You’re setting the wrong expectations and setting yourself up to fail.

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Whenever I start working with a new client, I have the same conversation: how do we reframe your goals and expectations to support meaningful and sustainable change and growth. We cannot feel better right away - that is unrealistic and often unhelpful.

We often don't seek help until we are in a deep space of despair and anguish. We feel overwhelmed with pain and distress and long for a "fix" or solution to make everything better or resolved. We need to get back to riding ourselves into the ground so make this pain go away as quickly as possible - and with the least amount of time and effort. I often refer to this as the hunt for a "band-aid solution."

By doing this, we are setting avoidant goals, meaning, "I just want to be anywhere but here, so give me whatever you've got."

We believe we should be able to fix "it" — whatever "it" is — and that we just have to work harder to choose happiness (see my blog post on toxic positivity and why this is the least helpful solution in these moments).

We set impossible standards and then get upset when things don't happen as quickly as we think they should.

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Not seeing results? Maybe it's a motivation problem?

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I watched a TedX Talk a year or so ago given by Mel Robbins where she reiterated multiple times that you will never feel like doing the things you want most in life. I may want to be an early riser, getting up and going to the gym by 5:00 AM, but come the following day, the idea of getting out of bed will sound way less appealing and so I turn over and pull back the covers over my head.

We tiptoe towards action and then when we feel the slightest chill of discomfort, we walk it back.

Statements like, "I'll just do it tomorrow" or "I don't really need to change my routine" fill our heads.

We resign to the idea of being "fine."

This results from being only half-motivated. We have developed the readiness to do or be something but lack the willingness to put that drive into action.

Readiness is about establishing thoughts and beliefs — the buy-in. Willingness is about putting them into action or practice.

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The reason you keep falling short on your goals.

in

Any meaningful and sustainable change is requires both insight and action.

  • Insight. I have to give myself space and time to identify my problem or pain point, its impact on my life, and where it came from. I have to define where I want to go and clarify how and what I will need to get there.

  • Action. I have to be willing to do the doing. I have to switch from thinking and feeling to doing...to living in that new reality.

Without creating space for both, you will only find yourself burning out, putting time and energy into what I call "band-aid solutions" or quick fixes that leave you in the same place as where you started with increasing hopelessness

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