Tag Archives: empowering girls

the secret to achieving your goals

Are you focused?

What would it take to actually achieve those goals you set at the beginning of the year?

Are you focused; or are you plagued with guilt over still carrying those extra pounds or not maintaining the original vigor you had to accomplish a specific career or relationship goal?

In a previous blog, I talked about how our subconscious mind has a set point, that brings us back to a pre-programmed belief about ourselves (whether it is in our weight, work or our relationships).

For most of us, those unconscious beliefs keep us stuck where we don’t want to be instead of heading where we’ve stated we want to go.

But there are ways to use this same mechanism to get what we do want, too.

The four steps for moving from a negative set point to a positive one are:

  1. Move your attention from what you do not want to what you do.
  2. Start to see yourself as having what you do want.
  3. Expect the good you want; not the bad you do not.
  4. Look for what is already good and be grateful for it.

I remember a friend telling a story about his first motorcycle ride in the Colorado mountains. Although an experienced rider, he said he was overly nervous and driving slower than the friend he was riding with. Finally, his friend pulled off the road at a overlook to talk. When they had both pulled over his friend looked him in the eye and said, “You will go off the edge if you keep looking at it. You have to look at where you want to go. It is the only way to drive these mountains safely.”

It is the same lesson in life as on that mountain road — if you keep looking where you don’t want to go, that is where you will end up. I notice it in every aspect of my life.

I remember hearing about this same concept in parenting classes years ago. My kids would promise to help with dishes or do some chore. I would notice that they didn’t do it. We would fight. They would do it reluctantly and then the cycle would start all over again. But when I would follow the recommendations to notice and thank them when they did do what I wanted, rather than focus on when they did not, I truly got more and more of what I wanted.

So whatever the goal — no matter how guilty you feel that you haven’t yet achieved it — start training your mind to look at the goal, not your current lack of it.

It really is simply a habit, the way we look at things. Like any habit, they become habits through repetition. So to change it we need to repeatedly change our view. I have been doing this for a year and by repeatedly moving my attention to my goal, and off my current results, I have noticed I am changing my set point. My rebound to old patterns is happening less and less.

It took years to set these old patterns of noticing what is wrong, so be persistent at reinforcing the new place you want to be.

I like to write my goal each morning as if it has already occurred. You might prefer recording yours, so you can listen to yourself saying it while driving. Either way, find ways to remind yourself to visualize your goal. And then when you notice you are thinking about your current result, remember the mountain road and readjust where you are looking!

Pick one or two things you have been trying to change and make a conscious effort to feed your mind the positive pictures and feelings of having already achieved it.

empowering women and girls

Lessons from the Always #LikeAGirl Campaign

Sometime back, I tweeted and posted on Facebook about the Always video #LikeAGirl. It became an online sensation for a while and if you missed it, watch it here for a quick lesson on empowering our daughters and each other.

Raising three daughters, I am always thrilled when messages come out that collaborate lessons I am trying to teach them, since, so often, what they see does not.

This ad reminded me of a group of women who came to my zipline canopy tour business called, Ride Like A Girl.  It was a mountain biking club and they were all women, with bumper stickers on their cars and wearing t-shirts sporting the slogan, “I ride like a girl.”

My girls were young (7,10 and 12) when these fun and wild women came through our doors. I remember one of my girls looking at me and asking, “What does that mean–ride like a girl?” I said it means they are really strong.

When I worked in corporate America I spent a great deal of energy making sure no one noticed I was “a girl.”

Don’t show your feelings. Don’t be too soft on people when they have problems. Be logical, decisive and forceful. Do not let them know you used your intuition for any decision, even if you do–find facts to prove it after you already know. And most important, laugh at the jokes about women and don’t act offended.

I learned early on that to get ahead I could not be #likeagirl. I am glad every time someone tells my son and my daughters that being like a girl is a good thing. Because if you have to hide a very basic fact of your being to be powerful; you learn to doubt every other part of yourself, too.

Are there any parts of being a woman (or a girl) that you have hidden away to be accepted or powerful? Maybe it is time to reclaim all of you.  Because when you bring all of you to your life again, you also have all that energy you’ve been using to keep these parts of you hidden.  It takes a lot of energy to not be you.

What do you do #likeagirl?