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Category: Stepping Forward

What’s the Best Way to Achieve Your Goals? Take Baby Steps!

 If you want to achieve your goals yet you keep getting stuck, try this easy, proven process of breaking the big goal down into the smallest baby steps.Are you feeling stuck? Perhaps you have big dreams, but  you’re like many of my clients who say, “Maria, I don’t know how to do it!” “I just can’t make myself get started.” “I want to, but I keep getting in my own way.”  What’s the thing that keeps you stuck so that you can’t achieve your goals? Procrastination? Perfectionism? Lack of confidence? Whatever the cause, the one thing that reliably works EVERY SINGLE TIME, for EVERYONE is taking baby steps. When you break anything you want to achieve into the smallest steps possible, you can do it! 

Even when we’re not talking about closed-end goals, like losing 10 pounds or giving a public talk, baby steps work. (A closed-end goal has a final destination, i.e., lose 10 pounds and the goal ends. An open-ended goal is open to change and may apply to multiple areas of life, i.e., becoming more secure. It’s not a destination. It’s a direction.)  Yes! Baby steps can even help you change your inner person.

So if you’ve ever asked, “How do I become more secure?” “How do I become more productive?” “How do I become less anxious?” This article will show you how to break these big concepts into smaller, actionable tasks.

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Anchor Your Values, Vision, Mission to Live an Inspired Life

Fundamental to defining your life is defining your values, vision, mission and developing plans for how to actualize them. Without an anchor, a ship is dashed against the shoreline and broken to pieces. Even in calm weather, an anchor prevents you from drifting away from your intended safe haven.

What anchors you? What keeps you stable during life’s storms? What is it that you have on board that gives you a sense of security, when you’re moving full steam ahead — that special something you continually refer back to for balance and strength? Your anchor is made up of three elements: your values, vision and mission, in a combination that will be unique to you. 

Are you still asking these questions: “Why am I here?” “How can I find meaning in my life?” Do you have nagging feelings of purposelessness, lack of fulfillment and meaninglessness?

Perhaps you’ve been so busy doing things that you haven’t taken the time to reflect on whether or not the things you’re doing really matter in the big picture. 

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Follow Your Own Path — How to Step Forward with Confidence, Despite Fears

As you follow your own path, you will experience internal and external resistance, but you can learn to tolerate fear and turn it to your advantage… As you follow your own path, you will experience internal and external resistance, but you can learn to tolerate fear and turn it to your advantage…“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” ~ Joseph Campbell.

Do you have a strong urge to follow your own path? It’s an innate desire to express ourselves as individuals. And, in fact, your family and community need you to show up as your authentic self. However, is it sometimes a struggle? Can you relate to this woman’s experience…

“By the time I was 35, I expected, as did my mama, that I would be married, working a part-time job and raising a family. Instead I’m living with a cat, trying to make a living as a self-employed life coach and I absolutely love it! I didn’t take the path all of my siblings did. I didn’t follow in daddy’s footsteps. I didn’t go to college. All those were someone else’s dreams, not mine. Did I meet resistance from family and friends? YES! Did I experience terror at times? YES! But that fear was exhilarating to me, not a roadblock.”  

Whoa…did you come to a screeching halt at the last sentence, “fear exhilarated me”? Can fears be exciting? Aren’t fears always scary? What can you do if your fears stop you from stepping forward because they feel insurmountable?

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Afraid to Choose Your Path? The Surprisingly Easy Way to Embrace It Is…

Learn to be comfortable in your own skin as you choose your own path using the Stepping Forward Program.“We’re not lost. We’re just headed somewhere different.” ~ Emily X.R. Pan

Who am I, where am I. and how did I get here? These are questions we ask when we begin Stepping Forward into the life we want to create. However, I have to be honest with you… it’s likely you’ve been conditioned by your stories and limiting beliefs to believe in an inauthentic version of yourself. Yes, your true self may be buried so deeply she’s a total stranger to you. That’s why I want to share with you a way for you to .choose your path, while still maintaining a feeling of control and anticipation. And I promise it’s going to be easier than you think.

First off, know that it’s normal to feel resistance, because you’re leaving a path that you’ve been on for possibly decades. For some this will be very difficult. I”m happy to see that the women I’ve been working with lately have a little bit of a RENEGADE in them. Is that true of you, too?

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Excellence is a Habit that Prevents Self-Defeating Beliefs and Behavior

When excellence is a habit, your preferred way of being, your goals  will be easier to attain and your quality of life improves dramatically.“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Will Durant

Habit is one of the strongest forces in our lives. And that’s a good thing because if you had to stop and make a brand new decision about every little thing in life, you’d never make it out of bed, let alone get to work. While most habits are behaviors that save you a great deal of time, not all habits are helpful. Some actually get in your way of making progress toward desired goals. However, if mindfully striving for excellence becomes your overriding habit — your preferred way of being — then your other habits will be beneficial. Yes, the quest for excellence is a habit that feeds success!

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