something to fall back on it things go a bit wry.

Have a think about some of the places you are already using a boilerplate. Maybe cooking your favourite meal, each time you make it, it’s somehow a little different. Going to the gym, you have a basic routine that you follow, but each time you go you do something else to liven it up. Even at work you may produce the same report on a regular basis but each time you do it, you find a new and more efficient way to do some part of it. By having that boilerplate, a base line to work from, you know what to do. After a while of using that base line your creative side starts to kick in.

Although having the boilerplate may initially seem a bit restrictive and even dull, it helps you put in place the foundation upon which you can build. By having the initial structure in place, your creative side is engaged, and before you know it, new ideas are flowing. You begin to tweak things here and there. If you can think about an area of your life or a task that you need to do and you are struggling with it, think about creating a boilerplate for it. Then watch it blossom into a creative and unique tool that you can flexibly use everyday.

Just for a giggle, I’ve recorded my speech onto YouTube. I still need to use it a few more times and be able to recall it without having to read my notes. The important thing is it’s a start and from there it can only get better.

ENJOY! And please do feel free to comment, I’d love to get some feed back on how to improve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYVBOYXFnng

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I have done this before and wanted to start doing it again. This morning however, I was really struggling to get dressed, ready and out the door. I was really close to saying to myself that it was OK and that I could go later. That’s when it hit me….

Why bother? Why am I bothering to drag my tired body off the the gym?
Answer: Because one of my goals is to get fitter, a LOT fitter.

It didn’t end the internal conversation though, which surprised me a bit, so I went with it.

Why bother? My little internal voice was repetitive but clearly unimpressed with my first answer. So I began to list of the reasons, no matter how small, why I wanted to get fitter:-

1. Real health history, my mother died at 45 from a heart attack. My father has vascular dementia at 72 and is confined to a wheel chair. I have a sleeping disorder called Sleep Apnoea, which basically means I stop breathing when I’m asleep. So I have to use a CPAP (in basic terms a breathing machine) to allow me to sleep properly at night. If going to the gym will help me long a better quality of life for longer then that is a huge reason to go to the gym this morning.
2. I’ll be 40 in two years time. I’m not getting any younger or any prettier for that matter! So if I can help myself feel and look a little younger by having a good fit body then hitting the big 4-0 won’t seem such a big deal.
3. I’m a life coach. I love to help people achieve what they dream about and help them find the motivation to do so. So if I can’t motivate myself to go to the gym this morning how can I expect my clients to?
4. Once I’m at the gym, within just a few minutes I’ll start to feel the endorphins working. I’ll feel uplifted and be able to carry that energy throughout the rest of my day.
5. Because I do enjoy it. I like learning new things and working out a routine for myself plays on my desire to do things right, but to do things my way.

Why……..? My inner voice fell silent.

As a coach I was trained NOT to ask a question starting with Why? Which for 99% of the time is true. WHY? Because….. to answer a why question the client jumps straight to “because” and begins to justify themselves. This can stop people looking deeper to find out what is really driving them.

On this occasion, my subconscious was using it correctly though. I needed to spend some time justifying why I was bothering to drag my tired body to the gym.

I went to the gym this morning.

I enjoyed it.