Using the law of Inertia to achieve your goals

So as I sit back in my swivelly chair the smell of coffee filling my nostrils, I’m too scared to reach across and pick the damn cup up. Each time I do I get 2 dozen bolts of pain shooting back and forth across my chest and head. Thursday evening I was elbowed in the chest, a blow that through my protective vest felt like a baseball bat hitting me in the sternum. I took a finger to the face and knuckle to the lip. What a great evening.

This was my first evening of Wing tsun class and I’m really glad I went but as it always happens there was a moment earlier in the evening that could have saved me this ordeal.

Having screwed up the directions to my first kung fu lesson, I sat in my car with my phone in my hand considering my options. My mind was set on going home the moment it realized that I was in the wrong place. I had my out, the reason to go back to the comfort of my flat and climb back behind my monitor. I could always try again next week. I knew I was lying to myself. “If not now then when?” that question is the one that came to me at that moment. If not now, when?

In a matter of minutes I went through the full range of emotions most of us go through when faced with a journey out of our comfort zone.

Use inertia to Fight the Fear

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an externl force. I have had the life goal of taking up Martial arts again for years, the problem though is fear exerts a force on us all, keeping us in place, comfortable. In order to get past our fears and achieve our life goals we need to build enough force to get us past the fear holding us in place. In order to go out on a limb and achieve new goals I needed a push. My knowledge of goal setting an planning aside, this was all about the emotion of change. The emotion of goal achievement. Achieving the life goal of learning martial art is something I really wanted to do, but the idea of learning a new skill, getting hurt, meeting new people just the idea of changing my schedule scared the daylights out of me. The first step toward your personal goals can be terrifying. When chasing life goals, we don’t have the safety net we do when chasing our work goals or social goals. We don’t have the immediate incentive to start achieving our goals now.

Overcoming Inertia:

• Discover your motivation for changing – I did martial arts as a child and thoroughly enjoyed the spirtual and physical nature of it. My approaching 30th birthday, has made me realise that each day I am less likely to achieve my life goal of taking up martial arts again. I became connected to the urgency of changing.
• Do research – Make sure that the choice you make excites you. Your life goals needs to rev your motor. I chose Wing-tsun, a chinese form of martial arts, very closely related to Wing chun the form made famous by Bruce Lee. I did extensive research on Wing-tsun and the method instruction and instructors in my area. Ultimately I felt very good that I’d chosen the best form and instructor for me and my goal.
• Commit to a time and date – Find out the soonest possible time to start and put your name down, your life goal is not going to wait. The longer you need to put off starting the more your excitement to start achieving your goal dissipates.
• Tell everyone you know – The best way to get yourself past the fear holding you in place is the social mirror. Once you’ve made your goals public, giving up becomes that much harder.
• Network - Speak to other people who’ve already done it, you’ll find the whole process less scary
• Set reminders- Set visual reminders and build anticipation, make your life goal an event and start building anticipation.
• Visualize it – Visualize your life goal already done, and the way that would feel
• Count it down – Keep a running countdown until D-Day for your life goal to go live

Use your momentum to push you past Moment of truth

An object in motion will continue in motion until acted on by an external force. Either gradual friction will slow you till you stop or you’ll hit a wall.

After a lot of perserverance, I was able to make it to the moment of choice. I had friction, I had some problems with my washing so I was without track pants or t-shirts, so I had to buy a pair of pants and t-shirt after work. I had a number of people mocking me. We old folks rarely stand together, do we? Despite this I put on my sweat pants pulled off the tags and made it as far as the bad directions took me. Each one of those choices side stepped a wall and gave me momentum toward achieving this life goal. That momentum got me to the moment of truth.

This was the last possible moment that I could turn back (turning back would likely mean releasing myself to the power of friction and I may or may not have made it to the following week’s class).

As I sat in the car, the momentum pushed me forward. Stopping seemed harder than stopping. So I made the call I got the directions and spent two hours

Keep adding force from the beginning,respect the law of conservation of energy and enjoy the power of monentum, and you too might have some impressive bruises soon too.

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Tags: failure, focus, focus on goals, Goal, Goal Setting, goals

This entry was posted on January 17, 2010 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Goals and Goal Tracking, Monetize Your Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.