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There is POWER in "Positive Terms"

Updated: Oct 28, 2019

Welcome to my P.O.W.E.R series for goal setting in the second quarter of 2019. For the month of April I would like to explore two questions through the acronym P.O.W.E.R.

  1. What are your biggest goals for your life?

  2. What progress have you made in attaining them?

For 5 weeks I will post once each week in regards to each new letter. You can thank my good sis Morgan who’s currently holding down “The Queens Corner” for this idea; stemming from her recent Spring C.L.E.A.N Challenge.


Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “P”. There is “POWER” in using Positive Terms. It’s important when goal setting to look at your wants in a positive manner. For instance, if someone were to ask you what’s your goal for the week, it shouldn’t be phrased in negative terms. Instead of saying “I want to work out three times this week because I’m starting to get fat”, you should find a way to rephrase that statement into a positive one. Thus your week’s goal might be said like this, “I want to start loving on myself and I want to go to the gym. I think going will help clear my mind, make me feel good and refreshed.”


Sometimes we burden ourselves by being our own worst critic.


We continue to highlight negative things even when we’re trying to be positive. The less negativity you bring into your own mindset the more refreshed you will begin to feel.


Negative goals are emotionally unattractive, which makes it hard to focus on them.

Yes, we all want to go to the gym to lose weight, but we sit there and we make losing weight the center of our focus. We don’t enjoy the gym because we view it as this horrible task that must be done because we want to obtain some idealistic body size. We’re going to the gym so that we can get a man because our minds zeroed in on all the things we don’t have or haven’t achieved. Your goal shouldn’t be “to lose weight”. Your goal should be to live a more active lifestyle. That positive goal will end up solving the negative problem along the way, and it’ll give you a better headspace about it to actually want to complete it.


 

Two Questions:


As a last bit of positive goal setting for today I want to explore the two following questions below as we begin to dive into goal setting, and give you my own answers as a way to be transparent with you guys. I’m going to attempt to phrase my answers in a more positive light by not reflecting upon the negative or what certain things don’t look like.


What does “success” look like to you?


The literal definition for success is: the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.


As I have gotten older I have seen the meaning of the word “success” change for me. Once upon a time I would have told you that “success” meant having a lot of money, a good paying job. Which made sense because my aim or focus was on getting through school so that I could have a nice paying job. Now don’t get me wrong this is still something that can be attributed to being successful, but I think it’s a bit more than that now that I’ve finally made it through school and I’m working.


Success now looks like me starting my own online business making paraphernalia for my sorority, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc, and passing it on to my children. It also looks like me starting my own family. I’ve always wanted two to three kids running around the house. Lastly, success for me looks like checking off my top three places to visit in the world: Barcelona, Spain, Paris, France, and Phuket, Thailand. Pretty simple and general goals for life.


How would you know that you’ve had a “successful life”?


This question is interesting to me because at what point in my life am I supposed to ascertain the quality and successfulness of my life? My mom is 41 and she looks back now and is not satisfied with aspects of her life. She still has a ways to go. My grandmother is in her late 60’s and she is still dreaming up dreams, she’s still planning for the future, she still has life left to live.


I think that in order to assess if your life has been “successful” then it needs to be taken from the point of view of “my life up until this very point. I also think that I am allowed to assess whenever I want to; every year, when I’m 40, when I’m 60, when I’m talking to my grandchildren or great-grandchildren. In that moment I will reflect and consider the question “Have I had a successful life so far?”.


I believe wholeheartedly that I will know that I’ve had a successful life in those moments based off of did I accomplish the things I set out to do? We go through life setting up one goal after the other, big or small, and the point of those goals is to accomplish them. Let’s say I did not accomplish a goal on my forever long list of things to do in life. I would have to think about all the contributing factors that went into it and reflect on what the outcome of that failure meant. Did my failing in one goal present me with a better goal?


Life is full of lessons and that’s how most events should be interpreted, as a way to reflect, assess, adjust, and attempt again.
 

So take this upcoming week, quarter, year, and begin to reflect. Reevaluate where you are in life, and start to think about our overarching questions for the month: What are your biggest goals for your life? What progress have you made in attaining them?


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