Fellow Wing Chun fanatic, Happy New Year!

It’s Rob from WingChunLife.com and I hope you had a great 2013 and looking forward to an even better 2014.

I can’t believe we’re almost half way through the second decade of this century (that was a mouthful of math, wasn’t it?).

The point I want to make is, Father Time does not slow down for anyone.

So it makes sense to set goals and plan ahead. For example, you can look forward to these Wing Chun related events coming right around the corner…

 

  • Chinese New Year
  • International Wing Chun Day

This is the Year of the Horse, and Chinese New Year (known as the Spring Festival in China) takes place Thursday, January 31. I’ll have more on this as the day gets closer.

 

International Wing Chun Day is held on the 3rd Saturday in March. This year it’s Saturday, March 15. This is a new-ish celebration that started around 2011.

It steadily grows each year as more people participate and plan special events to celebrate a day of blissful butt kicking.

Start planning how you will enjoy this year’s International Wing Chun Day.

 

4 Steps to Set and Achieve Wing Chun, Personal, and Career Goals…

In my personal journey of self-improvement, I’ve found many kinds of goal setting/achieving methods. Some complex, many rehashed, others a little too loosey-goosey for my taste.

 

I’ve boiled down some goal setting/achieving essentials I’ve discovered over the years below. It should be easy to follow and do. But feel free to adjust it however you want.

Step #1 – Write it Down. This is an important step that many skip. Write it clearly so it does’t confuse your brain. Clear instructions lead to clear results. Write it down, clearly.

Step #2 – Review it Often. The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that people make them, probably when they’re drunk on New Year’s Eve, and then never review them until maybe the summer. Review your goals often, everyday. This helps you stay on track.

Step #3 – Take Action. Achieving goals is about action. Not hoping, not praying, not waiting for the planets to align, it’s all about action. Take the steps to get you closer to your goals. A little, or a lot, small, or big steps; just get closer every hour, everyday. If you’re not getting closer, you’re getting farther away.

Step #4 – Don’t Stop Until You Hit Your Goal. Review your goals often, take action, and keep at it until you reach it. Many people quit too soon, or they lose sight of their goals because they don’t review them often, or they get busy with something else and move farther away from their goals. Keep at it until you get it.

If you follow the four steps above, you’ll reach many more goals in your life. Follow them to achieve Wing Chun goals, personal goals, and even career goals. But…

 

What Happens When You Don’t Reach Your Important Goals? Use These 3 Tactics —

The steps above are the mechanics, the how-to, the engine to achieving goals. I’ve used them to hit many goals in my life.

 

Sometimes when I have a goal that I don’t reach, I can look back and see that I didn’t follow the 4 steps above closely. For instance, I didn’t write the goal down clearly.

But I’ve also had many goals where it seemed the more I pursued them, the more they moved away from me. What’s going on here?

If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation, here are three tactics to consider:

Tactic #1) Goal Debrief and Elimination. If you have a couple of really big goals that you’re working hard to reach, but not getting it, maybe this can help.

I learned the hard way… not all goals are worth it. It’s true.

I grew up with the belief that being a quitter is bad. Never give up, as you’ve probably heard before.

That’s great advice and a good way to live your life… unless you take it to the extreme, like I have.

Sometimes we set goals because they sound good at the time, they sound like the right thing to do. And if you’re like me you go for them with everything you got, and if you don’t hit it, you’d keep at it and not let go.

Tenacity is a good trait to have; unless you’re going after the wrong goal. Then you’re just hitting your head against a brick wall for no reason.

Maybe the goal isn’t congruent with your values. Maybe you don’t have the proper skill level to achieve the goal. Maybe the goal just doesn’t really make sense in your life, but it sounded like a good idea.

If any of this is true, you may even subconsciously self-sabotage yourself from reaching the goal. This is not a pretty place to be in.

To beat this monster, this is what I do nowadays. I periodically debrief my goals and give myself permission to quit. I recently went through a session like this over the holidays.

 

  • About once or twice a year I look at the big picture and measure if I’m getting closer to my goals or not.
  • More importantly I double-check and reconfirm that my goals are really worth the trouble, time, effort, or expense.
  • I actively look for reasons to cut out the fluff, and give myself permission to quit some of the goals.

 

If you have the weakness like me, debrief your goals once or twice a year and give yourself permission to ‘quit’ by cutting out the useless, not important fluff.

You’re not a quitter if you do. Instead, you’ll end up doing more of the meaningful stuff, and live a happier, more rewarding life.

Tactic #2) Dump Data into a Lockbox. When I discovered the lockbox idea it really made a difference in my life because it helped me stay focused longer.

I tend to set too many goals. I have pages and pages of new ideas and to-do lists. And the number of pages only seem to grow.

I get bogged down and pulled away from my bigger goals, because I have too many things on my mind in real time.

If you get distracted and pulled away from your important goals for similar reasons, try the data dump lockbox idea. Here’s how:

 

  • Get a notebook (or computer file) and write down all your ‘would like’ goals, all your cool new ideas, all your lose thoughts. Do this every morning if you have to.
  • Get all that stuff out of your head and into your lockbox.
  • Then leave it there.
  • Trust and know that you can always return to those great ideas, thoughts, and goals whenever you want.

This helps me because by getting it out of my head and putting it aside in a safe place, I create a clear path in my mind that keeps me focused on what is important now.

 

Less distraction equals getting more things done.

What’s funny is every now and then I flip back a few pages and review my lockbox. Often, I find that many ‘not-so-firm’ goals got done without even trying. That’s a bonus!

Tactic #3) Ask for Help. This is an important goal I have for myself in 2014. Ask for help or hire it. I tend to want to do everything myself. But since I want to achieve more, I know I need to learn and practice being better at delegating.

Multitasking is a myth. You can only do one thing at a time.

For instance, if you have five things to finish for the day, you should do them one at a time until each is done. That’s great productivity advice and correct.

But based on my current goals list, it would take me years to complete the first three pages doing them one at a time 🙂

Realistically, I’ll cut out some stuff, other items will get stored in my lockbox, new things will get added, I’ll prioritize my goals and to-dos based on expected pay- off…

But still, many of these goals are important and worthwhile and getting them done sooner rather than when I’m ready to retire is better for everyone involved.

The only other way I can get any meaningful traction, in addition to being superman-productive or working longer hours, is to get others to help me.

If you have responsibilities at home and at work and you like to get to Wing Chun class often, AND you have other ambitious goals for yourself, you probably lack the time and energy to do everything on your own.

You could put off some not important things, but Father Time waits for no one.

Ask for help or hire help. The super successful and super productive men and women in our society all rely on others to help them reach their goals. We should too.

Recap:

 

  • Write down your goals clearly;
  • Review them often;
  • Take action to get you closer to your goals;
  • Don’t stop until you reach your goal;
  • Make sure to choose worthy goals and debrief yourself a couple of times a year to make sure you’re on the right track;
  • Dump distracting thoughts into a lockbox (computer file or notebook);
  • Find others to help you reach your goals so you can accomplish more, faster, and with less stress.

I hope this helps you get more out of life in 2014 and your future. If you’d like to share some of you goals for this year, tell us about it on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

 

Rob
P.S. A great book on achieving goals and aligning your values, character, and self-image so they all work together is Psycho-Cybernetics. It’s an oldie but goodie.

This is the original book written by Dr. Maxwell Maltz
Psycho- Cybernetics

And this is a new-ish-er version written by the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation. It functions more like a workbook allowing you to go into depth
Psycho-Cybernetics 2000

I own both. They’re not expensive bought together. But you could start with the original, and if you like it, get the *2000 version and complete the exercises to get even more value out of it to reach your Wing Chun, personal relationships, and career goals.