“Stop It” goals might be the most important goals you ever set!

Stop doing everything that you do that doesn’t give you pleasure, real results or make any apparent difference. All of us can have a better life but we must take action and stop doing the shit that is not getting results or giving us pleasure.

Stop reading right now and write down three things that you are absolutely committed to stop doing for the rest of the year and maybe the rest of your life.

For those that are still reading, let us consider the importance of stopping three things that you dislike doing or that are a waste of your time. The whole point of me writing this coaching session is to help you feel more energised and put you in the driving seat of your best life without excuses.

Learning to stop things that are not serving you will be the most invigorating and empowering thing you can do. By accident, many of you will fill the time saved with just being busy, but those that embrace the concept of “Stop It” will feel empowerment to have more of the life they want to clearly focus on what they want to achieve.

Many of us get stuck by convincing ourselves that we don’t want to do something because it will make things worse, so we hold onto the problem. This very quickly becomes a form of paralysis, as outlined in a wonderful 30 second explanation by Karl Niilo.

For simplicity, let us talk about this as life with four parts:

• YOU
• Home/Family
• Work/Career
• Financial

It is relatively easy to see these four things as being co-dependant, but don’t make the mistake of also thinking they are equal. ‘You’ are the most significant factor in your own life because with desire and cognitive health, you define the context for the other three parts of your life.

By applying the “Stop It” strategy to three things that don’t serve you, you are exercising your intention to have more influence, with a desire to create a better life. To achieve this, embracing it as an ongoing consequence, you will need to support that intention with daily ‘attention’. The process of focusing attention on your actions for short periods of time is taught to people trying to give up a bad habit or addiction. It is the same process required to stop your obsession with your phone, social media or a connection with anything else that you wish to stop doing.

Your intention is the first mechanism available to you when adopting a series of “Stop It” goals, and as such, is incredibly important. Think of your intention as your steering wheel, helping you navigate through a continual flow of decisions and an exciting stream of continuous opportunity and possibilities. Is it any wonder that many of us find it difficult to focus and prioritise when being relentlessly bombarded with seductive and exciting choices? To help us manage our intention, we are taught by society to adopt certain beliefs and values and behave a certain way, as part of our identity and the need to fit in. Sometimes these beliefs do not serve us and we need to challenge our intention to adopt a freedom mindset to set our intentions free of this context and bias. We seem hardwired to be more successful in doing this more easily when started in our teens and twenties, however we can do this any time, if we wish. You must shed any fear and find the will to try.
Your attention is the second mechanism to you achieving the result while equally important your attention must follow your intention. Practice this by staying present on what you wish to achieve and people do this using meditation and mindfulness techniques. In my observation, this is something that you master with practice.

Make “Stop It” a foundational part of your plan to create and have more in your life.