How to Achieve Your Goals with Healthy Habits

by Leo Babauta

Note: This is a guest post by Leo Babauta who blogs at Zen Habits about setting goals, creating habits, productivity, GTD, motivation, exercise and more.

We’ve all faced the disappointment and guilt that comes from setting a goal and giving up on it after a couple of weeks. Sustaining motivation for a long-term goal is hard to achieve, and yet the best goals can usually only be accomplished in a few months or even years.

Here’s the solution: Focus instead on creating a new habit that will lead to achieving your goal.

Want to run a marathon? First create the habit of running every day. Want to get out of debt and start saving? Create the habit of brown bagging it to work, or watching DVDs instead of going to the movies, or whatever change will lead to saving money for you.

By focusing not on what you have to achieve over the course of the next year, but instead on what you are doing each day, you are focusing on something achievable. That little daily change will add up to a huge change, over time … and you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come in no time. Little grains of sand can add up to a mountain over time.

I used this philosophy of habit changes to run a marathon, to change my diet and lose weight, to write a novel, to quit smoking, to become organized and productive, to double my income, reduce my debt and start saving, and to begin training for an Olympic triathlon this year. It works, if you focus on changing habits.

Now, changing your habits isn’t easy — I won’t lie to you — but it’s achievable, especially if you start small. Don’t try to change the world with your first habit change … take baby steps at first. I started by just trying to run a mile — and by the end of the year, I could run more than 20 miles.

How do you change your habits? Focus on one habit at a time, and follow these steps:

1. Positive changes. If you’re trying to change a negative habit (quit smoking), replace it with a positive habit (running for stress relief, for example).

2. Take on a 30-day challenge. Tell yourself that you’re going to do this habit every day, at the same time every day, for 30 straight days without fail. Once you’re past that 30-day mark, the habit will become much easier. If you fail, do not beat yourself up. Start again on a new 30-day challenge. Practice until you succeed.

3. Commit yourself completely. Don’t just tell yourself that you might or should do this. Tell the world that DEFINITELY will do this. Put yourself into this 100 percent. Tell everyone you know. Email them. Put it on your blog. Post it up at your home and work place. This positive public pressure will help motivate you.

4. Set up rewards. It’s best to reward yourself often the first week, and then reward yourself every week for that first month. Make sure these are good rewards, that will help motivate you to stay on track.

5. Plan to beat your urges. It’s best to start out by monitoring your urges, so you become more aware of them. Track them for a couple days, putting a tally mark in a small notebook every time you get an urge. Write out a plan, before you get the urges, with strategies to beat them. We all have urges to quit — how will you overcome it? What helps me most are deep breathing and drinking water. You can get through an urge — it will pass.

6. Track and report your progress. Keep a log or journal or chart so that you can see your progress over time. I used a running log for my marathon training, and a quit meter when I quit smoking. It’s very motivating to see how far you’ve come. Also, if you can join an online group and report your progress each day, or email family and friends on your progress, that will help motivate you.

Most important of all: Always stay positive. I learned the habit of monitoring my thoughts, and if I saw any negative thoughts (”I want to stop!”) I would squash it like a little bug, and replace it with a positive thought (”I can do this!”). It works amazingly. This is the best tip ever. If you think negative thoughts, you will definitely fail. But if you always think positive, you will definitely succeed.

Read more posts by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.

Emotional Healing Through Your Dreams

By Angel Shadow


Everyone dreams and those dreams range from happy, storybook romances to our upmost fears and anxieties. If it's important to take responsibility for our actions in our "awake" life, then we also have to accept responsibility for our dreams, for they represent our inner thoughts and programming.

This article is about emotional resolution through dreams. It will not cover prophetic or animal totem dreams. These deserve articles of their own.
In our dreams, our actions/reactions are the vehicle our emotions use to convey a message, so it's important we listen to them. Allow yourself to feel the emotions coming through, for they are raw expressions of your inner being and this is where you'll find your answers.

Emotional resolution dreams reflect a past or present situation that you hold an emotional attachment to. Your mind is simply trying to process the information and your emotions play a vital role in resolving the conflict. If there's one phrase to remember in dream work, it's, your emotions drive the message. Remember that and your dreams will start to make more sense. Coming to terms with the emotional attachment will bring healing.

You dream in symbols that will best express your emotional attachment to a situation. These symbols are different for everyone. What one person views as relaxing and comforting, another may find stressful and harmful. You have to ask yourself what emotion you personally attach to each symbol, because that's where the key is. The symbol is merely a tool you've been given to work with.
Dreams are personal information sent by the subconscious mind. We live in the world we create for ourselves, so this holds true for our dream world as well. But in the dream state, we are open to receive insight we usually miss during the day, because we're too busy to stop and listen. Ironically, our dream time is our wake up call.

We can either roll over and hit snooze or wake up to the message(s) coming through.
The most difficult dreams to deal with are what we consider nightmares. If you start to see your night terrors for what they are, unexpressed or unresolved emotions, they can be seen in a new light. Instead of blaming some outside force, take responsiblity and heal the parts of yourself that are demanding attention. Do some shadow work and figure it out. Once you resolve the issue (emotional attachment) the nightmares will stop.

Individuals that come into your dreams are sometimes aspects of yourself trying to get your attention. Look to the emotion you carry toward that person. Treat locations the same way. What is the emotional reaction to the location of your dream? This could also reflect a certain time period in your life. Look at these things for clues.

Dreams that come to you for emotional resolution take place in the 4th & 5th dimensions. Since these are so closely related to the 3rd dimension, they give us an opportunity to "play out" our unresolved issues in an environment we are comfortable with. But with our emotions coming along for the ride, it could make that environment suddenly uncomfortable.

In dreams, the message stems from "your" issues, even if other individuals are involved in the dream sequence. Every aspect of your dream is "you," trying to work out "your" issues.

With dream work, it's all about emotional responses. What you don't resolve during your awake hours, your mind will process and relive during dream time. This is another way to release and heal situations you are currently holding on to. By paying attention to the message trying to come through, you will be able to quickly work through any unresolved issues and take another step forward in life.

Emotional resolution dreams are a personal, for your eyes only moment in time. Think of it as a time where you can work with your guides one on one, without your ego. Raw emotional release and healing will be the result. Use that to your advantage.

Sweet dreams.......

Copyright © 2006 Angel ShadowMy ancestry is Irish and Cherokee Indian and I have a gypsy spirit that refuses to be fenced in. I am definitely not a conformist. Much of my life was spent under the control of others. My childhood was full of abuse and neglect, which lead me to my volunteer abuse work. It also lead to anxiety and panic attacks, which I suffered from for years, so I'm dedicated to helping others in that area as well. I have now found my own personal freedom, based on my own personal truth and nothing could be more liberating. Find out more at Writing.com and MySpace.com.

Spiritual Growth: the Spiritual Challenge of Modern Times

To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task.

Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, gadgets, and tools as well as entertainment through television, magazines, and the web have predisposed us to confine our attention mostly to physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the material and spiritual aspects of our lives?

To grow spiritually is to look inward.

Introspection goes beyond recalling the things that happened in a day, week, or month. You need to look closely and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically examining your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you have, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, on the good traits you must sustain and the bad traits you have to discard. Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any skill, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.

To grow spiritually is to develop your potentials.

Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. When you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the difference between these two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Christianity and Islam see that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology view that self-development is an end by itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for meaning.

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all things. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether we believe that life’s meaning is pre-determined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we discover this meaning, there are certain beliefs and values that we reject and affirm. Our lives have purpose. This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during trying times; and gives us something to look forward to---a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a drifting ship at sea.

To grow spiritually is to recognize interconnections.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all creation, live and inanimate. Thus we call other people “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our link to other living things through the evolution theory. This relatedness is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you.

Growth is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day encounter. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.